Is Making $800 a week as a NEWBIE possible?

All I can tell you is from MY experience. Pay is weekly. Whatever you get scanned in by the deadline is on that week's paycheck. You drive what you gotta. However long that may be. Hours or days.

 

How many days per week you drive is gonna vary. If you're OTR you're likely to be in the truck all 7 days unless you have home time, but you may only drive 5.5 days and sit for a 34 hour restart to get a new 70 hr clock to work with. Or you could be driving all 7 days if you aren't running too hard and don't need a restart.

What you'll find out is there is a lot of non-driving time in trucking as it is a hurry up and wait job. Some days your shift may be 14 hours but you only drive 7 hours out of 14 as you may spend 4-5 hours waiting at a shipper, and another 2 hours between fueling, scaling a load coupling, uncoupling, conference calls, hazmat briefings and an occasional piss break. Other days your shift could be just 6 hours and you drove 5.75 hrs of it because it was a short drive and your appointment isn't until the following morning.

For myself when I was OTR I probably averaged a 13 hr shift of which I spent an average of 8.5 hours driving. My first carrier I usually drove all 7 days, my second carrier I got a restart every weekend so I just drove 5.5 days but in both cases I was in the truck all 7 days unless it was a week I was going home (once a month).

 

You have to show your "On Duty" when your at shippers/receivers even when your just waiting on them? I've heard of drivers waiting up to 48 hours to be loaded.. how does that work?

 

it depends, are you on the dock or are you relaxing in the sleeper.

 

Letter of the law guidelines are yes you are to be on line 4 on duty not driving.

Personally I usually logged it in sleeper berth as not to use up my 70 hr clock. I have spent my entire 10 hr break waiting for my load to be ready or waiting to be called to a dock.

But regardless of where you log it it's gonna eat up your 14 hours unless you can log 8 consecutive hours to extend it or log 10 consecutive hrs to constitute a break.

 

Another driveby poster.He never came back to respond to anyone;just trying to stir up the pot and get us boiling.

 

Just thinking the same thing........troll.

 

Comparing Canadian Dollars to American Dollars, and you don't have Mexicans undercutting loads with their ultra-low pay and junk equipment.

 

Well I'm sure I'll learn more about this when I get out there.. I've been watchin vids about "offduty" and I'm not talking about sleeper berth.. This was seperate and was usually logged when going on break or other non job related stops or other time killer events.. does this exist? So basically there's, On duty (non driving), on duty (driving), sleeper berth, and offduty (if it exists) which wouldn't use your clock at all.. how does that one work if it does exist? what are the rules for that?

 

off duty DOES eat at your 14 hour clock, it is identical to sleeper berth usage. The difference between sleeper berth is this. If you're taking your break in the truck you log it sleeper. If you're out of the truck for personal reasons then you log it off duty.