Introduction And Advice For Driver From Europe

Hi everybody

I am so happy to found this forum. I am Hungarian guy living in the Uk, but it seams an opportunity come across and I might be able to move to the US. I found a company willing to support me for the visa application.

Here in the UK we have completely different life style, well at least most drivers I know. We payed by the hour and home every day. I drive since 2014 and never had to live in a truck.

The company in Chicago offered me pay by the mile and I can stay in the truck even on my rest days. This is Actually would be convenient at the firs year at least.

I would love to hear any advice how I should go about living in the truck all year around.

Any feedback on Experior Transport in Chicago, IL?

Any advice starting a life in the USA in general?

How the truck stop facilities look like in the states?

Are tipping and loading got done fast ? In the UK usually all sites ok, but everybody payed by hour, so not much messing around.

What is the usual pay per mile?

How the police deal with the truckers?

How easy to get the shopping done on the truck stops?

Should I prepare my self with some kind of self defence weapon? Yeh you read right I am excited and a bit scared too although they let me bring my German Shepherd.

Yeh you read right I am excited and a bit scared too

Welcome to our forum Limalex!

You have good reason to be nervous. Chicago is full of illegal trucking operations. I can assure you that you are being taken advantage of.

First, it is not legal in the U.S. to sponsor a work Visa for a truck driving job. Our government classifys truck driving as "non-skilled labor." The reason for that is political. It is to keep foreign drivers from taking the truck driving jobs from American workers/drivers.

Second, American drivers with good resumes and clean driving records are having a hard time getting hired for driving jobs right now. There is no way a legitimate company needs a driver so bad they will bring them from Hungary. The reason they need you is because no self respecting American driver will go to work for them.

Save yourself a lot of trouble. Stay where you are, or come here on your own money. Find your own opportunities. This one is going to be really bad.

Yeh you read right I am excited and a bit scared too

Welcome to our forum Limalex!

You have good reason to be nervous. Chicago is full of illegal trucking operations. I can assure you that you are being taken advantage of.

First, it is not legal in the U.S. to sponsor a work Visa for a truck driving job. Our government classifys truck driving as "non-skilled labor." The reason for that is political. It is to keep foreign drivers from taking the truck driving jobs from American workers/drivers.

Second, American drivers with good resumes and clean driving records are having a hard time getting hired for driving jobs right now. There is no way a legitimate company needs a driver so bad they will bring them from Hungary. The reason they need you is because no self respecting American driver will go to work for them.

Save yourself a lot of trouble. Stay where you are, or come here on your own money. Find your own opportunities. This one is going to be really bad.

Thank you for the input Sir, although it was not I was expecting. I am Hungarian but living in the UK though. Just for clarification.

How can somebody offer a sponsorship if it is not legal? I am sure it cannot happen without government approval, The sponsor needs to follow strict processes to be able to offer sponsorship.

How possibly they could take advantage of me? They offered to pay my CDL

What do you mean by illegal trucking operation?

Unfortunately my only option is to find a sponsor otherwise I got no legal route to America.

Besides, number 1, people need to have a regular US car drivers license for 1 year minimum. Illegal sponsorship, probably just paying your ticket here, however they may go about it, who knows. I'm not sure the US even offers work permits for immigrants, for reasons as Old School mentioned above.

Point is, you cannot just fly into the US, and start working for ANYONE, no matter what BS, this company is feeding you. Think of it like this, say they bring people into the US, then basicly you're stuck in a foreign land, with no family, no knowledge of how things really work. They just got them some cheap slave labor from someone who don't know any better.

Sorry, but it's not as easy as they are making it sound. I'm retired here in the Philippines, and I cannot work here, even when I marry my filipina gf... That just grants me a more permenate resident status, without having to keep updating my tourist visa, or paying any exit fee's if I fly back home to US for something(yes they charge an exit tax/fee lol)

Before you think about coming to the US, these are the regs for bringing your dog with you. After you go through the requirements just to bring into the United States, you need to look up the State that you are going to reside in and see what those requirements are. There could be more rules beyond what the import into the US is.

Dog Importation

More Dog Import Regs

How can somebody offer a sponsorship if it is not legal? I am sure it cannot happen without government approval, The sponsor needs to follow strict processes to be able to offer sponsorship.

How possibly they could take advantage of me? They offered to pay my CDL

What do you mean by illegal trucking operation?

Unfortunately my only option is to find a sponsor otherwise I got no legal route to America.

Unfortunately, the world over there are scam artists. The US has a bunch of them too. Yes, they are in the trucking business also.

I just looked that company up on the SAFER (Federal) website. Their US DOT number is a real old number under Polmax LLC doing business as (DBA) Experior Transport. They have 112 units/tractors and are currently reporting having 102 drivers. I went to their Facebook web page and someone asked how long of a wait for a sponsorship and they replied with: "a minimum of 3 years".

As was said above, once you come to the US, you cannot get a CDL until you have driven with a Class C car/pickup license for 1 yr.

How can trucking companies run illegally? I'm not saying this company does because I don't know anything about them. However, there are companies owned by Russians (usually) that hire drivers, telling them they are company drivers (W2) but providing them with a 1099 form. In the US a company driver fills out a W-4 and then at the end of the year is given a W-2 so taxes can be filed. A 1099 is given to a lease operator or an owner operator. A LO and an OO are responsible for their own taxes. It takes the IRS a number of years to catch these kind of illegal activities unfortunately.....so these company drivers that get a 1099 are being scammed.

That company may have made it seem like it would be easy to come to the US to work as a truck driver, but in reality it is not.

Laura

Welcome, I hate to dash your dreams but what your saying does cause concern. As said you have to hold a US drivers license for a minimum of 1 year before you can obtain a CDL.

I looked them up and they appear to be fairly large with warehousing and even their own cdl school. According to their website. They also say they have approx 500 trucks.

However the paperwork they filed with the gov’t shows just over 100.

How possibly they could take advantage of me? They offered to pay my CDL

You need to ask yourself why a company would go through the hassle of hiring a driver from overseas and getting them licensed when there are experienced drivers struggling to find work. There are also plenty of citizens that want to go through CDL school, especially if it’s being paid for by someone else.

One of the reasons there are a lot of companies around Chicago that do this is because Illinois is one of the states that doesn’t require you to have a regular license for a year prior to getting your CDL. You just have to have an Illinois license that will be valid during the year the permit is good for.

While it is technically possible to get an H2B visa to drive a truck in the US, I would be interested to see how they convinced the department of labor that there are no drivers available right now considering the about of trucking companies that have failed over the last year.