I’ll go over some of the finer details that I want to address further down in this post, but I want to spend the first parts of the article discussing several background items that come with the idea of being a trucker.
First, there is a difference between getting a pre-approval and having a job lined up. A pre-approval is a statement from the motor carrier, that is the trucking company, that your initial details look fine and they will move forward with your background checks, FMCSA Clearinghouse check, etc. to see if you would be a candidate. A pre-approval is not a job, and it is not a promise of a job.
“Having a job lined up” is different. If you got your license through a company that paid for your CDL schooling and you would be starting with or returning to them for your first job as a trucker, that is very different. As someone who did not take that path, I thoroughly recommend getting your license via a company that foots the bill for your tuition with the proviso that you will work for them for 6-12 months or whatever your term is, as stipulated in your contract.
You need a job, and you need it to be a safe job that will train you well.
That is the key difference: having a first trucker job lined up before you get your license means having a contract. It also means hitting goals or milestones at CDL school, and believe me when I say that not all CDL schools are equal.
Paying the tuition yourself is a different beast altogether. That is the student situation that this article is primarily designed for, as they will need this information more urgently. Like I did. You might have to go through a dozen or more companies before you find one that is a decent fit for your life and is also not lying to you about something crucial.
So, to state it plainly: if you are thinking of going for your CDL, discuss it with several companies that offer to pay your tuition directly and give you a job as a trucker, and take the one that fits you best and/or gives the best compensation and home time. That should be your first resort if you don’t already have your CDL. Negotiate a contract and sign it before you attend your first day of CDL school.
Key Things to Know Before Getting Your CDL
Protect your license! Anything that you do inside of any vehicle as a driver, whether it’s a tractor, your personal car, a friend’s car, whatever, impacts your license. As a CDL holder, you are considered by law enforcement to know better and will be held to higher standards at all times. Whether you are currently working as a trucker or not.
Safety is your first, second, and third priority. This is serious work. If you kill someone, and you very much can as a truck driver, you will have to live with that. If you kill yourself in an accident, the people around you will have to live with it.
Comb through some applications, for example on Indeed, and see how many companies specifically ask how many fatalities are associated with your license.
Indeed.com can be a starting point for finding a job as a driver, but your better resource is Pulse by Tenstreet. Your best resource is going to the websites of the companies you are interested in (e.g. Melton, Werner, TMC, Swift, Dollar General, Walmart, Amazon Freight Partners…) and calling or filling out an application provided by them.
Pulse by itself is a good resource, but it is not 100% reliable as far as the information it shows you and the contents of the applications you send through it. It has lost information in the past, and there are some points of failure where a processor might need information but have no way to get what they need (see further below).
Call the carrier about 24-48 hours after after you apply. As in, pick up your phone and call the number they gave you at the end of your application or on the recruiting section of their website, using your voice. I am one of the many, many people who prefers texts and email over calls — call them.
Do not get your commercial driver’s license as a last resort form of employment. Make sure you will be financially solvent for a few months after you pass and officially have your CDL. It can take weeks to months before you see a dime from a motor carrier.
Several companies offer paid orientation, as they consider it training. You will only get that money if you are hired.
You are not guranteed a job until you sign a contract with a carrier. (Several companies will give you your fuel card as part of signing that contract.) Until you officially have a job with them, you are not an employee of the company but you are still held to Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration rules.
Keep in mind that each trucker’s story is different. What worked for them might not work for you.
Which means it also stands to reason that what companies they worked for might not work for you.
The company that you work for as a truck driver is going to take drug testing, and drug use, far more seriously than most other jobs you have worked at or could work for. You cannot wing it, and you cannot get away with shenanigans. They are required to cleave to federal law, and answer to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. If the FMCSA would come down on them for hiring you, they would much rather cut you loose than keep you and suffer the consequences.
If you know that you are going to test positive on a urine test and/or hair follicle test (where they take body hair or hair from your head), wait to apply until you know for sure that you will test clean.
Don’t start using once you have a job as a trucker, because you can be tested at numerous points in your career. Testing positive pulls you off the road. Refusing to take a drug test of any kind counts as a positive result, which means it also pulls you off the road. You will have to go through the return-to-duty process outlined by the FMCSA, which requires working with a substance abuse professional or SAP.
Many motor carriers outright refuse to hire or keep a trucker who has a history with substance abuse.
Just because “it’s legal in your state” doesn’t mean jack. It’s not legal at the federal level. You work under the watchful eyes of every DOT trooper in the country, and the Department of Transportation is a federal institution.
Every carrier is going to do things differently. Certain requirements are handed down through federal, state, and local laws. Outside of that, you will have to get any details that you care about (such as pay, benefits, home time, the details of the position, et al) in writing signed and dated by your recruiter and sent to you.
