do tanker drivers sit as often as van drivers?

I have driven liquid food tank for 2 different companies for 9 years total and only collected 1 hour detention and that was because Refer driver came in the tanker side of the plant and hit a low pipe shutting down the whole plant for a few hours.

Normally I'm immediately loaded or unloaded regardless of appointment date or time, unless there is a truck or two in front of me. 99% of the time I'm in & out of the shipper/receiver in about an hour.

There is one driver I know in my company that runs from Port Newark to Anaheim, CA with some chocolate and it take only an hour to load he said but takes 12 hours to pump off but he is paid $20 to pump off, $12 per hour for detention pay, and $50 bonus cause no one wanted to do the load. He works it out so he is right at the end of his hours when he arrives at receiver, hooks up hoses and pump and hops in the sleep and sleeps, cause the plant is a union shop and doesn't want him out of the truck so place a union worker to do the pump off.

 

I've been hauling gas for 22 years(21 with the company I'm with now)I have some tall days sometimes but I wouldn't do anything else.

 

I thought you ran these in Michigan ..........

 

I never sat pulling tanks...In the time it took to run to a tank wash they had time to look. Actually at times I would run a tank load to LA or Portland from Chicago, and they would dead head me all the way back to Chicago. Langer Transport would do that and Quality Carriers too. Big bucks in tanker loads.

 

Tanker work is as varied as the rest of the industry. Right now I am hauling asphalt and on some days I make more on detention than I do on load pay. Previous companies not so. Nothing like firing up my Kindle & reading for awhile, or making dinner for $23 an hour. We do have to give each end the first hour though & a lot of times I'm in & out in under that. Tanker work is the only thing I'll do now.

 

Big bucks in some tanker loads maybe but at Quality Carriers my guaranteed rate was only $.40 a mile . I was on percentage and some loads I had to put in a pay request to get my percentage up to $.40 .
A regular 2,0000 mile run I did only paid $700 by percentage . I put in for a $100 boost every time I did that run . Last year that shipper was bought out and new rates were figured for the new owner . Then the percentage was $725 and I put in for a $75 boost . Drivers had to watch the rates . If they didn't put in a pay request for loads paying less than minimum they would be paid less than the guaranteed rate .
Most loads were dedicated trailers paying round trip . Some weren't and here's how the guaranteed rate worked then . Say you had a 500 mile one way load paying $.60 a mile . They couldn't find a backhaul and deadheaded you back . The pay for the 1,000 miles would be $400 . I thought that was BS . If you were paid $.60 going out that would be $300 and getting only $100 coming back was $.20 a mile not $.40 .

 

This is why sometime in the near future I plan on hauling hazmat tanker and why I renewed my hazmat last month.Its good till 2018.Because I never have seen tankers sit and sit.That gets old after awhile sitting waiting for a load ,to get loaded/unloaded.

 

Only time I'm sitting is when I'm loading and unloading.

 

Some do some don't as in my situation we don't need a six axle trailer if I had one I'd end up running splits all the time and with the extra maintains with tires and the added expense of heavy use permits etc. it's just not profitable for our operation.

 

Were you running e-logs, if yes did they require logged on-duty for wait time?