what can i expect to take home while with a trainer? after i go solo? any current drivers willing to tell me would be greatly appreciated. thanks
Its salary when you are with a trainer, not sure how much. As for when you go solo, it all depends on you. Dont turn down loads, work hard, dont waste your money in the truck stops... I have seen guys refuse 4, 5, 6 loads complaining about miles, yet they sit ALLLLL day, not making a dime. And their paycheck is in the red.
if i dont refuse any, not worried about home time as i have no family and wanna go otr, what could i make realistically?
You need to read thru this thread http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tr.../139292-want-know-what-new-trucker-makes.html
We answer this question a lot. Use the search option above to cross check my answer. While with your trainer (mentor) you will get about $450 a week for weeks 1-4 and about $500 a week for weeks 5-6. Now that will break down to a certain amount per day that you are on the truck. That's how it worked when Swift had the 6 week training time, there maybe some minor changes since they have gone to a training time that is based upon your driving hours vs weeks on truck. Your 1st 6 months are gonna be tough on pay. You'll have low miles and pay while you gain some solo experience. My 1st couple of months I got about $500-600 a week. After a year I was up to $800 a week. A big reason for that was learning to use the logbook and plan hours better.
You can run some hypothetical numbers of your own to guesstimate a rough ballpark of what your pay will be. You know the mileage rate starting out-- $0.26. You know you can drive about 60 miles per hour maximum. You know you can only drive 70 hours maximum in a week. Generally if you make 3000 miles in a week that's really good and oftentimes an exception rather than the rule. So calculate using 2500 miles maximum which is also Swift's minimum goal weekly for the drivers to attain. There are a lot of factors that play into that are out of your control like picking up a 200 mile load, delivering it and waiting 10 hours for another 200 mile load to be offered and repeating that cycle all week. Other times you get an 1800 mile load, deliver it and turn and burn on another 1800 mile load back to back.
This link will explain the pay scale once you go solo / team and training pay is at the bottom. I would call a recruiter to make sure it's current. http://swift.drivers-central.com/swift-transportation/driver-pay.cfm
Oh, I wish. It's been awhile since I've seen ANYTHING over a thousand miles. Here's all my loaded miles for the last.....awhile since I'm bored: Loaded - Empty: 619 - 113 22-24 361-0 559-8 500 -0 613-110 473-47 0-44 97-0 479-38 153-87 406-96 283-80 157-96 0-129 483-0 181-83 50-66 483-75 210-126 245-8 268-119 160-0 282-21 581-64 160-32 267-1 418-90 867-91 483-79 405-173 375-0 382-0 711-47 486-37 1025-235 121-0 And that thousand mile run is on my statement from Feb. 22. So yeah, those are the miles I've been getting, with each space being for a different week. I've never turned anything down unless I absolutely couldn't legally get the load in on time, except for one which wanted me to drive through the entire night after sitting over 24 hours.
