How much did you make last year?

$43, 000 my 1st yr with Swift

 

Be prepared to defend yourself with that number. $40k plus and Swift doesn't go together here.

 

It is possible..I too thought some of these guys are full of ####..

But i have a good friend i grew up with and he calls me everyday.I have been watching him very close as he is in his 1st year with a company out of NY..He has 4 months so far.They gave him a brand new 2014 kenworth with a trip pac.

He is doing about 1,000 a week with e-logs and a 68 mph truck..The thing is,his week is a 7 day week not a 5 day week.Not to mention he lives in the truck and only is home 4 days a month..So it is possible if you want to sell out your home life and live in a parking lot...Is it worth it.?..IMO No way..But many people do not have a home life..That is his case.He is single,no wife,no gf and no kids...

I seen his checks and he is doing an avg of 1,000 weekly gross...1,000 x 52 weeks = 52,000 a year...He makes .38 cents a mile and is doing at least 3000 miles a week...That is 1,140 on the miles alone.Not to mention his drop pays are 20.00 a drop and he lumps his own trailer for extra money...They also give him layover pay at 100.00 a layover.

He called me this morning and he is on his way to Chicago from NY.This is 660 miles at .38 cents plus it is a 2 drop..So today he is making .38 x 660=250.80 plus another 20.00 whick will be a 270.80 day...

He is a very smart hard working guy and allready he had to tell the dispatcher to go get ######,i quit..He has done this 3 times in his 4 months of driving..I think he has ''trained'' his dispatcher pretty well..Who do you think taught him that......

 

There's a tendency for people to not accept that with which they're not familiar. There's an even greater tendency for truck drivers to believe that their BS detectors are never wrong.

At this late stage in my life, I've come to realize that people, including myself, rarely know as much as they think that they know about other people's lives. This thread is a good example of just that, though I'm fairly certain that the members of "Team Mindreader" won't admit it.

 

It isn't that some of us migrating to the trucking industry don't have a home life. There are a few of us that have slaved and never made anywhere close to these numbers. I am adept in a lot of things such as my class B driving and I am also a heavy equipment operator and a warehouse forklift operator as well as being adept at chicken farming. I will give you one guess at which of those is the easiest to break into that can give you these type of wages listed here. Hint: it isn't the first 3 I have listed here. My wife can no longer help with the farming and to get a company farm with enough birds to produce these wages it takes 2 to run the farm. (we left a farm a year ago due to this, avg income 45k/yr 24/7 work and house and utilities provided.) Now you can buy your own farm if you have the credit, a 20% down payment on a half a million to a multimillion dollar loan and you can do the math to find a farm for sale that can cash flow enough to pay for its own bills, pay you and pay the bank. needless to say, that doesn't happen to easily. Heavy equipment pays these wages and more except for the fact that year round permanent jobs doing this are hard to come by and the rest are seasonal so you make really good money for 3 to 5 months out of the year and starve the rest and when the current job is finished you either pack up your family and move with the company to the next job or you are in the unemployment line till another company comes along building something. Class B driving has a few jobs that pay high income but they are few and far between and the competition for them makes it nearly impossible to get. A warehouse forklift operator around my area doesn't touch these kin of wages sooooo I am left with: go back to colledge at 45 years of age and starve my family for the next 4 to 12 years and get a degree or use my experience driving straight trucks of every sort and a lifetime of hanging out with truck drivers to work my way into a decent paying driving job and get paid while I do it.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which path I am going to take. My wife is a juvenile diabetic and borderline brittle (meaning she has a very hard time controlling her sugar) so I absolutely hate leaving her at home with just our youngest son to take care of her if she has a bad insulin reaction in her sleep in the middle of the night, but the truth is, we are broke and we are only going further in debt just trying to get by. Insurance through the company I work for now is over 400 a month with a $1500 deductible so I can't even make enough to have insurance to cover her care and meds. Trucking and being away from my family might suck, and the company that hires me and trains me might suck but I am #### well going to do this and make it work till I can get a driving job where I can be home more. I hate driving in one mile every 3 hours traffic, I am super nervous about my first downhill snow covered grade and whether I will survive to reach the bottom and even a bit worried about coming down off my first mountain like donner pass. But I will listen closely and do my best to make things work because some of us have no choice and will do whatever it takes to make a living.

 

The better question is..........


did you qualify for food stamps,

your first year of driving a truck ?

 

These "how much do you make" threads ought to be locked down. They always turn into a mess real quick. Name calling, accusations, etc.

Some troll comes along and acts like he wants to know something, and the fireworks begin.

We all know that most trucking jobs don't pay crap to begin with. That's why there is such a high turnover in this industry.

Nobody wants to admit they are making chump change, so of course people are going to exaggerate the numbers.

Here in Houston, and other areas, the industry is being flooded with an endless supply of cheap foreign labor. They work dirt cheap.

Get the picture? If you are thinking about entering this industry, you will be competing with legal, and illegal aliens for jobs.

 

I'm out of central NY... Any chance you'd share what company that was? Was it Emerson?

 

Your income, and home time, is critically dependent on where you're located. If you lived near the Chicago area, you could probably get on with a major LTL carrier and make a very nice living but, based on your post, that doesn't appear to be the case.

If you live near the Laredo-Detroit corridor, or near any major auto assembly plants/parts manufacturers, you may be able to get on with a parts carrier. These are not great driving jobs but a lot of the routes are dedicated so you know your home time & you're not at the mercy of a dispatch weasel. Many of the runs get you out & back the same day so you're home every night and still running 2,500 miles per week. I'm not trying to sell you; it's just something you might want to look at. BOL

 

No not Emerson...Don't go there...I will be honest with you.I am a Mr Know it all at times and i fought with him on his decision.We almost got into a fist fight over this.Naturally i would of kicked his jarhead Marine ###..I am from the old school way of thinking,so him and i clashed for a while..

He finally went against all i said and went with Leanord's Express out of Farmington NY.Seeing him and i go way back to 1st grade i supported his decision..Well so far i have LOST...The guy is doing very well and has wonderful equipmant.He really likes it alot and they keep him very very busy with no BS...Pay has been 100% so far...

You also have to understand that my buddy is a Marine and he works out everyday in the parking lots.He eats 100% healthy foods and does no drugs nor even drinks.He jogs 5 miles a day on his 10 hours off and worksout..He is a health nut and works very hard..He is no slouch...So he is a hard runner...