New... Again to pilot escort... Advice

Please look as professional as I do and do your job the same.

 

depends on the environment... lol
if its Vegas in August, and we arent loading or unloading that day, im gonna be in shorts and i dont care. i would want my escorts to be comfortable.
If you are going to be in front of customers, then yea i get that.

 

Not a good idea.

If you have to wrong way a turn, there is a specific procedure that your pilot car has to perform. And he is required to have the proper PPE gear on. The pilot car’s PRIMARY function is Public Safety.

You know those guys standing in construction zones holding traffic signs with full PPE on? If your pilot car has to get out and hold traffic sign, they should be rocking full PPE too. This is what @Landincoldfire is referring to.

Yes, you will see many of them dressed as if on holiday, and when they block traffic for a wrong way, they drive the wrong way down the street and hold their traffic signs out the window. This is improper and it could land you, not them, a ticket.
They are supposed to drive down the right side of the road, flip around to face you, get out of the car with full PPE and stand and block traffic...just like the road construction guys. It has less to do with your customers and more to do with the DOT.

 

Good to know, and that makes sense. I still think comfort should play a role, but you are absolutely right. Function/safety must always be first.
So far I havent run into any of that with my oversize moves. I would imagine oncoming blocking is more prevalent in cities and with larger moves?

 

That's not the only issue you may face. There are certain states that when you check into the weigh station, your pilot cars have to go inside with you, or be inspected by the DOT also. The ones that come to mind immediately are Arizona, Colorado and Florida. They will come out and inspect the escort vehicle, from measuring the wheelbase to flags and banners, lights, radios, insurance cards (have to say commercial vehicle insurance), and all PPE gear.

The scalemaster may ask you if you inspected your pilot car. If you answer no, he can write you a ticket. If he inspects them and finds something missing that's required, he can write you a ticket.

Now, the reason why I bring this up is not to browbeat or do any fearmongering and tell you stories that I have heard someone else repeating. These were the things that I've ran into, and got ticketed for or even got shut down for. I am sure each and every one of these guys can tell you some of the mistakes they made as they learned along the way.

Anyway, Six back quiet.

 

Add New York, Utah and New Mexico to that list. All are very strict, some down to the color of the hard hat the pilot car driver must carry...

 

No offense taken whatsoever. I appreciate all helpful information.
We all learn through our own mistakes, the great ones learn through others mistakes. I hope to be a great one.

 

I no longer drive, however I used to and I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express once so I'll chime in.

The original post is a year old so I doubt that person is still looking for advise on vehicle, equipment etc however I suspect many newly out of work people will be trolling these pages looking for new opportunities at this juncture in our history where so many millions of people are finding themselves unemployed and looking for quick way to start an income stream.

If you are one of those, please take this to heart - DO NOT DO IT! -

Why you ask? Well in the way of the infamous Six I'll talk in third person here for a minute.

Cell phone rings, I pick it up - "This is Scott" I say

And then it starts, some young guy (or his girlfriend with what aforementioned guy thinks because of her sweet voice will help grease the wheels) starts off by saying "Hi, I'm with A&B Pilot, I got your name/number from one of your drivers and they said you were needing pilots. - Already wrong because our drivers arrange their own pilots, rarely, VERY rarely does anyone in operations tell the drivers which pilots they use.

So I start asking some questions and typically find out they got my number either from the internet as my cell number is listed on the company web-page as the terminal number and came about this from talking to an OTR driver that doesn't haul OD but knows the bulk of it is handled out of my terminal or from someone who used to work for the company etc.

Enough on the cold calls, I'm telling you in this current environment this will get you nowhere, why you ask, read on.

I'm sure anyone with a pulse (and a few questionable based on the aforementioned calls) you are well aware of the current situation in our world. Something none of us have ever experienced in our lifetime and something that those who follow us will study in history class. Part of this is the price of oil actually going negative earlier this week.

What does the price of oil have to do with pilots you ask? - Well aside from the obvious, the price per gallon of gas is way down so one of the biggest expenses to pilots has dropped but that's not the reason why I say don't do it.

So, why not you ask? - As the price of oil has gone negative the oilfields have completely shut down, energy transportation has slowed to a crawl, mega-yacht moves have slowed, aerospace has slowed and all of these have pilots that are already in the business, have the certifications/equipment and the biggest part, business in place and they too are looking for work.

