Looking to go back OTR

my sentiments exactly Kabar....

 

I get sick of hearing this,.......Why drive for free????

Work to live,.....NOT,..Live to work...

 

drive for free? people get paid by the mile, so how the hell is that driving for free? please explain to us, with your trucker math, how "driving for free" really works.

 

Outside of sleeping a driver should be paid for his time,...all of it,.....Guess thats way I won't buy into the otr fantasy......

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you
You are so right and I'm so glad to hear somebody else say it.

It's not fantasy, it's reality. It's a way of life not just a job. It's not just what I do for a living it's part of who I am. I'm an east coast girl and if not for OTR I probably never would have seen much except for the east coast. I've seen the snow capped Rockies, I've seen the Mojave, I've seen the mesas in Utah, etc....... I've met beautiful and amazing people from all of the country. Those are some serious job perks. Does your McDonalds job offer you those benefits? Doubtful. Go get into your greasy uniform and drop some more fries.

I wanna know the answer to this too.

Why are you here? Why even belong to a forum set up for and about a career you hate? I'm far from a newbe but I still crave the adventure and get plenty of it. Oh, and by the way, by my standards my 72K doesn't qualify as crap wages. Just because you couldn't make money at it doesn't mean there's no money in it.

 

Been there, done that, scenery isn't putting money in my pocket.

Yeah right, if you even made half of that fantasy number, I'd be surprised.

Yeah I'm a "crybaby" because I don't work for free, and let some crap OTR company take advantage of me.

Who's working at McDonalds? I work in a high tech industry (computer software) and make a real good living. McDonalds workers make more money per hour than you do, and they aren't working for free like you do.

Look, you like driving trucks, more power to you. Don't try and BS us here. You are making low wages, living in a truck, sitting at docks all day for free. Driving more miles than they pay you for. You ain't making any more money than the next poor driver doing the same job.

 

I am in the Navy & when we are underway, I calculate how much I make 24/7 vice 40hrs a week. Why? Because we too are away from our permanent home, loved ones & stuff that we can truly call our own. So even though you do not drive 24/7, you are on company time while OTR and accountable for your equipment & actions while under the clock. So it is realistic to break an hourly wage down to the hour. The difference between OTR truckers & Navy personnel (me) is, in my eyes, that you work harder for the money & hours. I take my Navy cover off to you. I do miss driving a 10+spd truck, but, do not miss driving it for a living.

 

I dont know what companies you worked for,but there are a whole lot of companies you can drive for and make way over 50,000 a yr and not work 18 hrs a day. I have had yrs where I made in the reange from 65,000 to 80,000, and yes that is a company truck. The year I left that company for personal reasons, I had co-workers that made over a hundred grand for the year. Itsall about finding the right company and making the best of it. And before you go and call me a liar like you did to the young lady that posted above, I will show you my w-2's any day of the week.

 

Not buyin' it Buckeye. The numbers don't add up. Look, to make a ridiculous number like 100,000:
At .40 cpm, which is more than most companies pay, you would have to average 5000 miles per week, 50 out of 52 weeks per year.

Some of us may have been born at night, but it wasn't last night.

 

The simple fact of the matter is, the only place in trucking where you can make a decent living is in the LTL segment of the industry.
You guys that are talkin' about making 100K a yr. in the TL segment are either liars or workin' way too hard and way too illegal. As frdr said you'd have to be runnin' 5K per wk. and we know that's not happening.
Unfortunately, there are always gonna be schmo's that will put up with the crap these companies dish out. Until that crew of twits wises up, it'll never change.