While I understand drivers not wanting to be door mats for companies, most have no idea how seriously changing jobs every year or so affects their "hire-ability" in the trucking industry. You'd do better IN THE LONG RUN if you just stayed with a company for a year or two before leaving. A lot more doors would open up with better companies and chances are you'd get a job you would like. It costs a small fortune in time, money and effort training a driver, issuing him/her a truck and putting him "into the system". With several hundred applications received per day, it's often safer and makes more sense financially to hire someone who SEEMS a better chance at staying "with it". While student drivers are an unknown quantity, at least they have nothing NEGATIVE on their histories yet as the MAJORITY of experienced drivers do.
As far as TMC wanting students over "experienced drivers", that's absolutely FALSE. Every week I get a reminder email telling me to try and talk to more experienced guys if I can. The problem here is that a lot of experienced guys have experience with more than just DRIVING. They have been good at getting tickets, having accidents, doing drugs, job hopping, having a "know it all" attitude, getting injured, abandoning their truck, posting damaging remarks about their former employers, having a poor reference given to them when their past company was contacted and much more.
Working at TMC requires much more than a CDL and sometimes a great DRIVER, may lack someting else which prevents TMC from hiring him.

 

Couldn't have said it better Fred. You hit it on the head.

 

It was either TMC or Werner flatbed division. The Werner recruiter at my school tried to convince me to go with Werner b/c of the ability to switch over to dry van during the winter, not dealing with the cold.

Also, he claimed that flatbed companies can 'run-out' of freight, but Werner doesn't because it has different divisions. I'm sure this was the normal pitch to students looking into flatbedding. It seemed like a 'scare-tactic.' lol.

 

It's hard to help someone who can't help ME. I told you you needed medical documentation regarding the issue we spoke about. Your application is NOT declined, just "filed" awaiting more information from your doctor/surgeon. TMC needs more than a DOT physical. Hell, in NYC I can get a DOT physical without even taking my shirt off or having my pulse checked. The DOT physical is almost worthless.

 

Werner's where you go when even the morgue won't hire you.

 

Thanks Fred. I'm glad I chose TMC. Yeah, it seems like Werner has very few restrictions on hiring, which trigggered a red-flag in my mind.

Fred, I have read in past posts that people can chose Des Moines it they are assigned SC. It it is about a 300 miles more to Des Moines from my location, but I would prefer to go their for orientation if assigned SC b/c it is the headquarters. Is that possible?

thanks.

 

Yes you SHOULD be able to switch to Des Moines if you desire.

 

While I understand your view point Fred, I can not agree in my position. As far as my driving jobs go here are MY reasons for leaving.

Swift: I was there for 4 months plus 3 weeks for their CDL school.(which as I posted in the past is a joke) I left there because 1. they kept me out for a month straight with 2 days of home time, not acceptable to me. 2. I was getting VERY small weekly checks, to the tune of 100-300 per week. You can not pay bills and live on the road for anywhere near that amount. and 3. On a few loads I told my DM that I could not do it legally and was told if I did not take the load I would be fired. So why would I stay there for a year? I would have gone bankrupt and could have very well have lost my CDL for running illegal for them.

Kholler Concrete: I worked for these guys for 7 months right after swift. I started out driving a front discharge concrete truck and filling in pulling tanker and dump trailers. There was always something wrong with my mixer truck which I wrote up in my pretrip book that I turned in everyday. They would not fix my truck, then one day my front sway bar fell off going down the road at 55mph with 8 1/2 yards of concrete turning in the drum. I almost flipped my truck after hitting my head on the side window and blacking out for a second, but I was able to regain control and get off the road. Passers by who stopped to see if I was ok told me that through out the incident I had both sides of my tires up to 3 feet off the pavement, that's how close it was. The company then blamed me for the incident say I didn't tell them the truck needed work. I then pointed out my pretrip book and they let that go. After that I told them I wanted to go to TT only, which they let me do, however the truck they gave me needed tires which I wrote up over and over again. Also every trailer they had was a DOT violation on wheels, which I also wrote up. Then day I finally got popped by DOT and got 7 tickets and was shut down till the truck was fixed. Now I asked the state trooper who is responsible for the tickets as he made them out to the company and not me. He told me that it is the companies responsobility to pay the tickets because I did my job as a driver and wrote all the problems up in my pretrip book going back over a month.Well needless to say the owner of the company told me that I would have to pay for half of the tickets and they would be taking it out of my weekly checks, so I said I don't think so and quit. Again why would I stay here for a year just to make it look good on paper? I was almost killed or hurt seriously and they did not care in the least.

DLC Excavating and Construction: I worked here for 7 months as well, I drove a tri-axle dump truck and most days hualed a 30ft equipment trailer hauling heavy equipment, pipes ect. I really enjoyed this job and had no intentions of leaving. Howerver one week my wisdom teeth were bothering me really bad and my boss told me to take the week off and get them pulled and to come back the following monday. Well I came back that next monday and the other drivers truck was broke down so he was driving mine, so they told me they didn't have any work for me, even though I was the senior driver there. I kept showing up to work every morning for the next few days only to be sent home. They finally told me that when the other truck gets fixed they will call me to come back. So I waited about a week and gave them a call because I had seen the broken down truck back on the road. They then told me there was no work right now and they would call me. So I waited 2 more weeks while calling them every now and then but this time they would not answer my calls or return my messages. So I left them and went to work as an EMT because there were no local driving jobs at the time.

Wind Gap Ambulance: I am only leaving here because I can not afford to live off of 350/week bring home. My wife and I are trying to buy a house and there is no way to do that when our combined monthly income is only 3 grand.

The jobs I had prior to trucking usually didn't last a year because in a small town the economy changes all the time and people come and go when the work is there, When you are young in a small town you have to do what you have to do to earn a living. So it is my belief that I am NOT a job hopper, it just looks that way on paper. But when in reality there is a reason behind all of it, and that's where companies need to take a closer look at the person and not just what they see on paper.

 

Just updated my site with the latest TMC pay program figures. Click the link below to check it out:

http://www.goldiesplating.com/flatbe...efits-more.htm

Also included there is a much better map of our hiring area.

 

Unfortunately, "What it looks like on paper" is the ONLY thing trucking companies can and WILL look at and in reality "it is what it is". Do some great people get passed up because of this? Most definitely. But it is the nature of the beast.