I'll end with a tale of a young lady breaking into the pilot business and how this relates to why I'm saying now is not the time for this change in your career plan.

Many years ago I needed one more pilot for a move from TX to WA because one of my regular pilots had fallen ill. In a scramble I got the name/number of a pilot close by, new but had everything needed to do the job. So I call and she is available, not totally comfortable with going cross country however when I said what it paid per day (day rate on super-loads), overnight and no-go days, she was all in with both feet. Being a super-load there were going to be many overnights, a few no-go days etc. We take off and she does a good job, 11 days later (that's 10 nights of motels she had to pay for) we finally get to Washington.

The day we arrive I'm given another load, loading in 2 days, going back to Miami, FL that again will require 2 pilots the entire trip and 3 in a few places with some police escorts thrown in for fun.

I ask this new pilot if she would like to take the trip to Florida and although hesitant, she said yes. So 2 more night of motels that she wasn't getting paid for but far less expensive than the deadhead back to Texas.

We finally get going 3 days later, this time much heavier so moving much slower. 2 weeks into that trip we arrive at the Oklahoma/Missouri super-load inspection site where we will be for 2-3 days waiting on Missouri State Police escorts. One of my pilots head off to Neosho for motel and the subject of this story hangs out by the truck. After the other had left she finally comes to the truck to "talk". She had run completely out of money a couple days before, didn't even have enough to buy gas to get home let alone continue the trip, pay for food, motel etc.

She did a very good job of piloting, both front and chase however she was not in a place to be doing more than short runs because she didn't have the financial depth to cover the expense of doing the job before the money started coming in.

As much as I wanted her to continue the trip, I'm not a bank and it's not my place to bankroll someone else's business. I rode into town with her, used my card to fill her tank, got $100 on the ATM, had her drop me back at the truck and bid her farewell. I know that sounds like a cruel and heartless way to handle things however if I were going to be in the business of propping up a budding young entrepreneur I would have had my wife being a pilot car so the benefits could be kept "in house"

If you have the desire to make "the big bucks" in the pilot world, you must have bucks in the bank before you accept that first load. In this current socioeconomic situation we are currently living through, this is not the time to make this move. For every 100 that start, 99 will fail, 1 will make it. Many of those that fail will loose more than a job, they will loose homes, vehicles and wind up owing money to many people.

If, and this is a big IF, you already have the correct vehicle, equipment etc there are so many more things you need to make it. First and foremost, you will need to get the correct insurance. You auto liability insurance will be less than worthless should something happen. Call your insurance company and ask about a commercial policy with a million dollar general public liability and likely they won't even know what your talking about, if they do, be prepared for sticker-shock when they give you the quote. And no, you're not going to get that on the payment plan, you will be paying up-front to start that policy. Then you need to figure out how much you will be spending on motels, food, gas etc for the next 60 days because it's highly likely that it will be 45 days from the time you escort that first load till you start to see some invoices trickling back in. And even 60 days worth of cash in reserve is going to be cutting it VERY close and you will be uncomfortable at the 30 day mark, loosing sleep at the 40 day mark.

If after all of that you still decide you want to take this journey, have your $##T together, know how much its going to cost you per day to operate, know exactly how much you have for operating capital, know how much you have for emergencies etc. Know how many days a load will take, what the payment terms are up front, how long you can go while waiting on that first invoice to get paid. Don't jump at the first big dollar load offered as you may wind up borrowing a tank of gas to get home somewhere in the middle of the trip. And BTW, when you do get home on that borrowed tank of gas, will the lights still be on, what will be in the refrigerator, what will you eat?

Yes, the money that these pilots make "looks good" however in the end, what they actually make is far less than what it appears on the surface. I'm not even going to go into all the rest of the liabilities of being in business for yourself. There are no company benefits, you are the company, you provide your own benefits. There will be no unemployment benefit when things get slow, you are the business, you're sill breathing, you're not unemployed. Paid vacation days.....self explanatory.

It's safe to assume at this point it will be many years, if ever, before we get back to the volume of freight and revenue we all were enjoying just a couple months ago. Getting into something specialized like escorting at this time in history is a fools bet, you will have a better chance of coming out ahead by putting your entire life savings on 27 at the roulette wheel for one ride of the marble (can't do that right now because the casino's are all closed).

 

I like using the same people, I pay ,when the load is delivered, have advanced money, why not, my company will advance me money, if I need it