Ok, so you’ve decided to go to CDL school and become a truck driver. Allow me to dispel the one common myth before you even begin:
If you are getting your CDL with the hopes of landing a local CDL position the day after you graduate, keep dreaming. Generally speaking, the only trucking companies which will consider you for employment immediately after you getting your CDL are OTR (Over The Road) trucking companies. Local companies likely will not even consider you until you have at least a year of OTR driving experience under your belt. Unless your parents or Uncle Al living over in Missouri owns a local trucking company, you most likely will have to go the one-year OTR route before you can even consider looking on Craiglist for a local position.*
Now that we got that out of the way, the rest of this post will concentrate on the types of questions you’ll need to consider asking the slew of trucking company recruiters traipsing through your CDL school doors day in and day out trying to lure you in to their company.
Make no mistake about it, those recruiters are making money off getting you to sign up with their company. Their company is also paying the CDL school $$$ to allow the recruiter to come in and pay you a visit. You don’t think the training company is going to allow a trucking company to come in for free, when there is money to be made, do you? No, someone is getting paid to allow the recruiter to walk through the door to get you to sign up.
That said, you need to be armed like a warrior with all sorts of questions to lance the recruiter with. You will likely see a open or more recruiters representing a dozen or more trucking companies, all vying for your keester behind one of their trucks. You need to be asking the right questions to see which are the better companies, because, as you shall find out, not all trucking companies are created equal.
Shall we begin? Grab a pen and paper, write down my questions, and take these with you to your CDL school. When the recruiters start showing up, you’ll want to be ready, right? Take copious notes on what the recruiters say. Write down their answers verbatim. You may find that the recruiter for the company you are interested in signing with may not have been all that honest when he (or she) was speaking to you back in CDL school.
Ok, here goes.
1) How do you base mileage pay? Not all companies calculate mileage the same way. Some may use computer calculated miles. Others may use actual hub miles. Others still may calculate miles between the zip codes of point A and point B, not necessarily all the way to the loading dock. If you mapquest point A to point B and get 1345 miles, one company may pay you $.33 on 1300 of those miles, while the next may pay you $.30 on 1147. It all boils down to how the company computes the miles. Be sure to ask!
2) Home time. Unless you don’t care about getting back home, home time will be very important to you. As an OTR driver, expect to be out at least one week at a time. Maybe two weeks. That means you are driving from one pick-up location to the next drop-off location for one or two solid weeks before you get home. Your home time might be a “weekend”. Ask what is meant by a “weekend”. Does a weekend mean all day Saturday and all day Sunday? Or does a weekend mean getting home at midnight on Friday, sleeping until 2pm on Saturday, then expected to be back at your truck at 4pm on Sunday? In such a case, you are really only getting home about 1 day, right? One day when you have time to relax and see family, wash the car, see a movie, go to a restaurant, mow the lawn, etc.
3) Paper logs or electronic (e-logs)? Each has its own benefits are merits. E-logs are where you sign in each day on a little on-board in-truck computer. Paper logs are where you are drawing the lines on your papers representing when you were driving, when you weren’t and so on.Since e-logs are much harder to doctor, if you get pulled for a random roadside inspection, the inspector likely won't even bother to see your log. There is a way to have your e-log faxed to the inspector upon demand, but the normal presumption is that if you are using e-logs, you're good. Paper logs, another story. You can get away with more using paper logs, but so, too, are your chances of getting caught if you do try to fudge the numbers. And it's only a matter of time before you either get caught, get pulled over for speeding, or pulled over for a random DOT inspection.
4) How old is the equipment you’ll be driving? As a newbie, don’t expect a brand new truck with 12 miles on the odometer. They save their newest truck for the drivers that have been with the company a few years. No, you’ll get one with 650,000 miles on the odometer. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. Just don’t be expecting a brand new truck. No company will simply hand you the keys to a brand new truck until you’ve proven yourself to the company, as the drivers who have been with the company a few years already have. I know, all the pretty glossy literature the recruiters will hand out will show nice, clean, spotless new trucks and trailers. It's all just for show, like everything else.
5) Are the trucks 10-speeds or automatics? Ten-speed manuals are the norm in the business, although I have seen a couple automatics. I hate the automatics.
6) Bonuses? Sign-on bonuses, safety bonuses, fuel bonuses, etc., etc. Remember that bonuses are set up in such a way that you likely aren’t going to see many of them. You can ask recruiters about bonuses, but they likely won’t amount to much as far as you- a newbie- are concerned (except for a sign-on bonus, perhaps, and maybe a inspection bonus- a bonus given if you pass a random DOT inspection with flying colors).
