Thank you! Your submission has been received!
One hire turned into a pipeline Dutch Maid plans around
In January 2025, Andrew Bruce-Robinson earned his Class A CDL while living in a New York City shelter. "Getting my CDL has changed my future," he told us.
Eight weeks later, Dutch Maid Logistics hired him to drive over the road at about $78,000 a year. He was the first Emerge Career graduate they'd ever hired. Within days they asked for more.
Andrew was the kind of hire every carrier is hunting for. If you recruit drivers, you know how rare that is: plenty of applications, too few people who show up to orientation and stay.
Dutch Maid knows that problem well. It's a family-owned refrigerated carrier out of Willard, Ohio, started in 1977 with four tractors and four trailers. Today it runs about 200 tractors and 350 reefer trailers across all 48 states, hauling fresh produce, meat, and beverages. That's a lot of seats to keep filled, and an empty one means a truck sitting in the yard.
We don't send just anybody. Before we refer a driver, we look hard at grit and character, the things a road test can't measure. We want every grad to thrive on the job, not just get hired. Every driver we sent had also been checked against Dutch Maid's own hiring rules before a recruiter saw the name, so their team spent its time on yeses and could count on our referrals.
Kendall Miller, from our Massachusetts Donnelly cohort, during her first week on the job.
Four weeks after Kendall Miller started her job search with us, she was driving over the road for Dutch Maid. By the end of 2025, they ranked her fifth among all their drivers. She'd spent five years as a Certified Nursing Assistant and driven box trucks cross-country, but she didn't earn her Class A permit until May 2025.
Marco Jimenez, from our MOCJ 25-26 pilot cohort.
That fall, Marco Jimenez, 28, from New York City, passed his CDL exam on the first try and was driving regional reefer for Dutch Maid a month later.
"My why is financial freedom," he said. "I've been working for a while at different organizations and always felt like I was easily replaceable."
Nearly a year later, they haven't had to replace him. They rely on him.
By December, we were filling orientation seats in groups. On December 15, four of our grads, two from New York and two from Massachusetts, sat in the same orientation in Willard, Ohio.
Luis Colon, from our MOCJ 25-26 cohort.
Luis Colon, 49, from Staten Island, was one of them. Part of why our grads stick is that someone keeps checking on them. "I started going to school, and I seen the people calling and checking up on me, making sure I was here," he said. "It really helped me and pushed me through." That coaching continues through a driver's first year on the job.
We build our training around what carriers need from a driver on day one. By February, Luis had finished Dutch Maid's 200 hours of required training and was driving solo.
Why employers work with us
By 2026, almost every grad we sent Dutch Maid's way took the job. In September, Allison Wiers, a recruiter at Dutch Maid, interviewed Gilberto Maldonado. "I knew he was gonna be great," she told us. "It's so gratifying to me to work with these folks and take a great step in their life."
Dutch Maid counts on us for drivers who are safe, ready to grind, and proud to carry Dutch Maid's name, and ours, on every mile. Every grad they hire is paired with one of our coaches for their first year on the job. We're a workforce development program, so they don't pay a cent for the referral or the coaching.
The door Andrew opened stayed open. Today 34 of our graduates drive for Dutch Maid. Large truckload carriers have averaged about 93% driver turnover a year for decades. Dutch Maid has a pipeline it can plan around.
Dutch Maid's fleet today, and where our current pace puts it by 2029.
Want hires like these?
If you're hiring drivers, diesel techs, or anyone in the skilled trades, we want to do the same for you. We'll send people we'd stake our own name on, screened to your hiring rules before you ever meet them, with a coach beside each one for their first year. It costs you nothing. Tell us how many seats you need to fill and where at emergecareer.com/employers, and we'll tell you how fast we can fill them.