Comments By Pete B.

The 70-hr rule. I always found it counter-productive. After pre-trip, post-trip, and fueling hours are deducted from the day’s clock, that left you with only about 8 hrs drive time if you worked an even amount of time every day. I consider those… banker’s hours. If the 70-hr clock has to be, increasing the total hours from 70 to 80 would still leave me irritated with that rule, but it would be a little better.

Welcome Jason B. to the forum! About your situation, I'm not going to say it's impossible, but it's going to be very, very difficult for you to get a job in trucking within a year of your returning to the U.S. The insurance carriers who insure the trucking companies are nearly all going to require a valid driver's license for at least a year before allowing you to be hired, but you probably have already figured that out. Some companies, Prime for example, requires a valid license three years prior to them hiring you. I was out of the country for approx. four years before returning and becoming a truck driver, but kept up a valid license and did find about a dozen of the larger (mega) carriers willing to hire me. The best way for you to approach this is to just start applying everywhere.

Start here: paid CDL training.

Apply to each and every one of these companies; if they hire you, great, you will get your CDL and will not have to pay out-of-pocket to get it.

Next, follow this link, and fill out the application: truck driving jobs.

This may get your application out to other companies, not all of whom will help you with getting your CDL, but at least it will put you in contact with recruiters, with whom you can discuss your situation. These are your two best options, as they will connect you with the larger trucking companies with greater resources, i.e. more trucks, more mechanics, facilities, freight, benefits, etc.

What I see as your third option definitely carries greater risk, and that is searching the internet for trucking driving jobs; if you know which city & state you're returning to look at Craigslist, or other online classifieds in the nearby region for open positions. Using this approach you may be relying on a verbal guarantee to hold your job until you get a CDL, which you will very likely be paying for out-of-pocket, so there lies the risk. Also, those are companies with far fewer resources, so you may find yourself broken down or low on fuel in the middle-of-nowhere, or even somewhere, but asked to take care of whatever problem you're experiencing on your own, with the promise of reimbursement. More risk.

Not knowing anything about you, if I were you, I would just move back, get your driver's license, and then get a non-truck driving job. Work for a year, then consider entering the truck driving profession.

Whatever your decision, if it remains connected to trucking, please keep everyone on this forum apprised as it may provide a roadmap for others in your situation to follow. Thank you and good luck!

What’s the rectangular box mounted behind the shifter?

Wow, this is a great post, Davy. I think that after the first five minutes of discovering this site and forum while researching the industry, prior to becoming a truck driver, I closed the tabs on the other trucking websites because none matched the honesty, information, objectiveness, and professionalism found amongst the contributors to this site. Without a doubt it left me well-prepared to begin and succeed in a career I'd known nothing about, and for that I'll always be grateful to Brett, the moderators, and many others who have appeared here throughout the years.

Just the Manager decided he doesn't like me after I asked not to be dispatch by him in the beginning. My trailers were being tampered with in the yard, he would send me to the most difficult Receivers and they would give me the most difficult Docs. I was always being watched by the YD's as I backed.

This right here. Davy A. recently posted observations about the community of drivers engaging in this forum, and how many are considered 'top tier' drivers within their respective companies. Having been a part of this forum for many years, and having read hundreds if not thousands of posts by them and others, one of the characteristics of top tier drivers, or at least drivers who have maintained a long career in this industry, is that none of them exhibited the type of behavior you are describing. You wrote that your trailers were being tampered with... do you think that your manager assigned you trailers, and then sent people out to tamper with them? Or that he knew who the difficult receivers were and held back those loads for you? That's quite the conspiracy theory. You also find yard dogs watching you while you backed disconcerting.. well, I've had plenty of eyes on me while delivering to customers throughout the years... guys watching me back, watching me offload, some closer than others... but I didn't let any of it bother me. Most of them didn't know me, but they did know my company, so they had every right to observe me while on their property, making sure I worked safely and followed the procedures correctly. And that doesn't even really matter. When you enter someone else's property, you are in their world and subject to their rules. If you are bothered because your work is being inspected by the customer, that's a you problem, and has absolutely nothing to do with your manager.

You're a new driver in a company, and right off the bat requesting a new manager for these reasons...and these are just the reasons you have shared. That is not the way to prove yourself, and you are certainly going to lose any and all respect you might have been previously given. Add to the examples above your calling the non-emergency police number for assistance, and I'd say your conflict resolution skills need serious upgrading. That's borderline wackadoodle. I jumped in a loaner truck once where the previous driver's messages were still in the Qualcomm, so I read a few. Because they were so entertaining. She mentioned aliens who were stalking her in the truck stops. Aliens from space, not foreign countries. I see some similarities here.

If I were you, and you want to continue driving, I'd cut my losses with the company you are with, reevaluate how badly you want to succeed in this industry and what that requires, and if you feel you are up to the commitment, apply somewhere else.

This is one of those posts where we are not getting the entire story. As Larry alluded to, 'safety' is not going to call a driver; even if they were going to, they would access your HOS first and see that you were driving, and would refrain from making the call. 'Safety' is not going to bait you into answering your phone so that they could fire you. Let's say I'm wrong and 'safety' did call you... what prompted the three calls? I have heard of drivers getting let go because they were on the phone, but in each instance they were seen on the phone while driving, either at the entry gate to a Schneider yard (where there are cameras) or while driving around the Schneider yard.

If you want to pursue a career in driving, apply everywhere, be grateful for the opportunity (don't be picky), and when you find a job, honor their rules. It's their truck, their equipment, their risk, their rules.

Hi scorchednuts, hopefully what you did bring up with your carrier is the citation you received; that is something you want to be transparent about and let them know before they find out some other way. As far as reimbursement, that's a hard "no." It is your responsibility to make sure the truck is outfitted with the chains, as well as other safety equipment like three triangles, for instance. The company I pulled for, Schneider, would not keep up with your truck to make sure it had enough chains to satisfy Washington's chain laws (or Colorado's), but if you needed them to travel out west or just to deal with winter conditions, all you had to do was ask, and you would receive. Best to ask early, end-of-summer, to beat the rush. All the oc's accumulated piles of rusty chains in the spring when everyone turned them back in. So yeah, sorry but you're gonna have to eat that one. Expensive lesson; they happen. Stay safe out there!

Are you kidding me? How did you not catch this, Old School?! Coincidence of coincidences!

To anyone who comes across this thread... shaving your head/cutting your hair will not prevent you from getting hair-follicle tested. I keep my head shaved; the tester simply shaved hair from my arm to get the hair sample they needed. If you even need to ask this question this may not be the profession for you.