Become a Successful Truck Driver
Posted on Jan 07, 2008 - 12:22am by Wayne Weisser in Trucking
Notice, I said truck driver and not truck owner. We’ve covered several issues for owners already and will continue to do so. Check out our Business category to get started.
In my opinion, successful means finding a trucking job and a company that is a good fit for your situation.
Let’s start at the very beginning:
Schools
Best to go to a private run or community college school, grants are usually available. The biggest advantage is you’re not tied to any one company for tuition reimbursement. Unless you are extremely sure you’re going to stick with this career and this company it’s probably better if you don’t go through a company sponsored school where you have to sign a contract to work to repay tuition.
Medical issues
Some issues that may need waivers and will cause more trouble with the company are diabetes, this is serious. If you have type 2 and can control with diet and non-injectable insulin you may be able to get by with a waiver. High blood pressure will cause issues, especially if already on medication. Sleep Apnea - major pain because some companies will want their own clinics to test and at the very least a waiver from the doctor that did the testing.
Get a physical from your own doctor and tell him why. Before you lay out money for school or waste months of your time. If you have any issues, get waivers or whatever you need before you leave for your first job. A company will send you to their own clinic no matter how recent your DOT physical is. It’s supposed to be standard, but some clinics/doctors are more thorough than others.
Recruiters
Most are paid a commission on the number of recruits the company hires. After you’re hired the recruiters responsibility ends. I could say all recruiters lie and no one would argue, not even recruiters. They may only tell you about the good parts of trucking and why their company is the best. The most honest ones may not actually be lying, but certainly they are not telling the whole truth.
Research your first company
Pre-approved does NOT mean you’re hired. You have to pass DMV and employment verifications and a medical by the company’s clinic. Don’t even bother with training if you have a DUI/DWI within 10 years. Any serious moving violation or several minor moving violations.
Spend time researching your first company. Don’t take your first job offer (which is only a pre-qualified offer) because you think no one else will hire you. When you start having trouble being hired is if you start swapping companies every six months. If you live near a truck stop, ask every driver that comes in that is driving for the company you’re researching.
If home time is what you’re looking for, sometimes it’s better if you live near a terminal the company uses. That way you know for sure they can get you through the terminal.
If you talk to truckers and look on the internet, you’ll find good and bad (mostly bad) stories about most every company out here. Most of those stories have two sides and sometimes you have to consider the source and the agenda of the storyteller. You can spend months researching a company, talking to every driver they have and still make a mistake. Because your success and happiness are solely dependent on your personal relationship with your dispatcher. You might get along great, while the driver next to you can’t deal with them.
Before you quit and find a different company, try and change your situation within that company by changing dispatchers, managers or whoever you think is not a good fit for your personality. It happens, sometimes people just don’t get along.
Trainers
Every single company will assign you a trainer when you are hired for at least three weeks, sometimes as long as six weeks. Depending on the company will depend on the emphasis they have on training vs making the trainer money off of your back. If you’re having issues with your trainer of any kind. Most companies will allow you to swap with someone else. This may extend your training time, but in the long run, it may be worth it.
Find a Specialty
Not every company will be perfect for every driver. You have to find the company that fits what you’re looking to get out of trucking, not the guy at the coffee counter.
Some problems are “just trucking” and will be common in the entire industry. Some problems are specific to the kind of freight or trailer you haul. Talk to other drivers that haul freight you might be interested in hauling. More work, means more pay. It’s not always how fast you drive from dock to dock. Flatbed drivers get paid more because it takes a few more brain cells to make sure your freight doesn’t fall off your trailer.
Household drivers used to be able to make a ton of money, but they didn’t drive very much. They do the physical work of moving furniture, not just driving and by filling every square inch of trailer. Being smart in loading that trailer, hiring crews and not having a bunch of claims and you might make some money. If you hate helping your friends move, this field may not be for you.
There’s several different kinds of tankers, car haulers, grain and animal hauling. Don’t give up because you think trucking is only about grocery warehouses. Each area of trucking has their own set of challenges drivers have to deal with. If you look at your problems as headaches instead of challenges, maybe you need a different set of challenges that you can deal with.
