Going back OTR and need suggestions

Well the immigrant ones is only 200,000 or maybe 1 to 3 percent of the industry. The driver shortage narrative is dependant on who you ask. 90 percent of the industry is small company or owner operator that operates off the broker board. In that world, those drivers will say no driver shortage. The government, ATA, they only pay attention to big mega companies or smaller to medium size companies with mega carrier capabilities. They have customer freight and try to monopolize the industry, gobble up the freight, buy too many trucks, can't keep em all filled, then say there's a shortage. In my view, I think its 2 worlds of trucking.

 

Getting your info from the MSM will keep you poorly informed. The media has been publishing lies of a "driver shortage" for 10 years or more and there was never a driver shortage.

 

Word!

 

As an OTR driver for FCC, I can coment on this. After 9 months and 96,000 miles my gross is only $56,000. That's right. Nowhere near what was advertised. And that's at $0.58 a mile, which includes $.06 a mile for longhaul/OTR pay. Regional drivers make less. And getting 3,000 miles a week is like pulling teeth sometimes.

 

Does that $0.58 CPM include your quarterly bonuses or no? Or are your quarterly bonuses the $0.06 CPM you were talking about?

And how much hometime have you taken, roughly how many days off per month on average do you get after staying out 3-8 weeks or however long you stay out for?

Basic math says you're at around $1550 gross per week and I'm assuming you don't get home much if you're hitting their bonuses each quarter. This is probably about average for experienced drivers doing reefer or dry van OTR, around $1,500 per week gross average.

However like you said that's nowhere near their advertised rate of 95k - 110k per year. Good on you for being honest about the pay. Thank you.

 

That $0.58 a mile does not include bonuses. Bonuses are payed out the month following each quarter. They can vary based on number of miles driven and performance. The $0.06 a mile I was taking about is the over the road pay or longhaul differential. If your not over the road and are on a regional fleet, you don't make the extra 6 cents a mile.

I've changed my home time up occasionally but normally I'm out for 3-5 weeks and take 3-4 days off when home. My choice. I could put in for more or less time out or at home.

 

So you're averaging about 2600-2700 miles a week based off your numbers (96k miles in 9 months) and only getting 3-4 days off a month.

I wonder if they cut your miles back because you're on a higher CPM than other OTR drivers. $0.58 CPM base pay before bonuses seems high for FCC especially since the post Covid boom ended. In that FCC thread there was at least one guy making low 50's CPM base pay and the FCC reviews on various websites have always talked about the pay being on the lower end.

All this said though it seems you're on pace to gross about $75,000 for the year with 1 day off per week on average. For OTR trucking that's on the higher side of average pay. Yeah it's nowhere near the advertised six figures pay rate but it's better than most OTR companies. OTR drivers definitely deserve more though, the hourly wage dividing by 70 a week is pathetic in most OTR jobs.

But still, it's false advertising to say $95,000 - $105,000 gross per year as a company driver, it's nowhere near that as you said. I just saw your post in the main FCC thread about having to go 50 hours without having a load and the company isn't going to pay you layover for your full 2 days sitting at some random truck stop for the weekend. Yeah that's rough.

 

I should have stayed where I was in LTL. I was working 55-70 hours a week, home weekly, and making 95k-105,000k a year.

 

Honestly you need to look at LTL to get the money and miles you’re looking for. Most have driver facing cameras (including where I work), but we all make do with them.

The new ones we have aren’t as annoying as our old ones, which is nice when you want to take a sip of water.

I work at Cross Country Freight in North Dakota, and can answer questions on them if you want.

 

That's a huge paycut for you. I assumed you were an OTR driver who went to FCC and was upset about the lied advertised pay they have, that's why I said 75k is on the higher average for OTR.

But coming from LTL to OTR truckload is a huge pay cut for you. I can see now why you're so upset about the lied to advertised pay that FCC has. And it makes it worse now that the economy is #### and with a terrible employee market for trucking with all of these LTL's barely hiring at all, it's extremely difficult to get hired onto an LTL company right now.

If you don't mind me asking, what made you switch back from LTL to OTR (I'm assuming you did OTR before LTL and then went back to OTR)?