Comments By ad356

The pay package with wadhams rist division isnt bad 1,800-2,500 miles per week -35.5 cpm to start -38.5 cpm after 90 days -41.5 cpm after 180 days -44.5 cpm after 1 year plus 200-300 per week for things like pre/post trip inspection pay. they pay 1/2 hour for pre/post trip per day. most companies that i know of do not pay for post and pre trip inspections. its not huge $$, but its required therefore you should get paid for it. my trainer with werner didn't even do a daily pre and post trip. his idea of a pretrip was putting it into the qualcom and sitting there for 15 minutes waiting for the clock to tick down.

this company is also more aligned with my goals. 1 year after starting with them i can transfer over to the milk or fuel division and be home every day. i will also be able to keep all of my seniority, time, paid vacations, and personal days (yes they offer those).

do you guys at least think a regional no touch freight is a better fit then a dollar account for a new driver? if you had to pick one or the other?

There are already things that i like. Wednesday i drive my own personal vehicle to the terminal location. i drive my own personal car to get the drug test and physical done. they are going to give me a room at a microtel for Wednesday and Thursday night. i will be at wadhams from wendsday till friday. Thursday and Friday are orientation, smith systems, and classroom. Friday afternoon i will meet with a dispatcher and he will make the arrangements for a trainer, i will go home friday afternoon after the arrangements are made. Monday i get picked up by a trainer and i drive Monday thru Friday, i was told i will go home for the weekend and resume the next week with the trainer. i cant say how transparent they are being with me BUT so far i like

1. being able to have my own car. one of the things i really hated about allentown was being placed in that hotel for two weeks with no transportation. we were told we were unable to bring a car. kind of like being in a prison, i had no way to go anywhere to do something as simple as going to get something to eat. i was captive to restaurants in the area and paying the absurd delivery fees every-time i had to eat.

2. not having to have a roomate. they told me i will get a single room and not have to share my living quarters.

3. having the training arrangements made before i leave friday. it seems organized

4. dont know how accurate it is but if i am really going home on the weekends during training that's a huge plus.

5. they told me that they only have 4 trainers and they vet them heavily. apparently these are guys that have been driving a long time and are well seasoned, good trainers.

I guess all i can say is i will go with wadhams and stick it for a while, really make an attempt to make it all work. working as a milk receiver i met allot of truck drivers, some of which is still am in communication with. shall i ignore their advice? i have a tendency to ask questions to someone who i know has been through it all, and these are people that i personally know. all i can say is i will go to wadhams stick it out for a year and see if it works out. if i cant do it, then i will bow out of the industry and come to the conclusion that its not for me. at this point i like what a hear and i have to give it the benefit of the doubt. if i don't succeed i fear with the crappy paying jobs that are otherwise available i very well might be doomed for failure and loosing my home. $480 per week before taxes isnt enough to buy toilet paper to wipe my rear end. i have to at least try.

#1. they sold me the dollar account because i said i wanted to be home as much as possible. i worked on the dollar tree for one week with another trainer i had. it was allot of work with two people, by myself i could see having serous problems keeping up with it. driving OTR is not in the cards, being gone 2-3 weeks or more is not something im interested in at all. one of the reasons i switched companies is i had two choices, stay with a dollar account or go OTR with Werner. i found a company that offered me regional which would keep me in the same northeast area but is 99% no touch freight.

#2. i know i started during the holidays, the biggest issue i have here is that i was flat out lied to by the recruiters. they falsely told me i would be driving before Christmas. i dont like being lied to that's not a good start. i dont lie to people and i hate being lied to. honesty would have been better and prevent me from being resentful. i would have waited until after the holidays to start. sitting in a hotel with no training offered was a joke. i will admit i am quite resentful being so blatenly lied to, and it makes me wonder what else they might be lying about down the road.

#3. i knew that getting a local job was going to be tough but i did not realize it was going to be impossible. i was falsely told by the local feed mill that they had a local job for me when i graduated. i got my CDL and apparently they changed their mind, maybe they had no openings. i was told something that did not materialize.