Most of these specialized fields requires specialized knowledge they’re not going to teach you in CDL school. You have to make the effort to find a company that will spend the time to train you and/or find someone you can mentor from. If that means being a co-driver / helper for a few months and taking in less money at first, then you have to decide if that’s the path you really want. You’re not going to jump in and hopefully few companies will allow you to just jump into hauling animals or oversized without some training.
Even within the dry van and refrigerated industries there are specialties that pay more and offer different challenges.
Trucking is Hard Work
You have to realize trucking is hard work. It may seem like you’re just sitting there, but the mental discipline to sit and be alert for 500 to 700 miles a day every day does not happen overnight. Every time you stop at a truck stop you lose at least a half hour. From leaving the interstate to the truck stop, parking, walking in/out, getting back to truck and the interstate. Do that three, four or five times a day can add up.
Taking care of most of your business when you have to stop for fuel and any other time use Rest Areas. Rest areas are quicker to get in and back out on the interstate then truck stops in major cities.
That’s just the driving part. You may or may not have to load or unload, wrap, strap, chain, throw some iron in a blizzard, dealing with the smells of animals or animal plants and myriad of other problems we deal with on a daily basis.
Expectations
There’s a lot of frustration when you’re first starting out, from getting lost, to not having the kind of support from a company a rookie needs or the frustration of not being able to go home when you want to.
Don’t expect to make the rumored 30k a year your first year. Between a month or two being with a trainer at trainee pay, getting the worse loads for delays, layovers, labor and any other conditions you may not be able to get the miles you may need, especially at first. Not because of lack of trying to push you, but shippers and receivers have a lot of control over how much you are able to drive. From meaningless appointment times to having to wait a day or more to be loaded or unloaded.
Sometimes you’re just a rolling warehouse parked in their lot, product may not be finished or they may not have room to store what you brought. More and more carriers are trying to put a stop to this abuse, but if you’re carrier allows their drivers to be taken advantage of by their customers, find another carrier. Swapping carriers, trucks or anything else will interrupt your ability to drive (make money). A truck in the shop or on the side of the road, means the driver doesn’t get paid.
Bottom Line
In my case, trucking still kind of sucks for a job, but the positives for me still outweigh the negatives by a long shot. Even some of the negatives are only challenges that add to your daily routine and make things interesting. If you can find where YOU fit in trucking, it will make your career more than just a job.
Who are the high fuel price winners?
Popularity: 57% [?]
RSS feed for comments on this post | Trackback URI
Pages: [2] 1 » Show All
Hi Truckers,
I am wondering how many deaf truckers in the America soil, if you know or heard.
I’d love to research with deaf truckers and how successful with their professioanl. So far I have heard a few deaf truckers. I am also deaf from Louisiana.
To Deaf truckers…horray!
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Thanks!!
thank you for eveyones suggestions. I am still looking more into trucking. I always welcome more comments I just wanted to say thank you to everyone.
I too found myself in the position of ‘choosing’ to make a career change. I had always thought that the life of a trucker would be all about freedom and the open road. Um, so I was a little bit mistaken.
The most important piece of information in this article is that Trucking is hard work. Nothing is more fun that playing with chains when your hands feel like frozen stones.
But for the most part, I wouldn’t trade driving for anything else - expect for winning that lottery
Hello I am new here, but I want to look into more the truck driving. I company called PAM transport has given me a chance to pay for training for my class A CDL. But I am unsure if I am up to the part. I have a few quetions. Like I am a female who never left my state, I wonder alot about differnt things. Like how much are you away from home? Who pays gas and tolls? I know that it could be a lonely job but when you reach the spot do you have time to explor? How much time off do you usaly get? I live in New York City if anyone is wondering. I always wanted to travel and meet other people. Any experince or suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Mandee,
I am a wife of a truck driver. I can tell you that what PAM is promising you $ wise will not happen. These recruiters are rutheless when it comes to getting new drivers. They promise you the world and you get very little in return. They pay for Fuel and insurance and they even pay for your license, but in return you are stuck with a contract that you may not be able to fulfill. If you are serious about going on the road and getting a CDL my suggestion to you is that you look for a local SCHOOL. Not a company school. When you graduate with your class A they will help find a job for you that fits your needs. Trust me there will be a job for you when you get out. You are a woman and a MINORITY in the industry. You will be able to write your own ticket as long as you are persistant. GOOD LUCK!!
ps..Llyod I apolgoize for any grammatical errors…just wanted to share a story to help anyone else the same way i just got helped.
