Month Since Graduation.

Hey all. Well I graduated with a CDL about a month ago. Past month I only got offers from May and Schneider. Problem is May I've heard some not to over the moon things and Schneider's training is all the way in Fontana and they want me to ride a bus there. I'm hoping to fly if they will cover that but my question is if I wait any longer will I be ineligible to be hired? It's already been a month and I am a bit worried.

Thanks all.

Hey all. Well I graduated with a CDL about a month ago. Past month I only got offers from May and Schneider. Problem is May I've heard some not to over the moon things and Schneider's training is all the way in Fontana and they want me to ride a bus there. I'm hoping to fly if they will cover that but my question is if I wait any longer will I be ineligible to be hired? It's already been a month and I am a bit worried.

Thanks all.

I'm not an expert but most of the companies I have seen that hire people with 0 experience but already have their cdl want you to have gotten your cdl within 3 months. I refuse to believe this to be true for ALL companies that hire with 0 experience because then what happens after month 3... you gotta go and get a new cdl or never be a trucker? that would be quite stupid.

what happens after month 3... you gotta go and get a new cdl or never be a trucker? that would be quite stupid

Some companies will have you take a refresher course of some sort. If they have their own school they'll handle it. If not, they'll have you take it at a private school somewhere.

I believe it is around 3 months or so for most companies. You can Apply For Multiple Truck Driving Jobs at one time with one application in our job listings and get some quick responses.

I don't know much about May Trucking but I know Schneider National has quite a variety of opportunities to choose from and they work well with inexperienced drivers.

Hey all. Well I graduated with a CDL about a month ago. Past month I only got offers from May and Schneider. Problem is May I've heard some not to over the moon things and Schneider's training is all the way in Fontana and they want me to ride a bus there. I'm hoping to fly if they will cover that but my question is if I wait any longer will I be ineligible to be hired? It's already been a month and I am a bit worried.

Thanks all.

My question is, what's wrong with going to another city for orientation and riding a bus? Didn't you expect this? This is the norm. Sometimes companies will make travel agreements where if you take another form of transportation, they'll reimburse up to the cost of the bus ticket but it's doubtful they'll pay for your flight just because you don't want to ride a bus.

Many people in this forum I'm sure can say that they rode the grey dog to a different city and lived.

I'm expecting a nearly 3 day bus trip to get from Oregon to Missouri. With no long stops in states I've never been in. Embrace the experience and get rolling.

Hey all. Well I graduated with a CDL about a month ago. Past month I only got offers from May and Schneider. Problem is May I've heard some not to over the moon things and Schneider's training is all the way in Fontana and they want me to ride a bus there. I'm hoping to fly if they will cover that but my question is if I wait any longer will I be ineligible to be hired? It's already been a month and I am a bit worried.

Thanks all.

Lightside N, there's a few things that stood out to me in your post.

I had some health issues that delayed my initial getting of job after I got my CDL, and that time delay can cause some problems.

You sound like you only got offers from two companies, but you don't really say how many you applied to. Did you try and contact any recruiters by phone? If you just send in applications and then don't follow them up with phone calls they will get buried under the overloaded recruiters piles of things to get to later on.

You say you've heard some not so great things about May, but you don't tell us where you heard these things. If you are relying on internet reviews for deciding on which trucking company to go with you are chasing a wild rabbit trail. How in the world can you verify any of the information you read? How can you know who those people are writing those reviews? This industry has a lot of people who try to get started in it that don't have a clue as to how it really works, and most of them fall by the wayside fairly quickly and then start posting internet rants about how badly such and such a trucking company did them. The truth is that it takes a pretty darned determined individual to break into this industry, and those types are few and far between. The ones who just can't do it usually can't accept the fact that they weren't cut out for it so they point their fingers at the "evil trucking empires." They ignore their own shortcomings and try to place all the blame on to "the man." That stuff doesn't fly around here.

We've had several new drivers start their careers at May, and they had very positive experiences.

One more thing. Almost all trucking jobs start out with a long bus ride. I'm not even going to bore you with telling you about how many hours I spent on the greyhound when I got my first job in trucking. If you can't handle a long ride on a bus, how are you going to handle driving ten and eleven hours a day and then being stuck in that truck for the next ten hours while you sleep?

You are a brand new CDL holder - you are not a truck driver yet. They are not going to roll out the red carpet for you and fly you across the country. And if you start acting like you think they should, they are going to get cold feet for you real quickly. This whole career is performance driven. You are completely unproven material with absolutely no track record. Even drivers with years of good solid track records get on the greyhound bus when they go to start a new job, or else they will fund their own transportation and then get reimbursed the difference based on what the bus ticket would have cost. These companies are in this to try and make a little money - if they can save a few dollars by putting you on the bus, then that is what they will do.

I wish you would have struck while the iron was hot as far as getting your first trucking job, but then I also am glad to see you in here. I think you will serve yourself well by trying to peruse these forum topics a while and getting yourself a little more prepared for what it is that you are about to embark upon.

I have to agree greyhound isn't all that bad. I have ridden it numerous times in the recent past. so far I have taken greyhound from NYC to Boston and back, I have taken it from Houston to Dallas 3 times, Dallas to San antonio once and then San Antonio to Dallas and back once.

The only time I had even a small complaint is on my return trip from Boston when I had someone who was too big for his seat who fell asleep and kept leaning on me... but that happened once. almost every other time I have had an open seat next to me or the person next to me wasn't a problem.

You might also look into amtrak depending on where the company is located. it's usually cheaper than flying not always cheaper than the bus but usually a bit quicker than bus but slower than flying BUT it's way more comfortable than both. I took amtrak from san antonio to baltimore and back in 2013 and have used it between san antonio and austin numerous times. My trip TO Baltimore took about 2.5 days of travel time although I bought a multi city ticket so I could stop in Birmingham, al and visit some family so total time was 5 days but that was my own choice. the trip was san antonio to new orleans, then new orleans to birming ham then to dc (normally I would not have stopped in birmingham) then dc to BWI airport. only problem I had was a freight train broke down and we had to wait for it to get moved so I missed my connecting train, but most trains out of dc run every hour so no big deal. My return trip was BWI to DC, DC to Chicago, Chicago to San Antonio. no problems there, took about the same amount of time.