The truth about trucking....

You're right; I did misread your post. My apologies.

 

Well said!

 

I love this job, wish I would have started 20 years ago, I'd be retired now.
I sometimes still can't believe my good fortune to get paid so well to do such a simple, low stress, low skill, mostly enjoyable job.

 

I disagree with you on this. I have been driving since '07, started with Schneider and am currently working two jobs, one trucking, the other is random crap that does sometimes include trucking. I have worked for about a dozen or so trucking companies in this time and half of them terminated my employment. The other half either went out of business due to retirement, lack of freight, DOT issues, or something else. The ones I was fired from, guess why I was fired? Refusing to falsify my logs; refusing to run over hours; refusing to drive when i was tired; or workmans comp retaliation. If you think I am lying about this, let me refer you to the following two threads:

Gypsum Express:
http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tr...gypsum-express-llc-aliquippa-terminal.154157/

Performance Food Group:
http://www.thetruckersreport.com/truckingindustryforum/threads/pfg-performance-food-group.308137/

Gypsum settled out of court - for the record, I am not making any disparaging remarks about Gypsum, it was the terminal manager who caused the issue.

PFG is pending litigation.

Predator's BS caught up with them and they were forced to go E-Logs, as was R&J. PFG is e-logs, but they still tried to work around it (i have no proof of that, unlike the workmans comp retaliation).

So before you make assumptions about someone, perhaps you should ask strategic questions to get more information. If you take a look at the threads I started (like the ones above) or the one about Golden Hawk, you will notice that I put in specific details. Not everyone writes like I do, but with the right questions, you could get more information out of people and make a better assertion about a person or a company. I refuse to allow someone else dictate the value of my life, and the lives of the other people on the road. If I need to get creative on my log by 15-30 minutes, *I* will weigh the variables and make that call. Not you, not Chinatown, not the moderators, not my wife, and definitely not the dispatcher, terminal manager, or even the owner of a company.

It's *MY* life on the line, not theirs
it's *MY* license on the line, not theirs

but it's also possible that it's a family member of *YOURS* on the line. Do you want an overhours, fatigued driver pulling 32,000 (we'll say an empty truck/trailer), crossing the zipper, putting your siblings/parents life in danger because their dispatcher told them to drive or get fired?

Guess I'm fired then.

Please see the article I was interviewed for:

http://www.businessinsider.com/amer...tting-squeezed-out-of-their-profession-2014-8

I'm sure you can figure out who I am

 

if just starting out find a carrier near you so you can leave the truck in their yard and go home when the time comes. ask about meal allowances and hotel rooms when doing a reset so they are paying for your offtime. living on the road is expensive and watching movies in a bunk is no life. you also have to understand that you are a rookie for five years and just about everyone will see how much you can take during that time. you must learn to say NO. if carrier doesn't like your limits move on.

 

all van freight is crap, mercer is one of the best run

 

Not all of us are fired from 6 jobs. Many people on this forum have problems because they are too hard headed to take advice. For example, we will do some research FOR THEM and maybe recommend Old Dominion, then they post they found the perfect job with CR England and ignored all the advice and probably didn't even research what was recommended.
Some of us have been very successful in trucking and had very few problems.

 

Thank You Chinatown!