Is Hopper Right for Me?

Saw in another thread you don’t want to work past 14 hours. There’s nothing wrong with that but it does mean you need to stay away from hauling any commodities that are ag exempt. So hoppers wouldn’t be a good fit for you.

 

I am fairly new to hopper work myself, but I can tell ya that you can throw the 14 hr legal mumbo jumbo crap or idea of it right out the window. The job has got to get done. If your paid on percentage ya gotta be able to get the loads loaded and get em off within customers operating hours. Some places are 24/ 7 some aren't. And by golly if fibbing on a book somehow gets me to a shipper in the nick of time to get loaded so I don't gotta sit all night, then I figure out how to get it done. I wouldn't of got home till saturday this week if i woulda ran everything by the book. I was home friday night around 18:00. Some loads are hard to get out an some lines can be time consuming. Shorter runs pay better. Lotsa 16 hour days, sometimes even longer. Just my experience so far.

 

Also since I switch products a lot and run OTR , we don't ever use ag exempt status on the log book. I run an e-log all the time just like most everyone else does.

 

Split logs. Extending days by 2 or 3 hours. On top of that I wake up early to do morning breakfast, supplements, an stretching exercises. I try an eat out of the truck as much as possible, so food prep takes extra time, and at end of day I have exercise an physical therapy to fit in when possible. I maybe get 5 or 6 hours of sleep on average. Yes splitting logs is my choice but when the job needs done, it gets done. An if i could go back to paper logs, I would.

 

If you get hung up 2 or 3 hrs at any point during the day, say off duty while waiting in line somewhere, you can push the end of your 14 hour day out by that time frame.

 

I do alot of ag exempt short junk plus a bunch of regional.
I made it home about an hour and half ago, no load yet, but i’ll look tomorrow.
Let’s you run 750+/day miles plus load/unload.

 

A lot of feed mills don’t have adequate storage for their ingredients. When I was pulling hopper or even hauling feed salt in a pneumatic there were many times I’d show up and they’d have less than a load left of whatever I was bringing in. If you’re actually hauling grain to an elevator then being late wouldn’t matter at all, other than it could really mess up your following day which could really mess up the rest of your week.

 

If you think your gona just haul grain and make it work .. You'r gona find out in a hurry you can't just jump in the hopper game and haul grain and make it work
Their called welfare wagons for a reason

 

When I decided to start truckin I thought hopper would be what I wanted. After talking to a few customers though, I knew right quick those hours waitin weren't for me.

Glad I went flatbed