Can you start out with 80k with you become a trucker in North Dakota?

probably and perhaps ... but you may have to live out of a cardboard box until you can find a very expensive apartment or mud hole to park a trailer that freezes up half the winter. Also, you can forget about the $5 value meals at McDonalds. it's expensive to maintain any sort of residence, if you can find one, and it's very expensive to eat and difficult to impossible to keep yourself halfway entertained in your off time ... what little you may have. There's plenty of sub-topics here in the forum that discuss ND exclusively.

 

You can make really good money as a truck driver but its like everything else in that it will depend solely upon your performance level. When you read stuff like that those are the extreme cases and "fluffed" statistics. Sure it can be done, but you have to know what you are doing, you have to be a #### good hustler, and you probably will never see home!

In most cases, usually new drivers will not make this amount of money. Realistically I would set your goal at about $25,000 - $30,000 for your first year or so.

 

From what I hear is they are not hiring as many rookies because they are causing way too much damage. Rookies are good for the company because they can pay you cheap. You also don't know when they are bending you over like some of the experienced guys. You probably could of made that 2 or 3 years ago when the boom first started, but its slowing down from what I hear. There are tons of pages on here about the oilfield and recently everybody is saying its slow, but I haven't checked in awhile.

 

You can easily make that and more there...As far as being a NewB and heading up there, you don't want no part of the patch, especially now that winter is starting to set in, and it ain't even winter yet

That place will put you in a ditch faster than you can even think how to react to it. The snow just makes the ground that much worse up there and you will be fighting not destroying someone else's truck every single day.

Then you got to consider where you will stay, and how you will get up there? Will you live there, or just stay on your hitch and fly back home? Housing is high, groceries are high, and everything else up there is outrageous as well. I was up there for 3 months and it wasn't worth the money I was making. I found a great company and got a dedicated account and couldn't be happier.

 

What's with the 80k?

You don't get into trucking for the money.
You do it because you want to do it - for what it's worth.

If you really need 80k per year to live your lifestyle, do something else.

 

You can make that money in the ltl world without trying too hard. The democrats will appreciate it next year.

 

if you are young why not try to get on at a rig or drilling company