#4. my issue was not driving at night, but overnight. they are not the same thing. i drove at night pretty much shift i drove. my issue is not having a problem with night driving itself. my issue was being expect to sleep during the day in a moving truck. when i get on my own, im going to drive during the day and evening and shut down at 1 or 2 am. my issue was i started to nod off about 3 or 4 am.

#5. yes the family part sucks. i hope to at least get as much time as possible at home. they tell me they dont work on the weekends so perhaps its a little better. i dont know, i will have to find out. i really was trying to skip this leaving home part and go straight into being home at some point during a 24 hour period.

the problem around here is the local non-trucking jobs aren't even close to a living wage anymore. the temp services have sucked the life out of the wages in manufacturing. i would probably pursue something else, but i will be living in a cardboard box at $12 per hour. that's the typical starting pay around here, and with a minimum wage of $9.70, $12 per hour is not money to live on. i have accepted the fact that i will not be home daily for quite some time, but if i can get home on the weekends it will greatly reduce my emotional pain from being separated from my wife and child. frankly unless the local job market makes a drastic change for the better i am left with little choice.

i will try my chances at wadhams and stick it out there. it will probably still have its moments but might be something i can live with. im not expecting it to be perfect, if i am not spending 34 hour resets at a truck stop i can deal with it. unpaid 34 hour resets away from home suck. i did several of them. if you are on the road, they are not days off.

How about this if wadhams turns out to be most of what i want i will come back here with a glowing review. i know several people in trucking and they all think this is a positive move. one guy i know actually drove for werner early during his carrier. another guy i know works in the milk hauling divisions.

Ad356 has standards:

so yes, i would agree that so far this journey has been full of things that don't meet expectations.

There your problem right there. Many people come to this industry with "expectations" I believe are more like their demands. "Home every weekend"? You can certainly expect that, but you'll search high and low to find a company so generous to rookie drivers. You are having such a hard time because you are looking for that company that meets your demands, instead of expecting to start out like 95% of new drivers that go OTR for quite a while before they get to one of those weekend off jobs.

A heads up - add this into your "expectations": a company may say you'll get weekends​ off, but don't be surprised if these weekends only last 34 hours or so. That means you get home Saturday afternoon and head out Monday morning.

if i usually get the 55 hour home time they are talking about i would be happy with that, if sometimes it doesn't happen i will understand. OTR is terrible for family. OTR is not suitable for people that have families. being gone 2-3 weeks from my wife and kid, you cant pay me enough to be gone that long.

Mega carriers are the best training you will ever get

sure was great to have a company that ran me as team as a student driver. great to the have the trainer sleeping while i was driving. surprised the industry doesn't have more accidents. while at Werner, i met a former trainer that stopped training for this very reason. he felt uncomfortable putting his faith into a student that had little driving time. the team driving part wasn't that bad, expecting me to sleep during the day in a moving truck almost made me fall sleep from lack of sleep. could have been deadly. the only thing that kept me awake was rolling down the windows all the way and 30 degree temps

Im going to be regional not OTR, well at least regional will keep me in the northeast and home on the weekends. frankly i felt kind of trapped in that hotel, i had no other employment arrangements to go home to. the non trucking jobs around here are worthless temp service jobs that pay $12 per hour. local trucking jobs are inaccessible to new drivers. i also have a fear that if i went back i would sit in a hotel while they find me a truck. in total i probably have 3-4 weeks sitting in the hotel. what a waste of time. it took me being home for a week to make a change, being in a position of a 1 month leave with the ability to return if i had to. i couldn't just jump ship without something else to go to, and while i was there yes i got some driving experience.

How about this little perk. wadhams pays for post trip and pre trip inspections every day. not too many companies offer that.

Where do i get the notion that i should avoid the larger carriers, people i know that have been driving for decades. they all say the same things about larger companies, they lie through their teeth.