Hi everyone, hubby and I are almost done with cdl school and are considering 2 companies, US Xpress (the red trucks) and Schneider National (the orange trucks). If anyone has any good or bad experiences with either of them please let me know!

My personal preference would be schneider.vi have known several drivers that worked for schneider and really liked it. O believe their pay package is better too. Now if your willing to expand your horizons I would recommend CWTL depending on where you live. Are you planning on taking a pet? Schneider does not allow pets. Schneider doesn't allow big inverters either. Rumor has it usxpress is loosing freight. I am not a usxpress fan at all.

I have a problem. Not that one!

Recruiters and companies are quoted as saying a first year driver can make 30-40k. I come up with about 27k. Please check my numbers. Average starting cpm .26 x 2500 miles over 7 days = 650/week. Looks good until I figure weeks driving. If I earn 1 day off for every 7 and I have a 34 hr restate on top of that. I come up with only 38 weeks of actual work. 365 days per year/9.42. The 9.42 is 1 day earned plus redraft of 34/24=1.42 days. So, 38x650 = 24,700.

What am I missing?

You won't always need a restart also miles could vary and be as much as 4,000 miles per week .26 cpm is a low starting wage. I made .25 cpm while with my trainer at CFI.

Paul: You won't actually get all your days off. For example, you may be out for 6 weeks, and then come home for 4 days.

Expect to get paid crap your first year (or 2). Once you are done getting that experience under your belt (keep your record clean, do your pti's!) then you can move to a better company that will pay better.

crb, I had spoken with Conway but they would not hire us due to a lack of work history. Schneider does not hire out of Florida but we got a recommendation from a previous student out of our school, they had made an exception for her and her husband so they are making an exception for us. The one thing I like about US Xpress is that they pay .44/mile for teams, Schneider only .31/mile. But I would rather go with the better company. Yes I did know they don't let you have pets, that is a big bummer for me.

Conway truckload does hire students and they start teams at 43 cpm practical miles and allow pets and inverters. Can you not verify what you have been doing for the last 10 years for work history? Christine in recruiting is the best person to talk at CWTL. And no I don't work for CWTL anylonger, we put a 1.5 years in there and left for greener grass. From Schnieders' website they pay .34 cpm for recent grads team. I am not sure if schneider pays practical miles, but USxpress does not. Florida is a bad place for freight with most companies, except maybe tanker. CRST may be another option for you although they are not on my good list either. CRST does have a lot of team freight though.

crb, I hear ya, Conway was my top choice when I was researching what company to go with out of cdl school. Before we even started school I put in the application online and called them. When I talked to the recruiter, once she saw our lack of work history (ie no taxes filed for our self employment, which is because we didn't start running the truck here in the US until this year so we can't file taxes until next year, before that we were in Panama for a year and a half) she pretty much said 'we are inundated with new hires we don't have time for you'. Swift, Werner, Us Xpress and Schneider all said they can use invoices to prove that we were working. Swift doesn't hire south of Tampa so we would have to move to go with them... Werner is our very last option... so US Xpress and Schneider are our top 2. I think we are going to go for Schneider because we get to go through training togeither, so it works for us.

I did my research before I started school and had called at least a dozen companies if not more. I have a spreadsheet of all the other companies that said they wouldn't hire us for one reason or another, mostly due to our location.

Be careful anywhere you go, many times everything is fine until you get to orientation, and then it becomes an issue. Hiring requirements are becoming more strict everywhere.

This sounds like a good gig to start for a family "team." You may have to each go out with a trainer for a few weeks, but the pay should be the same, and you NEED the training. Do what they want for the first couple of months, and then... presto.... you are a married "team." 43 cpm is good team pay. If they provide insurance and other bennies, you are way ahead of me.... and I've been at this for 6 years.

I always wanted a "pet inverter" to help provide meals on the go!

Do you really need insurance? If not, you could look into Independent Contractors in the Florida area. Like maybe a Fed Ex truck owner looking for a team to run from the Orlando terminal. You are almost guaranteed to get the miles you need... and usually to get HOME weekly.