Choosing Your First Trucking Company Job

Often times the only way to find out is to try it. But if you do decide to give it a shot please don't give up your home or apartment for several months figuring it will work out. If you can handle it for three months you should be ok. Often, though, both parties are glad that they can travel together sometimes and at other times one person can stay home to give themselves a break and to take care of other responsibilities. There really is no easy answer for this type of situation. It's a matter of trial and error. Now when I started driving I was 21 years old, hadn't traveled too much, had never been married, and had no children. The idea of traveling all of the time and living in the truck sounded AWESOME, and it was! The better part of my first 9 years of driving was over the road. I would stay on the road for weeks and sometimes months at a time. I just totally loved it!

So your first consideration should be home time. But please be honest with yourself. Don't convince yourself to do something that deep down inside you probably have some serious doubts about. If you have a family please try to find a job with as much home time as possible. If you absolutely NEED to make as much money as possible at least for a little while then at least try to formulate a solid plan that will get you out of your money crunch and into a position to take a job that will get you home as often as possible. I'm telling you, too much time away from home can ruin a family. Try to avoid it.

The next big consideration will be the size of the trucking company you choose to work for. I have worked for companies with over 5,000 trucks and for companies with as few as four. It's a huge cultural difference.

The larger trucking companies have a huge amount of resources available. They have tons and tons of different types of freight and driving opportunities. They often have local jobs, dedicated jobs - where you remain with one customer or run one route all the time, regional jobs, and over the road. They have much more flexibility when it comes to home time and will allow you to freely move between different divisions within the company when you feel an opportunity presents itself.

Larger trucking companies also have accounts set up with customers, lumpers, repair shops, towing companies, motels, bus companies, and truck stops. These accounts generally allow you to walk in the door, tell them who you work for, and get what you need taken care of without doing a thing. Repairs, towing, showering, getting bus tickets when needed, and picking up or delivering freight becomes much faster and easier under this system. To me this was always a really big deal.

Larger trucking companies also have a large pool of equipment to use. A variety of tractors to choose from and a huge number of additional trailers available make life much nicer for the driver. With the extra trailers you get to do a lot of “drop and hooks” where you pull into the customer, drop your trailer, grab a different trailer, and leave. You don't have to wait around to be loaded or unloaded.

This is really huge because most jobs pay by the mile so the time you spend sitting around waiting to load or unload is unpaid, wasted time. You want to keep rolling as much as possible and drop and hooks can help you make a lot more money in a lot less time. Drop and hooks also give you more flexibility as far as when you make your pickups and deliveries. Often times they will give you a deadline to pickup or deliver but you can generally get in there as early as you like, 24 hours a day.
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