some advice and my IT story
Hey, IT? QA in IT? WOW
Sorry for the long response. I hope this helps you but you may already know some of this so please don't be insulted.
First as one IT professional to another, slow down. Unless you worked in the Pharma industry, you were most likely working at a fast pace and not used to some of this. I have been struggling with the fact that I have to (not maybe) sit somewhere waiting for a load for a day or two. I also am struggling with the salary issue going for IT to transportation but look at things differently because of my business background and know it will get better for me and my situation. If you know anything about disaster recovery work, you may know how fast paced that is and how much pressure people are under to get things rolling again, this work is something like that but long stretches in between.
As for your rates and companies question in your first post, reality is that you have to get out and talk to these companies and recruiters to really get a feeling what is going on with expediting. Everyone’s expectations are different as is everyone’s situation and unlike IT, there are a lot of variables that you will encounter that are customer related, like getting loads. This is a service industry that actually is not like any other service industry, you go when you go. Not unlike IT there are standards and the bigger picture that needs to be taken in consideration to understand how you fit in. I talked to a lot of companies just to get an idea what the rates are and how much I should expect to drive before I decided on what type of truck I was going to drive. I opt for a Cargo Van.
To answer your question in your last post “but my question as a newbie is that will these people get me a load at my destination and not have to wait a whole day or two in a hotel when I have to dish out the hotel/motel fee?” Honestly I don’t know, as I said it all depends on the customers and their needs. Expect to sit but listen to the company dispatchers if they want you to move, move where they tell you. Remember it is not like IT, your truck makes everyone money when it is moving, not sitting. In IT you can plan different projects around work schedules and make money while doing not much of anything. Also get into the mind set that you need to look at monthly intake not daily or weekly. Once I realized that it is what I drive in the month that matters, I relaxed a lot. As for waiting here is what happen last week. I sat less than a day from my first run to my next run on every run but now I am sitting at home and sitting for three days but going back out tomorrow. I slept in my van when I was away from home, which was a pain but I wasn’t going to spring $80 for a bed that was not comfortable as my air mattress but that’s me.
Also on a personal note; been there done that with the IT job. I was laid off in July of 2003 from the BIGGEST Pharma company in the world. Actually 3500 of us in it were laid off at that time. Promised training from both the company and the state, grants to start our own business and a whole bunch more stuff that were all lies. My governor shook my hand and told me that there will be a grant and training waiting for me after I was terminated, which was July 15. But she failed to mention that I was to apply for it when I was shaking her hand. We were all told that we were not allowed to apply for these grants while we were employees or we lose everything, including our 401 Ks. Well the grants were awarded on … July 15, the day we were terminated and went to some people who were not being laid off. Thanks Grandholm.
As for a job, I wasn’t only competing with my former colleagues but also college kids coming out of school working for nothing and also had to deal with people from India and Pakistan who live in Canada and came here to work for 50% of my former wage. I went to 35 interviews, applied for over (I am not making this up, I kept track) 1800 jobs and had been rejected by some of the fast food companies because I was a ‘tweener’. The worst interview was with Ford Motor Company, which included a much hated former colleague of mine. Boy talk about being beaten up.
I had 9 years of experience in IT for the medical and financial industry, wrote validation plans, QA plans, sat on steering committees, took part on comment committees for government projects like HIPAA and 21 CFR part 11, wrote disaster recovery plans (two of which were used on 9/11), wrote books on training IT and business personal for disaster recovery and server infrastructure planning, saved companies millions because of my server consolidation plans and have several awards and a lot of Vendor certifications to boot. All of this got me... no where. Two years... no job except crappy consulting work and a horrible help desk job at per call rates. I did make some money from ecommerce work but no where enough to pay the bills. I completely understand your frustrations and hope this all helps.
Good luck
