Typical day of a linedriver

In case you don't know what a linedriver is, the following will kinda explain it. I work Tuesday nights thru Saturday nights. Off Sundays and Mondays (plus holidays, which usually also fall on a Monday).

1830: Wake up, catch up on TV shows I missed throughout the day, check the weather and road reports online.

2000: Pack my lunch, get dressed, make sure my MP3 player/wireless headset are fully charged

2030: Usually right around then my mobile rings: Each call starts with "let's go to Salt Lake City/Spokane/Pocatello/Three Forks/Missoula/Billings/Idaho Falls or Great Falls. Usually ALWAYS just one of those places. From my terminal, it is between 140 to 220 miles per destination

2045: Out the door. Kiss/hug my wife/dog goodbye (whichever one happens to be in a better mood... usually the dog)

2100: Arrive at my terminal. Pretrip my truck, make sure it is full of fuel, no write-ups from the dayshift that might have borrowed my truck while I was sleeping. I also say goodbye to the nightshift guy that just finished loading up the trailers I am taking. He also fills me in on what trailers are parked where.

2115: Update my logbook, call my dispatcher so he can give me my trailer numbers, I also sign out on a paper entry exit log with my truck that I am taking, the converter dolly, plus whatever trailer #s I am taking, and what time I left

2130: Unless I have mechanical issues, by this time I have put my trailers together, checked my lights and all my airline connections

2135: Pull out of my yard and park. Time to lock up the gate and call my dispatcher to let him know I am leaving. As I walk back to my truck, this is where I do my final safety check and make sure I didnt miss anything when I connected my airlines or electrical lines.


2140: Parking brake released, AC set, MP3 player hooked into my radio and set on shuffle

My trip usually lasts between 2.5 to 4 hours depending on where I go, during this time I just hold the wheel, shift gears for hills, flip through songs on my MP3 player, cry and complain about all the other LTL carriers that have faster trucks than me, think of songs I want to download when I get home (which I will forget by the end of the trip), and occasionally smile when I pass Prime, CR England, or Swift.

0030: Most of the time I get into my destination around then. I call my dispatcher and let them know that I got there. I wait for instructions what to take back with me to my home terminal, or if I am pressing on and laying over at a different terminal. If the trailers I took with me are destined for the terminal I pull into, then I break them apart and put them in different docks. IF they are going somewhere else, I will leave them hooked together and park them in the "outbound" lane for the next driver to take.

0100: More often than not I will meet another driver that is bringing me trailers to take back. He in turn will take my trailers back to where he came from. Kinda like a relay-race. We meet halfways and swap trailers and the manifests that go with it. If I am lucky, they are hooked already... if not, then I have to find or wait for additional trailers that need to go back home with me. We shake hands, talk about the roads, the crappy weather, the crappy driving of the mega truckload carriers, and our favourite football teams losing.

0130: Usually hooked at this time. I sign out of wherever I am leaving and make my phone call to my dispatcher to let them know I am leaving.

0430: Unless DOT screws with me at a scale, I am back at my home terminal at this time. This is a best case scenario since I almost always wait on trailers at my turn point.

0500: I got my trailers broke apart. Trailers destined for my home terminal are backed into a dock so that the morning shift can start stripping the freight out of them. They will place the freight in smaller trailers so that the pick-up and delivery drivers (P&D) can take the freight to waiting customers.

0530: I drive about two miles to the closest Exxon petrol station to fuel up. I should be back getting ready to head home.

0600: If everything went like clockwork, I am home right around now.

0900: Things didnt go as planned. I just got home and I am writing this up.

1100: Time for bed. Dog better not wake me up. I also make sure I plug in my MP3 player and headset to charge. Wait, wasn't there a list of songs I wanted to download? Oh wait, I forgot... surely I will remember when I am back on the road again.

Notes: My carrier doesnt require us to do daily dockwork. We DO on occasions pull/add freight to trailers we take... this happens not that often and usually will be half an hour to an hour TOPS.

We get paid mileage, but they also pay us hourly and a flat fee for certain things. Hooking doubles (30 minutes), hooking triples (45 minutes), fueling (15 minutes). As for the hourly pay, it will be for stuff like dockwork, waiting on trailers, breaking down, and P&D work (in 15 minute increments). As for the flat fee for hooking sets, if you work fast, you still get the full amount. If you suck at it, then anything you go over on you pretty much don't get paid for extra. It is extremely helpful to be a fast learner and good at backing so you can get everything hooked/pretriped and then head out the gate.

I make about $180 to $300 a night. Most of my pay will be mileage. Less than 1/3 will be pay I draw from my hourly work. I might only work an actual hour... But because I get paid a flat fee for hooking sets, I can easily make double that depending on how many times I swap trailers. Even if I meet a driver and we make a trade, we both get the full rate although we don't break our sets apart.

Some probably wonder if it gets tempting to inflate numbers to make more pay. Like wait time. Not gonna lie, we have alot of chances to fudge our numbers, but for me personally, I make more than enough to keep the lights on and food on the table. I get treated really well and I will protect the financial interests of my carrier and not try to cheat them. Just my two cents on that.

Hope this explains some stuff. Let me know if you have any questions. I copied and pasted this directly from my Facebook. I took out my name and terminal info. No offence, I like most of you, but you never know what random creeper happens to be on here to stalk me or something. HAHA!

 

Some differences between us. 95% of the time we keep the same truck. We have to build/break our sets for the most part. Larger terminals have full time hostlers that zip around the yard all day with their yard goats and they will build our sets. Happens rarely with the routes I cover.

If we lay over, they let us bobtail to our hotel (which is usually within a 5 minute drive). Some of the larger terminals that we lay at will confiscate our trucks so their dayshift P&D guys can use them... that is when they call us a hotel shuttle. We run 2 MPH slower than FedEx Freight, but we are always a bit faster than Prime and Swift. I agree with some of the other posters, our routes get monotonous and boring at times. The nice thing is we have an in-depth understanding of the contour of the road and we know when to pass/not to pass and we can almost always predict our arrival time within a 5 minute window.