Driver Salary

yea if the driver never goes home...lol

 

Here is the reality. Thull do you think you want to be a driver as your career or just a while as a job? If you want to truly be a Driver then just get a job anywhere as fast as you can. You just need a year to make a move. Money sucks your first year.

Factor into your equation that you would like to visit home sometimes. I worked for two OTR companies. Both considered Starter companies. FFE and Transport America. Sometimes trying to get home and then leaving again can be annoying and kills your weeks miles. Seemed to be more coming home than going. I lived in Atlanta which obviously has freight.

If you consider a 4 week work schedule count on being paid for 3 1/2 weeks and you lose money going home. I knew the money sucked but wanted the experience. I would say i honestly grossed on average probably 800 a week. Sometimes less. Reason I say gross is everyones deductions are different. Everyones situation is different. Some people have families to support some dont. I After you get a year you can jump ship and make a little better money. Then again after about 5 years

 

Most of the time when they say that drivers make " this amount" they are referring to the top paid driver but when I first started driving I was making about 600-800 a week before taxes

 

The job should be paying every OTR driver 70-100k a year. Based on the responsibility and the danger and the hours, plus time away from home and personal liability for tickets.

The reason mist drivers don't and never will make that is deregulation and lousy freight rates. Companies simply can't afford it, even if they wanted to.

Until something happens to make freight rates reflect reality a little better, a lot of us are going to be making 30k a year and get stupid excited over 60. The whole model is pretty broken right now IMO.

 

I know this isn't the most recent post to be replying to but in all honesty if I could average 30k for my first year I'd gladly take it over my current 9-5 warehouse gig that will only allow me to gross about 20k. I was just about ready to take the leap and get my CDL about 6 months ago after doing my due diligence researching various companies but I never took the plunge. If it were my way I'd just go to a private CDL school and try to get hired on locally somewhere as I have 2 buddies who were able to do that. Unfortunately I don't have a few thousand dollars laying around and with the hours I work I can't swing the 6 month college course, which only leaves getting my CDL through a "cdl mill". I'm not a huge fan of being away from home but if it would ultimately get me into a LTL position or something specialized that would have me home every night or on the weekends I can see it being worth it to suck it up for a 6 months or so OTR. It's just a big leap to take considering all of the horror stories you read regarding CDL mills, bad experiences at the company paid schools, bad trainers and so on. I'm a pretty intelligent guy and have some very usuefull skills but sadly when I was 18 I made some bad decisions and got tattoos not only all over my arms but on my hands and neck that aren't conveniently covered. So even when I'm "qualified" for a position, I'm usually looked over. But that's on me. I'm tired of dead end, low paying jobs that I'm required to take currently. If I did this trucking thing it'd be as a career. There's just that problem of sifting through all of the company BS to get to the ultimate end goal. Random rant over.

Dave

 

That's not an offer, it's a recruitment letter. Smdh