Lloyd, no one here is a professional writer, see that “Write for Life on the Road” menu option at the top? This is open to anyone and even though I’m the editor, I’m a truck owner/operator first and as long as it’s spell checked, the grammar isn’t too bad and can be understood, I’m not going to worry about it.
If you’re volunteering for the job, because it would be a volunteer position, let me know.
Is there a resource on the net where people with new CDL-As can get reviews on the various companies out there? It would be nice to be able to sift through the company BS with the the real point of views from truckers who know about them.
Pretty accurate, but next time you write something like this, run it by a copy editor to polish it and fix the errors.
well thought out posts on here. after driving full time from 1982 an bouncing from one part of trucking to another the one thing I will underscore is if you change jobs try to make it with that company for at least a year.you can be a great driver but you wont get a job if you look like someone that wont let them make some money off you.[they have to make money off you so you can make money off them]trucking the job you hate to love an love to hate but if you get it in your blood there is no cure
There may not be anything wrong with being stuck for a year. You have to work somewhere, just be careful. I’ve heard good things about Schneider’s program mainly because their trainers aren’t allowed to team drive with their students for the first two weeks.
This wasn’t meant to discourage anyone, just realize what you’re getting into before you jump in.
If you’re going to go with letting the company pay, Schneider is a good school. It’s respected among other carriers when you leave Schneider too. Don’t let company’s with nicer trucks fool you, those companies usually really work over a new driver. You can make a living with Schneider, at least better than you can with some of the other carriers. There are alot of benefits from a safety standpoint working for them. Inspections and legal harassment just do not happen as often due to their reputation and standing. Don’t get me wrong though, like most big student companies, in the long run, they’re not the most desirable to work for in my opinion.
Schneider is very well known for getting folks up to Green Bay, then letting them go for minor infractions on their record. If they find something part of the way into your schooling, they’re going to hit you with fees for the school that you cannot finish. Get a copy of your DAC, BMV report, legal record, and make sure you’re physical stats are good. Don’t trust the recruiter that you are hired, you’re not until they set you in the truck on your own.
I’ve known guys get their start at 40. Some do very well and love the freedom, others do the opposite and miss the comforts of home that they’re so accustomed to. Analyze yourself really well before you get into trucking.
Thank you for the comment my husband and I are going to drive as a team, and on monday we are scheduled to speak with a recruiter at schneider. You are right about not trusting the recruiter. Almost a year ago my husband was prequalified and received a bus ticket to crst truck driving program. he had a dui that was 4 years old and a suspension less than a year old. The recruiter knew this because we sent her his dmv-she said no problem. 4 days into to the program they sent him home. Not because of the dui (they take people with a 3year old dui) rather because of the suspension not being 1 year old. We were very upset especially when they sent us a 300 bill 2 weeks later for expenses.
We are okay with going with a company sponsored school for a while since we can’t afford a private school. I currently work in corporate for the largest bank in america and already with the economy dropping my commission checks are getting smaller and smaller. This is why i decided to hit the road with my husband. I k now our first year we won’t make alot of money, however we will save over 24k our first year because that’s what we currently spend on rent, utilities, car and insurance, gas, clothes and upkeep just to get me to work everyday.
also if anyone else knows of any other reputable company sponsored schools let me know please.
I’ve been in trucking for 30 years, and I pretty much have seen and heard it all. One thing I can’t stand is people being taken advantage of. I must say that there is a lot of that going on within the trucking industry in general.
As far as Schneider goes, I’d have to say that it’s a pretty good company for Truck Driver Training and for new drivers.
i am looking at a major career change at 40 and was just going to give in to a recruiter and have at it. I realized I would be “stuck” for about a year going this way but after reading all your posts I am going to rethink that route. Thanks for all your input.
Its pretty tough to have a career change at the age of 40. But yes definitely Training schools like this would help you out. Seems a good post & giving all insights & out sights of Trucking Industry. But still I feel that you have got very few years left in the industry compared to others as the Truck driving does require lots of physical strain too. If you are physically strong then you can go ahead else I would suggest you to search another industry at this age of life.
You mean like this CR England trainer?
http://www.landlinemag.com/todays_news/Daily/2008/Jan08/010408-08.htm