Profile For Parrothead66

Man you might find that quite a few drivers are married to nurses. My wife is a RN. She’s actually gotten into the teaching side of it over the last couple years.

As far as paying your own way through a school that’s not on their list. You would have to ask the recruiter if they will hire from that school and if they will pay the reimbursement. If you live in Austin I think Houston would be the nearest school to you. And you would have the option there of paying for it out of pocket and being reimbursed or them paying for it and you signing a work agreement.

If you go to a school that they are contracted with and sign the agreement to work for them then they pay for the school. There’s other schools that they will hire from and you pay your own tuition and then they will reimburse you.

Former Mcelroy driver

If they’re contracted with Mcelroy then the company pays for the school. You sign a contract to work for them for the agreed amount of time. There’s no reimbursement because you’re not out any cash.

Parrothead66 so the college is Austin Community College and I believe McElroy have a contract with them after I complete schooling and then I can get tuition reimbursement from them. Is that correct? Only thing is I might have to pay for the schooling cost upfront to begin with.

I have a friend that worked for them for 2 1/2 years and he had nothing bad to ever say about it. He said the money was good but he didn’t go through their training per say. He had a little over a year experience when he signed on. They run like a lot of the flatbed companies. You can be home every weekend but they give you an option to stay out longer if you want to. They do run a larger area than Mcelroy so you may or may not have a longer ride home on Friday.

Yes Mcelroy has contracted with them. They pay for your school and you sign on to work for them upon graduation. You will get your CDL and then go to Mcelroy for orientation and 4-6 weeks on-the-job training. They don’t run as a team during training so the entire time you’re on a trainer truck he’s sitting up front teaching (some better than others). As your training progresses he does less so towards the last couple weeks he’s basically just sitting and watching but there if needed. Carl Negley is the school owner. He’s been in the industry for a long time and had the school for many years. It’s an accredited school 240 hrs. Try to get with Marcus or Richard as your instructor.

Joel if you don’t mind doing a contract with McElroy they have a CDL Sponsorship program with a few schools in Texas. Not sure what part of Texas you’re in but I know they use Tyler Jr College/Career Trucking Academy. It’s where I went (before they offered this program).

You probably know already but TMC and Mcelroy offer tuition reimbursement if it’s your first job. I believe that’s the requirement.

What Turtle said. I’ve been with McElroy and I know drivers from TMC that make real good money and from what I’ve been told they have a really good training system. Now if you’re looking at company training for your CDL, I don’t know if they do that. McElroy is contracted with different schools to do their CDL training and then you’re contracted to drive for them. I don’t know what the details of the contract are.

Yes they’ll be on elog, pretty sure they have a gps built in BUT DO NOT DEPEND ON IT WITHOUT USING YOUR ATLAS...and how current do you consider up to date

Good luck

TMC also hires new CDL drivers and they’ll give you the option of staying out over the weekend.

Welcome. With McElroy you’ll be home every weekend unless they have some needs for volunteers to cover an area. You should make at least $48k your first year, maybe a little more depending on where you live.

Had to pull off the road early. I was empty and that trailer was rocking

Currently

Hey Parrot. Just out of curiosity. What are your departing thoughts on McElroy? Good Bad Ugly ? TIA

Overall they aren’t a bad company. There were some changes...Mr McElroy passed as did our load planner for Texas. They also replaced the TM in Texas who by all accounts was a great guy that handled business. Weather it was just a break in period or what things just weren’t running as smoothly. You do get home every Friday and I never had a problem with anything I asked for. Lowe’s is there bread and butter. Lowe’s has a pretty busy DC in Ennis and they run as much as they can for them there. I think that limits what a driver can do if he’s running out of Texas but on average I think the Texas drivers run anywhere from 49-55,000 a year. This opportunity came up where I can make more and an extra night at the house occasionally. If I went back to flatbed would I work for them again? I wouldn’t have a problem with it but after talking to some friends that have gone to other companies, there are some I would look at first.

Sweet... and dont you love the truck????

Still getting acquainted with the automatic but I think it’ll be just fine. Turned in a 2015 with 400k hard miles on it and this one is almost like driving a car in comparison.

Yes OS we unload. Once you get about 1/3 of the way in the trailer you can pull one of the bigger tires and lay it on the floor then use it as a kicker tire. Just bounce yours off the front edge of it and it takes off. Now you get a Wingfoot/Goodyear truck center and them can wear you out if it’s a lot of them. But you stand them up and roll them.