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Hey all, Marty here with Warehouse and Operations as a career again! We appreciate you checking in with us again, where are we at now, the 8th week of the year. By now we should all be settled in with our goals, are you sticking to your play? We only have 5 more weeks in this 1st quarter! This week I was scrolling through some Job Board groups on Facebook and ran across several questions about how do I obtain a CDL license for free and How do I get my A & or B license. After reading all the replies, a few were just downright dangerous, I wanted to chime in with a few thoughts. So today let’s talk about three avenues I’m familiar with.
First off let’s talk about those schools where you pay x amount of dollars to attend. Now it’s a school so we’re not being paid. Yes, there good, and if you have a plan, maybe a buddy who owns a transportation company that’ll hire you and give you a chance to get some experience on the road This is the shortest route for you. Think about this. There definitely going to teach you how to drive the tractor, its gearing, braking etc. All the regulatory and Safety principles, the hook and unhook principles, hauling a trailer and being a professional truck driver. And yes, they’re going to take you out on the road, you’ll get quite a bit of on the road experience and the DOT testing is typically going to be included. You’ll have your license but no real experience. Is an employer going to put you in their units with let’s say $250,000 dollars’ worth of their product in the trailer on the road? Or maybe your applying for a delivery or route driver job? Are they going to entrust us with say 25 stops of product and allow us to interact with their customers when we have no experience dealing with alleyways, parking lots or city driving? Last month I interviewed a young gentleman for a warehouse trainer position for order selectors. He’d gone through one of these classes, and he’d paid quite a handsome tuition for it only to find that the only offers he could get were for over the road positions or team driving positions. He had wanted something where he would be at home nightly or at least for most of the week! With his experience being in warehousing, an order selector actually, he’d gone back to what he knew, at least until he could figure out how to break into transportation, and with it fitting his home requirements. Again, these schools are great. What we’ll learn will be the right way to operate the big rigs, but we need to understand what they won’t be able to give us also is all I’m saying. This leads us into our second scenario.
Now this one is very popular. It’s where we can sign up with one of the large trucking companies that offers a training program to its employees. Other words we apply and are hired for their training program and we commit to driving for them for a contractual amount of time. These can be great avenues for us if we can commit to the contract. It’ll usually be agreeing to go over the road hauling their freight. Probably starting off as a team driver. Being over the road is a great way to see the nation and you’ll definitely get those needed miles under the belt. But you could be gone from home for days, even weeks at a time. Now if this works for you lifestyle or home life this is a great shortcut to a driving career. And after a couple of years we’ll have the experience those local and delivery route employers are looking for. I know a lot of very successful drivers that started this way, many went on to become owner operators of their own tractors and trailers, some started their own local transportation companies. Remember that contract I mentioned though? If we quit or decide this just isn’t for us, we may be obligated to pay back a tuition cost for all that training! Just something to keep in mind.
And now we’re at the long game option, but it’s free, we’re getting paid and there’s no contracts involved. If you’re a long time WAOC listener, you’ll already know we believe there’s no shortcuts to experience. The same holds true for transportation. I know many young men and women that started out in the warehouse working for a company and are now very successful delivery and route drivers. One of my close friends started out with a national foodservice distributor as an order selector. He of course learned every product and item they carried and where it was located. After about a year he transferred into their inventory control department, then moved on into the returns area where he learned about their invoicing and the driver’s responsibilities regarding the paperwork, issuing credit codes and returning product. After about a year doing that task, he went to the transportation department and let them know he’d like to become a driver. This particular company didn’t have a driver training program but many of your large distribution centers will. Anyway, the director hooked him up with a transportation supervisor that each evening would spend a little time with him in a tractor. They let him go out on a few routes as a driver helper and helped him get his testing and operators permit where he could occasionally drive with a driver on his routes. Long story short, after about a year of that he was moved over to transportation and today is a 20-year veteran delivery driver for that very same organization. Oh, and another friend was working the inbound dispatch window. She’d been doing that for, gosh, 5 or 6 years, knew everybody and one day decided she’d like to be a driver for their specialty meat and produce departments. Today she’s a recovery driver for her company! She’s been doing that now for about 3 years and one of her goals for 2020 is to get her class B license and start driving straight trucks. I’m absolutely certain she’ll complete that goal too!
I know 2 or 3 years seems like a long time, but I think if we’re being realistic, it’s not really. I mean, and I think we’d all agree, that in just 3 or 6 months we’re not going to have the experiences to get out of all the situations a delivery driver will find him or herself in every day. I know a lot of people that have transitioned from warehousing into transportation. Good paths seem to be from Inventory control, the inbound departments, a know several driver helpers that are now drivers, and just about all the outbound side of things. All these makes sense as we’re working closely with transportation supervisors and admins. Like we always say here at WAOC, learn a little about every position that touches yours. It pays off every time!
In my experience there’s just no shortcuts to our careers. What better investment though, our happiness and livelihood comes from our career choices. We’re probably going to be working for a while, at least until our golden years and we’re going to need to have the finances to get us through those! Hence, that’s where the importance of planning and goal setting comes into play folks. If you haven’t planned out your goals it’s not too late! Get those 2020 plans done and know where you want to be in 2030!
Well, another weeks coming to a close. If we can help you get some answers to any questions just email us at host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com. And remember other listeners can help us all out too. Just use @whseandops on Facebook and Twitter both, oh, and, don’t forget about the Facebook Group warehouse equipment operator’s community to post any thoughts or questions you may have.
Until next week, research, self-educate ourselves and above all remember what we do can be dangerous, please make Safety our first thought every day!