Recruiters are useless for getting accurate information. They are car salesmen, not your partner in a career path. If you ask if your truck will have an ice skating rink in it, the recruiter will answer I’ll have to check. If you ask “since we both like to ice skate I hope our truck will have an ice rink, do you know if that is true”, the answer will be “I think that is true but I’ll have to check.”
You need to ask current working drivers at any company to describe their pay and conditions and schedules, etc. You will need to search out those drivers. Some good companies will pass your info onto current working drivers at the company for you to ask your questions. Web sites and recruiters will give you no useful info. They will give you vague generalities in which you pour lots of unrealistic assumptions and then the day after you hire on you will never be able to contact the recruiter again. Many recruiters don’t work for the company. They work for a group of companies or they just collect a fee for every wannabe they get hired.
THERE IS NO TRUCK DRIVER SHORTAGE. The media is wrong. The media gets it’s info from trade associations that want 20 times more drivers so that even the lowest paying company has an endless supply of desperate truck dwellers working for peanuts. Automated truck are NOT almost in service.
If you need to inject insulin you are all but prohibited from driving semi-trucks. If your diabetes is under control by pills, you may be able to drive depending on the specifics of your diabetes and medication. High BP is common. If you are on medication for it you can work but you will be limited to a maximum of 1 year DOT medical card, rather than the 2 year max. You can work a full career with a 1 year card, you will just take twice as many medical exams. If your CPAP use is documented to the satisfaction of the doctor you can get a DOT medical card.
There is no one good place to work. Trucking companies work the way they work and your job is to specifically define what you need or want and then work where that is what the company provides. NOBODY changes the trucking company. Nobody but you knows what you want and need. Drivers can recommend companies they have heard are good or companies they thought were good for their wants and needs, but fitting another driver doesn’t mean a company fits you. You have a lot of research to do. You need to imagine the work schedule, pay, conditions, insurance, locations, etc that fit you and then you need to find the companies that provide most of that. You also need to prioritize your wants & needs. If you get A, B, and C, and almost no E, F, G will the abundance of A & B & C make up for no E, F, & G?
On the DOT medical exam, the doctor is not your partner in good health. He is not your advocate for a healthy life. He is not your counselor or personal physician. He is only there to pass you or fail you. He will only know what you write on the DOT forms and what he can see with his eyes. You will give a urine sample and that is only testing for blood sugar. You will be subject to drug tests (THC, Cocaine, amphetamines, opioids, etc) but the urine sample at the DOT exam is not a drug test. If there is ANY drug use in the last 6 moths, don’t start the process to get into trucking. Weed, pot, marijuana, cannabis etc may or may not be legal where you live and work IT IS ILLEGAL FOR TRUCKING AND NOBODY NEEDS TO KNOW YOUR OPINION ABOUT IT. The rules are the rules and you eaither pass the test or fail the test or refuse the test, which has same impact as failing the test.
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