The Good, The Bad and The Ugly... Tanker Companies

I went from TMC last year to yanking a tank this year (tiddie juice) and it's been some of the easiest money I've made (until the ice arrives...looking at you surge). I won't make as much this year, as I did last year w/ TMC...but I've not had a single day of stress in 2020 at all, while last year I avg 4 hours and 43 mins of sleep per night, and my first time ever having high cholesterol. This year I'm avg just shy of 8 hours of sleep per night. I don't think I could ever work another 14-17 hours/day like I did last year. I start to whine if I hit 10 hours now. How soon we forget our roots...

 

Some of my best weeks as a company driver were sub-2000 miles. Lots of sitting but it all paid and it starts to add up.

 

I'm in a similar boat to you OP, I'm in the Houston area I'll have a year of otr tanker in January and I'm looking to make a move hopefully to something more regional / local. I like tanker work and want to stick w/ it but the good company that started w/ in January of this year was acquired by another company and I don't like the direction things have been heading. I'm not going to openly bad-mouth the company but I will post this link to a thread that should speak for itself. It's a long read b/c it's been going for several months but I definitely think it's worth the time to read through and by the end you should have a good idea what's-what w/ those two companies at least:

Superior Carriers & Henniff

 

Yeah the miles have been alright for me. Lots of sitting but coming from reefers and my last place being LTL reefers I will take driving a tank anyday over that. I forgot what driving normalish hours felt like. I can finally live without having to drink several cups a coffee or Red Bull’s to make some ungodly delivery time window. And as far as sitting around I did plenty of that if not more doing reefers waiting to deliver. Customers have been super cool so far. If I’m late or early seems like they’ll still take you within reason of course. No more “Oh your 15 minutes late, you’re going to need to reschedule” bull. Im no longer having to deal with OSD’s because one case had a minor scratch in it or some crap like that. I’m making about the same I was before but so far it’s been 500% percent less stressful and I don’t really know how to put a price tag on my sanity.

 

I've delivered many loads that were sometimes days late and never heard any complaints from the customers. These were regular runs though and they had an amply supply of the product in their storage tanks. I think the company still gets fined due to contract stipulations, but nothing will be said to the driver if he got the load after it was due to deliver.

As for delivering early you will soon figure out which ones won't take you early so might as well sit tight and get in a 34 reset if you can.

 

I'm leased on to Trimac out of their Bayport branch and run super regional. Trimac also runs out of Beaumont. It's the only outfit I've been with and I'm not going anywhere. Honestly, at my age, no one would want me.

 

Do you ever get used to it? I always felt that about then you would give your a wakeup call or some jack would force you to hit the brakes.

 

I’m used to it for the most part. I can for sure predict when it’s going to happen. I tend to have it hit the back of the tank far more often than it does the front thankfully.