7) Benefits? The recruiter will likely hand out papers, brochures and leaflets extolling the many benefits of going with XYZ Carrier. One of these will be what benefits the company pays: Health? Dental? 401k? Break-down pay? Detention pay? Snow pay? There are all sorts of pay that you can become eligible for in certain cases. If you are at a dock for more than two hours, will the company pay for your idle time while you sit there waiting to be loaded (detention pay)? They should. In most cases, your best pay will be when your wheels are moving. You will likely get detention pay while you sit, if you sit for more than a prescribed length of time (one hour, two hours, etc.), but in most cases you will have made more money had you been moving rather than sitting.
8) Who loads the freight on to your truck? Will you ever be responsible for loading or unloading it? What percentage of your stops will be drop & hooks (where you simply drop one trailer and hook up to another and go, without waiting on being loaded up). Everyone loves drop and hooks because there's no waiting involved. No one likes waiting around to be loaded or unloaded. Sure, you might get detention pay, but you are nine times out of ten going to make more money if your wheels are moving rater than sitting earning detention.
9) Will you ever be forced to go to NYC? Believe me, as a newbie, you do NOT want to be caught anywhere near NYC. NYC is nothing but trouble for newbies, which is why most companies pay a premium for any driver to go to NYC.
10) Do the trucks come equipped with APU (Auxillary Power Units)? Do they come equipped with power inverters? APUs allow you to heat and cool your truck using a smaller, more efficient mini-motor mounted on the side of the truck somewhere. APU’s seem to be getting phased out, as they were wrought with problems. If your truck doesn’t have an APU, how will you keep cool in your truck on hot summer nights? If it’s 88 degrees outside, it’s 95 inside, even with all the windows open! Inverters allow you to run microwaves, TVs and computers off truck battery power.
11) Will your company force-dispatch you? Forced dispatch means you have little or no say in where the company sends you next. You might get three or four crappy 250 - 500 mile runs before you get a decent paying 1100-mile run. And regarding runs, your company will do everything it can NEVER to route you anywhere close to where you live. This is because they know you’ll want to make a detour and head home for a few hours or a day. You might come close to home (within 50 miles), but don’t expect to be allowed home time in the middle of a run!
12) Number and locations of company yards and maintenance facilities around the US. More is better, obviously.
13) Who pays for highway tolls? Normally the company pays them. Most larger companies offer an in-cab electronic module affixed to the windshield. This registers your truck as you pass the toll booth. If you have one of these EZ-PASS systems installed, you will almost never have to stop and pay a toll. I say almost because some states don’t participate in the EZ-PASS system, making toll booth stops mandatory. Always carry some cash on you at all times for this express purpose.
14) Some questions about the company: How long has it been in business? Has it ever had to downsize or lay-off drivers? How large is it? Where does it operate (in what states or regions)? What does the company typically carry (does it routinely haul paper products? Haz-mat? Refrigerated food products)? How large is the fleet? How many trucks and trailers? What is the company’s annual driver turnover? Average age of the equipment? Average time a driver spends with the company? Will the company reimburse you for your CDL training? If so, how? Can you bring along a family member with you as you drive from one spot to the next (usually the answer will be “no”, until you have some experience under your belt). What is the company’s training regimen like? How is the company’s standing with DOT? Does it have lots of violations and infractions? What is an average company-wide DOT inspection score? How high is safety on the company's list of important considerations and philosophies?
15) Once you get your CDL and sign on with a company, how will the company get you to its headquarters to begin training? Will they fly you? Will you take a bus? Will you rent a car? Who will pay for the bus fare or car rental? In most cases, you’ll actually be paying, in terms of a lower per-mile starting rate, or in some other way. Nothing is free, no matter what a recruiter says.
That about sums up all the questions I can think of off the top of my head. I hope this helps out. Other experienced drivers may add some of their own comments, experiences and potential questions below.
Now, for some of the gimmicks some companies try to lure you in:
Don’t fall for some of the immediate-gratification promises. Promises of high pay while training, or all- expenses paid while training, and so forth, typically aren’t worth it if you have to make up for it later on down the road in terms of reduced mileage pay. Trucking companies know you aren’t going to have the time nor energy to look for other driving opportunities while you’re out on the road, so they have to do everything they can to reel you in from the get-go (as in, at CDL school).
Just because a recruiter walks in the door with job applications doesn’t mean you need to make a decision right then and there, on the spot. Weigh all your options. Ask lots of questions. Force the recruiter to open up and tell it like it is. In most cases, the recruiter is going to gloss over everything. When you get home each day from CDL school, look up each company represented by a recruiter on the internet. Do a google search. Does the company have a website? Does the website look professional (a plus), or amateurish? Check the company out with the BBB. The company will most likely be registered with a local BBB chapter in the company’s headquartered state.
* There are always ways around this rule, however. I'll create another post where I explain how others have landed a local CDL position with as little as six months as an OTR driver!
