OTR or Local (hourly)

Thanks, it's a 40' sliding axle. small enough to get into ridiculous places and big enough to get me in trouble

 

That's a good way of putting it..haha..

 

My P&D nemesis started showing up around late July and went through mid August - text books!! Most schools and universities didn't have docks and were a pain to get in with a 53' - add some August heat and 10,000 lbs of geometry 101 and I was an unhappy camper..haha..

 

Yea, gotta love university book stores. no place to park, good luck getting a student to help, nothing lite about a skid of books! My problem childs are Ann Sacks ceramic tiles. nothing like trying to pallet jack a 2000lb. skid up someones driveway. folks, cant you shop at lowes or home depot? worse yet is builders direct or direct buy club. 2500lb skids of flooring 8'x4'
then of course there are the numerous deliveries of treadmills and ellipticall bikes and other crap poeple get from amazon.com by friday nite ive had my fill of fun!

 

I'm surprised somebody local is giving you a chance without exp.

 

Lmao u gotta love the local p&d operation. .. everything that mark and jake said I've been there still there and hopefully will not be there too much longer lol . ( school ) I'm going back !!!

 

Hahahaha.. They were probably those "double barrel" skids that you had to offset your pallet jack to move too. I don't mean to laugh, but some of these deliveries are nothing less than absurd right.. I used to get this delivery about once every two or three months that was multiple skids of fiberboard drums containing bullets to a small gun shop. The place was a nightmare to get into and they didn't have a dock but they did have a lift - problem was the planks on the bottom of the skids were so close together you had to use your jack to break off some planks before you could move them - then you'd get stuck on the chunks you broke off with the jack. I got smart and started putting their pallets on top of standard pallets - till their pallets collapsed around or collapsed the pallet I placed under it creating one big hot mess of pallet..hahaha.. God this yard jockey deal is soooo easy..hahaha..

 

I have done almost all kinds of trucking, except oversize. I just left a local job like the one you describe. 10 stops a day, 10.5-11 hours, $180 a day.

Now I drive a spotter truck at a brewery. I drive 3.5 miles to work. It is a little less money but I go home after 8 hours, no stress at all.

Trust me when I say this. It takes a VERY strong family to withstand the demands of an OTR job. I bet more than 75% of the OTR drivers out there are divorced or estranged from family/friends because the demands of the job. I know that there are lots of families that can survive but they are in the minority.

If you OR YOUR FAMILY have any doubt or second thoughts about doing this, then dont do it!!! Remember, you might be all alone in the cab of the truck, feeling like you are the only person that is enduring the "lifestyle", you are not!!!

Your wife and kids will miss you terribly.

No amount of money will make up for all the stuff you will miss being OTR.
And that shiny KW will turn into a tarnished prison cell very quickly!!!

I could give you more examples:
hot in the summer/cold in the winter because you cant idle.
You may not get a shower every day and some places you will shower in will leave you feeling dirtier than before.
You might sit for days with no load AND NO PAY.
Laundry facilities are few and far between.
Truckstop food is horribly unhealthy and SUCKS!
And everything OTR is WAY MORE EXPENSIVE!!!

Sometimes I think I wasted my life by driving a truck. To most OTR companies, you are an annoying liability that has to be tolerated, if you are lucky, the company treats you like a number. Good OTR jobs are almost impossible to find, and with the thousands of students being churned out year after year, those jobs are going away.
And dont get me started about the invasion of foreign drivers taking even less money to drive truck.

I could keep going but hopefully you got the point by now.
STAY LOCAL IF YOU CAN!!!

 

The yard truck or yard jockey is the best single bid in the history of CCX/Con-way Freight.. I took what I thought would be a 30K pay whack to do it but it will turn out to be more like 35 or 40K less than last year but I love it - till I bid for 2012..haha.. Not sure I've even worked more than 10 total hours of OT yet in 2011 - 8 and the gate for me man.

In the winter when all the line-haul drivers were rolling in stressed out after a night running on ice, I was pissed off because I had not yet figured out how to write my name on the fresh snow with the yard truck.. One Monday when the yard was clear of trailers with about 6" of fresh snow I was finally able to write my name in the snow with the yard truck and all was well..

 

Agree with what you're saying...my thing is tho that you've gotta be careful what you're getting into sometimes in regards to a local job.
I got a buddy who's on disability now from a local job.
Hauling beer: he's got a metal pin in his shoulder and two shattered discs in his back.
Got another buddy who just got hired onto an LTL...he's working 3 days per week and sitting by the phone (on call).
Know a guy at Sysco...sure he's home everynight but he's so tired and worn-out that he basically eats and goes to bed.
It's just like anything else, you really got to do your due diligence in regards to local work.
But alot of guys see local, daycab, hourly, etc and think it's so much better than OTR...it CAN BE...but you gotta play your cards right.