Hardships as a trucker

Being away from your friends and family is the largest obstacle to overcome for most drivers.

Learning to adapt to living in a truck takes time. Sleeping in a small box after driving for up to 11 hours in a 14 hour time frame.

Learning the various rules and regs from the states you travel through. Regs such as which lane its legal to drive in, which roads can you take based on the weight, width, and height of your vehicle.

Learning how to handle the various weather conditions and terrain in a rig that could weigh up to 80,000 lbs.

Eating on the go because you dont have time to stop. Dealing with rude drivers, rude customers, and rude dispatchers.

Learning to document your every waking moment thru the use of logbooks or an onboard computer monitoring system such as E-Logs.

Learning that people lie to you on a regular basis. Brokers and dispatchers are the worst. Telling you the load delivers at a specific time and when you get there the customer isnt expecting you nor do they even want the product you have.

HURRY UP AND WAIT.

OTR drivers will "volunteer" their time every day. Waiting time is unpaid. Most customers will not pay for detention so your stuck waiting for them to get around to offloading your truck. Waiting between dispatches is also unpaid time.

 

Very nice,we volunteer our miles ws well, most companies (not all) pay a city to city rate to the driver for mileage as opposed to an actual door to door milage. The difference could be fairly substatial. Not to mention fuelsurcharges not quite keeping up with the market.

Other hardships besides the aforementioned is how we as professionals seem to be percieved by the general public, including shippers and sometimes our own companies dispathers or load planners. Im very lucky to be with a respectful company that realizes without "us" they dont get paid. All drvers arent that lucky, and i understand that all drivers arent professionals as well.

 

Low pay,some have went into serios debt thanks to trucking.Away form home for long periods.The tight rope many companies have on drivers,

 

Most schedules are tight, very.

Most recievers have people to unload their frieght. Some you have to pay to do it. Evenif you want to unload some (most) recievers wont let you on the dock for "insurance reasons" , read: we want you to hire our lumper service

 

Ive only done that once and the court ruled in my favor because i wss just trying to get my property out from under his.

If youre company you should be paid back

 

If I am on a tight schedule then I forego stopping. If I dont have the time to complete the run then I will inform dispatch and either they will repower the load with another driver or reset the delivery appointment.

The key is communication.

As for unloading the trailer no I dont have to normally. A grocery warehouse will have a lumper service available to hire.

For building supply stores with smaller deliveries I will tailgate the load through using a pallet jack or straps. Normal time it takes me to offload a couple pallets is between 5 and 15 minutes depending upon how fast the customer is. I get paid extra for helping to unload so its worth it offload once in a while.

 

Dude that has got to be the best saying that I have ever read