The trucking industry in America takes advantage of people that are desperate for work. Each company has its own set of foibles. You will have to do a lot of research on the companies that you choose to apply to, and expect details to change as you interact more with each carrier.
Don’t be afraid to move on from a company during the recruitment stage. Don’t be afraid to move on from a company during orientation. Just remember Rule 1 — Protect Your License!
Motor carriers will ask you about other carriers whose orientations you have sat in. They will contact those companies to confirm the details that you give them — they will confirm all of the details that you provide. Keep records (of everything, really), and make backups of your records.
The general flow from start to finish for a CDL graduate who does not have a job lined up is as follows.
You send in your application, or call the carrier, to start the process. You will speak to someone, and it could be a field recruiter whose job it is to get student drivers’ feet into their company’s door, a recruiter assigned to you specifically, or a frontline member of their recruitment team that simply handles the first phone conversation (or two) before you are assigned to someone.
From there, a processor handles the background checks and figures out if there are areas on your application where you were dishonest or if you forgot something. Assuming everything comes back okay, another individual makes the final decision as to whether you are hired or not.
Someone from the company, likely your assigned recruiter, will be the one that reaches out to you should the processor need any additional information.
Recruiters
Each carrier offers a different package to its student drivers, and you should get something from either your first point of contact at the recruiting department or from your assigned recruiter. Read over those details, and write down what questions you want to ask (such as whether there is orientation pay). Your recruiter should be honest with you, but they are not required to give you details that you don’t ask for. And, not every recruiter is honest.
A recruiter might offer you something outside of what the company is stating they will offer. The short version is this: ask for anything that they are offering in writing, with their signature and a date next to the signature. If they cannot back up what they’re saying with a signature, then the company cannot back up that statement.
As a student driver, there are certain things that are standard to the industry within the realm of large motor carriers. Even if you’re not looking for regional or OTR work, acquaint yourself with a couple of these companies as part of your research. Get used to handing over your personal information to the correct parties in trade for learning a little about the company.
The way that a recruiter handles you is indicative of how the carrier operates. A recruiter that lies to you works at a company that will lie to you, one that might put your license in danger — I personally know one student driver who now has to go through an SAP program because he refused to move forward with a carrier during the drug test stage. The carrier wrote down their choice to leave orientation as a drug test refusal. They now have to jump through SAP hoops just to get their first job as a trucker, assuming they decide to stick with it.
So, you’ve sent in your application and had at least one discussion with a recruiter. Now what?
Processors
Next is the processor. A processor handles the back-end portion of your application. The FMCSA requires a certain amount of background checking, such as verifying your recent employment, home address, and your MVR or motor vehicle record. Several carriers go beyond what the government requires, and can look back as far as you can think for certain details — such as whether you have at any point been charged with a misdemeanor (which means, generally but not universally, a crime with a jail term of less than one year).
Some look at the past ten years of your MVR. Most will ask about accident history, and whether you were at fault or not (and some won’t take you if you have a documented accident regardless of fault). Some will ask about any fatalities regarding your driving — I did say up above that this was serious — and all of them will ask you about drug use.
Once the processor enters the equation, your recruiter will likely leave you alone unless there is something that needs to be done, such as signing authorizations for background checks or checking in to see if you’re going through their pre-employment materials (typically videos, some or all of which will have questions you’ll need to answer correctly).
Your actual qualification, which is what the processor is working on, has little to do with the recruiter. Your assigned recruiter is supposed to be your primary point of contact with anyone at the carrier, and they’re responsible for keeping you on track.
You cannot be hired until your qualification is done and the processor agrees that what you said in the application is true. Each carrier might do the next stage differently, but the gist is that the processor’s determination is handed off to someone who gives your application a thumbs up or thumbs down. Thumbs up, you get hired. Thumbs down… you don’t.
A Note About Processors
The processor has both one of the most thankless jobs in the hiring process and is the area where plenty of applications can come up short because of laziness, incompetence, or poor use of technology. Processors have to mull through numerous applications, and if yours is looking like it’s missing something and they hit a wall in resolving it, they will move on to the next one.
If Pulse loses some part of your application or neglects to offer a section where you can provide important details, then those aren’t available to the processor. If the processor can’t locate, for example, some part of your employment history (e.g. a company that you worked for went out of business or was bought by another entity, and you never actually worked for the company that bought your place of work), your application can come back “not qualified” through no fault of your own. And, unless you can get a hold of your very busy assigned recruiter to start discussing it, you might be denied a job and not know why.
Drug Tests and Physicals
While the processor’s job is going, you should be given a drug test and possibly a DOT physical. If you have not had either yet, every company will require a urine test (which looks at very recent drug use) and many require a hair follicle test (which looks at longer term use). The hair test can use body hair, and needs a sample about the size of a cotton ball. For some fellas, this is the easiest part of the whole experience.
