Moving on up: career growth opportunities with Paper Transport

Post Date - Dec 23, 2021

Truck drivers come to this profession for a wide variety of reasons. For some, it’s strictly all about the money. For others, it’s love for the open road. Ask a few drivers why they chose the trucker life, and you’ll probably get a wide variety of answers. Trucking can be a step in your career journey instead the entirety of it. Steve Wolf became a truck driver in 1999 and it opened great opportunities for him.

“I always enjoyed getting out into the open road. My grandfather was a driver,” says Steve. “Trucking always intrigued me.”

Steve joined our team in 2000 and drove until four years ago when he made a move into the office.

“I’m always up for a new challenge,” he explains. “I had always enjoyed driving but I was open to change.”

At the time, Steve was a home daily driver in our Green Bay to Chicago Short Haul division. Showing great enthusiasm in providing feedback and coaching others, it was natural that his first job off the road was as a driver trainer at our training facility in Green Bay, Wis.

“PTI asked me to help with road tests and onboarding new drivers. I had already been pitching in here and there whenever they needed help. I think they asked me because I’ve been at PTI for a long time and they knew who I was and how I operated,” says Steve. “I did that for a year before moving into more of a coordinator position.”

During the COVID-19 shutdown, Steve was asked to help streamline the driver onboarding and training program in a virtual setting. He quickly found himself doing the orientation for all new hires across the country through a live broadcast.

“We found that doing it this way actually improved our training program because it allowed our message to be uniform across the board,” he adds. “Even though we’ve now transitioned back into a classroom setting, PTI is still doing live broadcasts to each training class.”

Today, Steve is now one of our safety managers. He spends his days coaching and mentoring drivers both inside and outside the truck.

“I also really like talking with drivers,” Steve explains. “We chat about where we can improve, and I enjoy passing on wisdom from my own experiences.” Steve says he also makes a random list of drivers to talk to every week. He does this to touch base with the drivers and find out what’s happening in the real world.“Who’s going to know what’s out there the best? Our drivers do because they’re the ones out there every day,” he says. “I think it’s important to know what things they’re dealing with to determine how we at PTI can help them the most.” Steve’s career journey at PTI is impressive and a great example of how we continually provide career growth opportunities to our team. “You hear that at a lot of these trucking companies, the truckers are this and the office people are that and they don’t mingle,” Steve says. “It really means a lot to work for a company that allows you to grow and gives you the opportunities to try new things.” Steve’s best piece of advice is to simply work towards your career goals and not let anything hold you back. “You can do it if you have the ambition or desire to grow into an office career. Ask the questions and find out what you need to do to make that transition,” he adds. “Don’t give up. I applied to multiple office positions, and it was easy to just give up. It happened for me eventually because it needed to be the right job at the right time.” Reach out to us today if you’d like to learn more about becoming a PTI driver or office worker. We’d love to have you join us!