If you are getting your CDL with the hopes of landing a local CDL position the day after you graduate, keep dreaming. Generally speaking, the only trucking companies which will consider you for employment immediately after you getting your CDL are OTR (Over The Road) trucking companies. Local companies likely will not even consider you until you have at least a year of OTR driving experience under your belt. Unless your parents or Uncle Al living over in Missouri owns a local trucking company, you most likely will have to go the one-year OTR route before you can even consider looking on Craiglist for a local position.*
Now that we got that out of the way, the rest of this post will concentrate on the types of questions you’ll need to consider asking the slew of trucking company recruiters traipsing through your CDL school doors day in and day out trying to lure you in to their company.
Make no mistake about it, those recruiters are making money off getting you to sign up with their company. Their company is also paying the CDL school $$$ to allow the recruiter to come in and pay you a visit. You don’t think the training company is going to allow a trucking company to come in for free, when there is money to be made, do you? No, someone is getting paid to allow the recruiter to walk through the door to get you to sign up.
That said, you need to be armed like a warrior with all sorts of questions to lance the recruiter with. You will likely see a open or more recruiters representing a dozen or more trucking companies, all vying for your keester behind one of their trucks. You need to be asking the right questions to see which are the better companies, because, as you shall find out, not all trucking companies are created equal.
Shall we begin? Grab a pen and paper, write down my questions, and take these with you to your CDL school. When the recruiters start showing up, you’ll want to be ready, right? Take copious notes on what the recruiters say. Write down their answers verbatim. You may find that the recruiter for the company you are interested in signing with may not have been all that honest when he (or she) was speaking to you back in CDL school.
Ok, here goes.
1) How do you base mileage pay? Not all companies calculate mileage the same way. Some may use computer calculated miles. Others may use actual hub miles. Others still may calculate miles between the zip codes of point A and point B, not necessarily all the way to the loading dock. If you mapquest point A to point B and get 1345 miles, one company may pay you $.33 on 1300 of those miles, while the next may pay you $.30 on 1147. It all boils down to how the company computes the miles. Be sure to ask!
2) Home time. Unless you don’t care about getting back home, home time will be very important to you. As an OTR driver, expect to be out at least one week at a time. Maybe two weeks. That means you are driving from one pick-up location to the next drop-off location for one or two solid weeks before you get home. Your home time might be a “weekend”. Ask what is meant by a “weekend”. Does a weekend mean all day Saturday and all day Sunday? Or does a weekend mean getting home at midnight on Friday, sleeping until 2pm on Saturday, then expected to be back at your truck at 4pm on Sunday? In such a case, you are really only getting home about 1 day, right? One day when you have time to relax and see family, wash the car, see a movie, go to a restaurant, mow the lawn, etc.
3) Paper logs or electronic (e-logs)? Each has its own benefits are merits. E-logs are where you sign in each day on a little on-board in-truck computer. Paper logs are where you are drawing the lines on your papers representing when you were driving, when you weren’t and so on.Since e-logs are much harder to doctor, if you get pulled for a random roadside inspection, the inspector likely won't even bother to see your log. There is a way to have your e-log faxed to the inspector upon demand, but the normal presumption is that if you are using e-logs, you're good. Paper logs, another story. You can get away with more using paper logs, but so, too, are your chances of getting caught if you do try to fudge the numbers. And it's only a matter of time before you either get caught, get pulled over for speeding, or pulled over for a random DOT inspection.
4) How old is the equipment you’ll be driving? As a newbie, don’t expect a brand new truck with 12 miles on the odometer. They save their newest truck for the drivers that have been with the company a few years. No, you’ll get one with 650,000 miles on the odometer. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. Just don’t be expecting a brand new truck. No company will simply hand you the keys to a brand new truck until you’ve proven yourself to the company, as the drivers who have been with the company a few years already have. I know, all the pretty glossy literature the recruiters will hand out will show nice, clean, spotless new trucks and trailers. It's all just for show, like everything else.
5) Are the trucks 10-speeds or automatics? Ten-speed manuals are the norm in the business, although I have seen a couple automatics. I hate the automatics.
6) Bonuses? Sign-on bonuses, safety bonuses, fuel bonuses, etc., etc. Remember that bonuses are set up in such a way that you likely aren’t going to see many of them. You can ask recruiters about bonuses, but they likely won’t amount to much as far as you- a newbie- are concerned (except for a sign-on bonus, perhaps, and maybe a inspection bonus- a bonus given if you pass a random DOT inspection with flying colors).
