Just another new drivers experience with TMC

TMC loves their veterans. But they treat everyone the same once you are in a truck.

 

I have the choice of 40 cents per mile or a start of 26% of load. After a few weeks it should be 28% just for being average with a TWIC card, passport/passcard and HazMat. My trainer, and he just became a trainer, bounces back and forth between 29/30%. Living in WV is hard to keep the MPG high because we are in the mountains every week.
My trainers take home since I have been in truck has been a low of $900 and we were parked up before dark almost everyday up to $1250 seeing midnight most every day.
With Above driver claiming 25 cents and getting calls from the VP he obviously did not fit the TMC work ethic of working safe, working hard and driving like you know your ##### from a hole in the ground.
If you want to go faster than 62, if you want to make violent lane changes, overspeed through curves, etcetera just stay away from TMC. You will not be happy and you will not make money.

 

Week 3 - We picked up a three stop load the Friday before. Dropped one load Monday in WV. Dropped load 2 in MO Tuesday morning and load 3 Tuesday evening in KS.
Bounced deeper into KS for Wed morning hay pick up. Well the farmer was a jerk and cursed my trainer and called him a liar. 30 minutes later we were at another shipper getting plastic pipe headed to PA. Don't know if the farmer ever got his hay on a truck.
We took two days to deliver the pipe so we were in a good spot to get a load going home. Half of what you learn with your trainer is what loads set you up to go home on Friday. You need to start preparing to get home on Wednesday.

 

If you want paid mileage a nube would start at 40 cents so I don't think he knows what he is talking about. If you drive empty between loads over 150 miles you get 20 cents per mile.
Most every driver at TMC takes percentage pay. While with the trainer he keeps track of what my pay would be with the loads we deliver. Honestly more than half pay better using mileage. $10 -$20 a day better using cents per mile. Then there is that one day a week percentage pays $400-$500 better that day.
I'm going to go with percentage.

 

Week 5. Last night in the truck on week 5. It was blizzard week in the mid-atlantic. Trainer got screwed out of two loads this week. He went home empty over the weekend so we could get home on Friday. No loads were close enough to get us home before midnight or later.
We spent Monday driving through snow back and forth across WV to get loaded. Distributors were closed because of weather. Get a load of lumber to Baltimore and when we pull up Tuesday morning we are told they took a snow day at the receiver and we couldn't get unloaded till the next morning. Fun day in a truck with 2 people.
A load of shingles to detroit, back through the snow, on Wednesdeay and a big ### coil going to Louisville Thursday.
We are sitting at the receiver now waiting to unload at 11pm. My clock is about shot and trainer Rick is trying to get some sleep. We get this coil off our back then drive to Cincinnati where we hope to get a preloaded trailer swap and be on our way home before 3 am.