As you read through this book you will learn more about other stages of development and responsibilities in trucking. Use this information as a springboard to other more in depth questions you can and should be asking. Don’t worry about how they will react, none of the companies will see you as a threat or deter you from having ambition, in fact most will encourage you. Most Truckers make the decision to enter trucking not having learned all they could have about their trucking company at the company level. These are many valuable lessons you don’t want to waste. You can even learn about mistakes other drivers are making and how you can avoid them just by talking to enough insiders.

If you keep on top of things you can even learn mistakes made on the company level and how to avoid them too. On the other hand after you leave, the company really don’t won’t you just calling them out of the blue with questions on how the company is run. It’s the most amazing thing. You see, when you’re in, you are part of the family, or think of it this way, “you’re in the club now”, which entitles you to all the benefits of membership which includes in many cases full disclosure to you about how things work. I lost opportunity on a lot of good question I hope you don’t make the same mistake. Here’s an idea of some of the questions I wished I would have asked.

 

Where do these loads I run come from? How do you find them? How do you contact shippers and where do find them? What are all these permit for, and about in this permit book you give me? How much are you paid on loads, and how are you paid? What can I do to improve my chances for getting a good load? How can I get out of what I believe is a really bad load, “like a 5 stopper, or a short hopper that’s going to take all day”?

How can I insure I’m paid detention or layover? What’s the process for getting licensed, what is operating authority, who is the owner, president, vice president of the company, and how can I meet them? What decided you to start the company? Where do you see the company in 5 or 10 years from now? What’s new in trucking? What does deregulation mean? What are union companies about, how does that work? Is it better? Ok, you get the picture, some of these questions I asked, many of them I didn’t and later I wished I had.