7) Benefits? The recruiter will likely hand out papers, brochures and leaflets extolling the many benefits of going with XYZ Carrier. One of these will be what benefits the company pays: Health? Dental? 401k? Break-down pay? Detention pay? Snow pay? There are all sorts of pay that you can become eligible for in certain cases. If you are at a dock for more than two hours, will the company pay for your idle time while you sit there waiting to be loaded (detention pay)? They should. In most cases, your best pay will be when your wheels are moving. You will likely get detention pay while you sit, if you sit for more than a prescribed length of time (one hour, two hours, etc.), but in most cases you will have made more money had you been moving rather than sitting.
8) Who loads the freight on to your truck? Will you ever be responsible for loading or unloading it? What percentage of your stops will be drop & hooks (where you simply drop one trailer and hook up to another and go, without waiting on being loaded up). Everyone loves drop and hooks because there's no waiting involved. No one likes waiting around to be loaded or unloaded. Sure, you might get detention pay, but you are nine times out of ten going to make more money if your wheels are moving rater than sitting earning detention.
9) Will you ever be forced to go to NYC? Believe me, as a newbie, you do NOT want to be caught anywhere near NYC. NYC is nothing but trouble for newbies, which is why most companies pay a premium for any driver to go to NYC.
10) Do the trucks come equipped with APU (Auxillary Power Units)? Do they come equipped with power inverters? APUs allow you to heat and cool your truck using a smaller, more efficient mini-motor mounted on the side of the truck somewhere. APU’s seem to be getting phased out, as they were wrought with problems. If your truck doesn’t have an APU, how will you keep cool in your truck on hot summer nights? If it’s 88 degrees outside, it’s 95 inside, even with all the windows open! Inverters allow you to run microwaves, TVs and computers off truck battery power.
11) Will your company force-dispatch you? Forced dispatch means you have little or no say in where the company sends you next. You might get three or four crappy 250 - 500 mile runs before you get a decent paying 1100-mile run. And regarding runs, your company will do everything it can NEVER to route you anywhere close to where you live. This is because they know you’ll want to make a detour and head home for a few hours or a day. You might come close to home (within 50 miles), but don’t expect to be allowed home time in the middle of a run!
12) Number and locations of company yards and maintenance facilities around the US. More is better, obviously.
13) Who pays for highway tolls? Normally the company pays them. Most larger companies offer an in-cab electronic module affixed to the windshield. This registers your truck as you pass the toll booth. If you have one of these EZ-PASS systems installed, you will almost never have to stop and pay a toll. I say almost because some states don’t participate in the EZ-PASS system, making toll booth stops mandatory. Always carry some cash on you at all times for this express purpose.
14) Some questions about the company: How long has it been in business? Has it ever had to downsize or lay-off drivers? How large is it? Where does it operate (in what states or regions)? What does the company typically carry (does it routinely haul paper products? Haz-mat? Refrigerated food products)? How large is the fleet? How many trucks and trailers? What is the company’s annual driver turnover? Average age of the equipment? Average time a driver spends with the company? Will the company reimburse you for your CDL training? If so, how? Can you bring along a family member with you as you drive from one spot to the next (usually the answer will be “no”, until you have some experience under your belt). What is the company’s training regimen like? How is the company’s standing with DOT? Does it have lots of violations and infractions? What is an average company-wide DOT inspection score? How high is safety on the company's list of important considerations and philosophies?
15) Once you get your CDL and sign on with a company, how will the company get you to its headquarters to begin training? Will they fly you? Will you take a bus? Will you rent a car? Who will pay for the bus fare or car rental? In most cases, you’ll actually be paying, in terms of a lower per-mile starting rate, or in some other way. Nothing is free, no matter what a recruiter says.
That about sums up all the questions I can think of off the top of my head. I hope this helps out. Other experienced drivers may add some of their own comments, experiences and potential questions below.
Now, for some of the gimmicks some companies try to lure you in:
Don’t fall for some of the immediate-gratification promises. Promises of high pay while training, or all- expenses paid while training, and so forth, typically aren’t worth it if you have to make up for it later on down the road in terms of reduced mileage pay. Trucking companies know you aren’t going to have the time nor energy to look for other driving opportunities while you’re out on the road, so they have to do everything they can to reel you in from the get-go (as in, at CDL school).
Just because a recruiter walks in the door with job applications doesn’t mean you need to make a decision right then and there, on the spot. Weigh all your options. Ask lots of questions. Force the recruiter to open up and tell it like it is. In most cases, the recruiter is going to gloss over everything. When you get home each day from CDL school, look up each company represented by a recruiter on the internet. Do a google search. Does the company have a website? Does the website look professional (a plus), or amateurish? Check the company out with the BBB. The company will most likely be registered with a local BBB chapter in the company’s headquartered state.
* There are always ways around this rule, however. I'll create another post where I explain how others have landed a local CDL position with as little as six months as an OTR driver!
I want to work on that kind of field because I really want to follow the steps of my father. I'm sure that it will be easy to me because I have a knowledge in driving a heavy truck.
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