As the title says, I’m about to be going after my Class A within the next month to month and a half. My first option was Prime when I first started doing all of my research about 7 months ago, but now with the trainer shortage, and the truck shortage, I’m thinking about passing on Prime as I don’t want to wait very long to start driving. I’m now looking at Schneider and Swift, and if I can’t get hired by them then I’m looking to go with Knight. I’ve also been looking at PAM and XPO. Also, my girlfriend and I are probably gonna be going at the same time and teaming up after we finish up with all of the training, and we’ve upgraded to our own truck. We both want to do OTR. We don’t really have any commitments or priorities at home or anything, she just wants to come back home every 3 weeks or so to see family.
My biggest concerns about which companies will hire me is my driving, and both of our employment records. I was fired from my previous job back in 2019 because of an honest mistake that I had made. I had just graduated school with my Associates Degree in Automotive Technology, and started working at a dealership. If you know anything about dealerships, you’re basically paid commission at an hourly rate known as flag rate. Management was wanting me turn the same hours everybody else was turning, people that had been there for months and years, a lot longer than I had been. Which wasn’t giving me time to adjust. I was only there for 3 weeks when I was fired. I made a simple honest mistake when I had accidentally forgot an oil filter cartridge on a van after doing an oil change, and came back after overheating after being pressured and rushed. My two jobs prior to that, both companies went out of business.
As for my driving history, I had one at fault accident back in 2009 for a failure to yield, and didn’t have any insurance at the time because it had ran out 3 days prior to the accident. I was on my way to a job interview when I was involved in the accident. Go figure, ha. So I got a ticket for that as well. Long story short, I wasn’t able to make the interview as the accident had totaled my truck. And I didn’t have the money to pay the tickets so it went into failure to appear and warrant status. I was young at the time, and didn’t know that I had any other options that I could use such as talking to the judge about community service or anything else. So without any money to pay the tickets or anything, I had been driving with an invalid license and getting multiple driving while license invalid tickets. My very last ticket that I’ve ever gotten to this date was back in May of 2013. I was finally able to pay off the surcharges so that I could get my license back. I got it back in 2015 until 2019 when it had expired. And since I still had the open tickets, DPS denied the renewal of my license. Then covid hit. And with the covid stimulus payments, I was able to pay off all of the tickets, and remove all warrants and everything. Then after paying off my last ticket, because I had paid off my last ticket, TX DPS decided that they would do a Departmental Suspension starting in July 2020 and ending July 2021 on my license for the DWLI ticket that I paid off, and was finally able to get an appointment to take my test to get my license back in October of 2021. Thanks to covid, I wasn’t able to get an appointment any sooner.
As for my girlfriend, her driving record is clean minus one ticket back in 2015 for going 10 over that she took a defensive driving course for, no license suspensions, or anything, but she was fired from her previous job before her current one back in 2018 for taking care of a patient that was going into diabetic shock while another one slipped out the door without paying or signing an agreement to pay. Other than that, she’s clean as a whistle.
So now the whole internet knows my life history, hahaha. So with all of this said, will Schneider, Swift, Knight, or PAM hire me based off of everything I’ve told you? And if there’s any other good OTR companies that will hire us and train us, I will surely appreciate the info. I’m kinda wanting to stay away from CRST and Western Express unless those are my very last resort options and no one else will hire us. Also, I’ve looked into CDL schools such as local community colleges, and the ones near us are all booked until around next year. I kinda don’t want to wait that long.
I need straight-forward answers as I’m really wanting to take this big step into this industry, and really wanting to get into it. I’ve looked into it in the past, but never really dived into it this far nor took it serious like I am now. I can take blunt, honest, straight-forward answers. I’ve put a lot of research into this. I just can’t find the answers to the questions I’m asking.