You will be given a DOT physical as part of starting CDL school, which will document your physical readiness to do the job or highlight areas that need correcting. Basic health problems, like hypertension or poor vision, might require attention from your primary care physician or be fixable with glasses. You might also need to get your PCP to fill out a form signifying that you are indeed fit to drive.
There are also sometimes additional forms that your primary care physician will need to fill out. Any psychiatric history, even documented depression following the loss of a loved one that you’re now better at coping with, might require that form.
Be in contact with your PCP. Not just for these forms, but for your health. Your body and mind are the most important tools you have as a trucker. You have to keep yourself healthy.
Your DOT physical will need to be renewed at most every two years, and it can be as frequent as (I think) six months, though I do remember hearing about someone getting a DOT physical every three months. For your reference, I have a mild case of hypertension that is well controlled with the lowest dose of a common, frontline oral medication. I need my DOT physical done yearly. It’s not as crazy or uncommon as you might think or fear.
Training
The short version, to again provide one, is this: you need training, and you should favor companies that will provide it over those that won’t. I’m going to show you a few things that will illustrate why, nothing of which should be graphic (CW: tractor and automotive accidents).
Go with a company that provides you with training under a mentor, which is a driver that you will be working with for 2-4 weeks who is responsible for monitoring your progress and showing you how the job is done. There is a crapload you will need to learn, from federal and state laws regarding your job to how to read and use a truck atlas to how to secure the load you’re driving and lots, lots more. You cannot get all of that done in just a days long orientation.
Here’s Why It’s Important
Readers of the older posts of this blog know that part of my curriculum at my CDL school was watching tractor-trailer crash videos. Not only was it quality entertainment during our lunch hour each class day, every crash illustrates why it is important to know your business as a driver. CDL holders are held to a higher standard on the road because this is the kind of stuff that can happen.
The report states that this was a 10,000 pound coil of steel that came forward when the tractor driver had to slam on his brakes after someone came onto the road in front of him. For frame of reference, Edmunds states the curb weight (the weight of the vehicle plus operating fluids like oil, minus cargo or driver & passengers) of the base model 2024 Ford Escape with front wheel drive is around 3,300lbs.
This coil was three Ford Escapes shaped like a wheel that was held on the trailer parallel to the trailer. It can go forward or backward, and physics states that it will continue moving forward if the trailer it’s on stops moving. Hence the crush.
The driver was ticketed for having an unsecured load, among other things, but that doesn’t mean there was zero securement. The likely scenario is that the securement was not strong enough to control the load in a hard braking event, the coil rolled forward and broke loose, and rode right into the cabin. He’s lucky that he was driving a sleeper, as a daycab might have turned this from an event with zero physical injuries to permanent disability or worse.
Flatbed drivers can regularly work with coils in this orientation, as well as in other orientations, and a load comprising a single coil can have that one coil weigh up to 55,000 pounds. Aimed -just like this- at the cabin that you’re sitting in.
The speed limit for the road that this happened on at that time was 45 MPH. The faster that something needs to travel, the more force is required to move it and, thus, the more energy it imparts on impact. What is the speed limit on the highway nearest to your home?
This driver walked away with injuries following a jacknife on an off ramp with an empty trailer. He was charged with reckless driving. You do not have to be going fast to lose control.
For your reference, a 53’ dry van trailer, the kind of trailer that you think of when someone says, “tractor-trailer”, typically weighs 12-14,000 pounds without any cargo. If it wants to keep going while the tractor is turning, it will, and it can shove you around while driving — take your turns slow so you can make corrections.
Details in the article this image was sourced from are scant. The point here is the damage. I wrote a post several months ago titled Right of Weight where I made the point that the law might protect you depending on what you are doing at the time, but physics won’t. As the article title states (see: caption), the accident resulted in a fatality. That red pickup looks like someone was done with a can of Coca-Cola and crushed it.
Again, the weight of an unladen trailer is around 12,000 to 14,000lbs. The engine used in a 2024 model year of the very popular Freightliner Cascadia, an engine called a Detroit DD15, has a dry weight of 2,718lbs. That’s just the engine that hauls all of that weight around, without any of the 45+ liters of oil it needs to operate correctly.
As I am ever fond of saying and writing, “That’s physics.” You can maybe argue with the law, and you can argue with your fellow drivers, but you can’t argue with physics.
Your Life is Important
You should take it seriously, because you’re the only one on the road who’s going to care. If you’re going to drive for a living, there is a buttload of stuff you need to learn, and more you will need to have a passing understanding of, in order to safely operate a tractor-trailer.
Be very careful who you try to work with. It’s fine to take time doing the work. Lay the right foundation before you try to build a home for this kind of life. I certainly don’t know everything, but I’m here for questions and can try to help or maybe direct you to someone who can. Post ‘em.