I've been meaning to put something out here for a while. When I was in a truck driving school (2 1/2 years ago) I was told OTR will hire you but it's very unlikely any local company will hire you. I hooked up with Arrow but left them within months. I checked my local newspaper for jobs and applied at 4 local companies. Even though I did not have experience 3 local companies offered me a job. I took a job working for a concrete company driving a mixer truck. I been with them for 2 years. Good pay and I'm home every night.

 

Thats all B.S. i dont know why they keep tellin people that. am glad you found a good local job.

 

It all depends on the area you live in as to how difficult it will be to find local work without any experience. The bigger the area the easier it will be, generally speaking.

 

It's my belief that the trucking school probably get some sort of finders fee maybe. I know the school I was in pushed us to make a decision on a OTR company before I left the school. Not only did the school provide OTR companies time to come see us, but, we made a trip to a OTR company.

 

Yeah, some schools do get a bit of a kickback from trucking companies for providing students. A easy way to spot this is if the school seems to push a company or a few companies on students.

The school I went to did not get any kick backs, and if the owner found out a recruiter came into the school and flat out lied to the students that company would get banned forever. When I was there Werner, Schnieder, and a couple of mid sized companies out of Chicago had been banned for life.

 

I'm starting SAGE on 9/4. When I met the program director and asked him about family friendly companies he showed me several brochures; Werner, CRST, Covenant, Swift. Obviously they're getting kickback.

But thanks to this site and some research I know better! :wink:

 

Many different recruiters came to our school, and the instructors told us the same thing (unlikely to get hired by a local company), BUT they warned us the recruiters would paint us a pretty picture about their company, and it would probably not be as they said it would if we were to get hired for real.

 

My school made clear that a local Class-A job was possible, but it was going to be an uphill battle. Class-B jobs were a dime a dozen though - problem is all the really good local Class-A jobs don't count straight truck time as experience. Everyone else (save one) in the class got mixer jobs too - big business around here.

The instructors also pushed the big companies applications around (US Express was their favorite) but they didn't told us what to look for in the fine print.

 

I started out driving local when I first got my class a licence, as did many others I know, anyone who says you can't is full of s@#t, if you go out and look for a local job you can find one. A lot of people just believe what the big company recruiters and driving schools say, so they don't bother to look for a local job.

 

A concrete company might actually be more likely to hire someone with little to no experience than some other driving opportunities, now that you mention it. The place I worked didn't road test me, didn't care about anything driving-related up front, and mostly seemed concerned with my creative answers to deep philosophical questions. It was a weirdly thorough interview that kept me off balance, and then I had to take some kind of IQ test. (Where I got a higher score than the HR lady administering the test.)

The money was decent, the benefits were good, they had a good guaranteed minimum hours policy for the slow winter months where they'd pay you 40 hours a week to do scut busy work around the shop just to have something to do. Good camaraderie, and a real sense of brotherhood.

It just wasn't for me though. Wow. I guess if anything, it really made me appreciate how much I really don't mind the DOT, the HOS rules, the traffic, the fourwheelers, and all the other BS. It could be a lot worse. I could be back in that mixer.

<shiver>

I'm glad it's working out for you though. Concrete seems to be an all or nothing kind of deal, and if you've lasted two years, I expect you'll probably have a long and fruitful career. A lot of the guys where I worked had been there for more than 20 years.