What are the different specialties in trucking and their salary relative to the years of experience?

Location
Company
Record (driving)
Years in
Willingness to stay out
Specialty (van, flat, osod, hazmat)
Pay structure (mile, percentage, flat rate, hourly)

All change what you can make. Basically you can say a first year otr at a decent company can and should make 45k or better. Beyond that... its up to you to make it more.

 

Or head to the oil patch when it kicks up. Bottom feeder outfit I worked for starting out paid drivers $325-350 a day.

 

Well, haz tanks pay better than haz vans.. and then you get into average millage.. so if you average 2500 miles a week at .45 a week.. thats around 18k before taxs. Now are you getting a perdiam? Mpg bonus? Idle bonus? Lots goes into pay

 

Some of the best money company side (as in you dont own the truck) is in line haul doubles triples. But you need some time in to get your hands on a decent bid. We have a few regional flats here, they seem happy, and well above the 75k range. (Again, pay varies

 

There is no one specialty. There are only good drivers who are either trainers or highly paid team/solo. When you have a committed husband wife team who both drive as a strong powerful combination pay to the truck approaches .80 a mile as ours did and 7000 miles plus a week. Literally limited by both household miles minus 20% max and speed governor.

Trainers are paid salary but have large responsibility because trainees will be tested again pending acceptance and issued own truck. If trainee fails there is either a reason (Such as insubordination, disrespect, failure to comply with instructions refusal to drive assigned etc.) The salary is high enough to create a situation that the trainer can focus on training rather than miles. Such as net 1500 a week which was for me 2001 wages.

I happened to specailize in heavier than 80K weights. That dated back to the container days where permits were 99K in two states and god knows what the gross was on a few loads exceeding 137500. The heavier it was, the more focused I was and literally better. But there were a few trucks that did just about break because they simply were not built to accept such weights above a certain speed. I should have gone into 150 ton transformers, B trains or something of that nature but that kind of trucking is not widely available were I am and was.

Ive had a couple loads that were extremely heavy and looking back on it, frankly I should have refused to get them. I also had a cement plant load me at 110K gross near Pine Bluff with a 60's Rig that did well with that kind of bulk tanker weight but frankly I should have been issued a more stronger tractor. The floor fell out of that one one time. Never again. Ever. That was both a death day and rebirth with strong convictions for me. Eff the boss. Stick that POS tractor on someone else let them get killed. Not me.

Specalities? Finally but not last. It's mountain work for me. Im not happy if the world was flat. The steeper and stormy it got the more predatory and motivated I got. I'll get the #### thing up and over when everyone else is cowering in the truckstop. However there have been times Nature revealed its fury, enough to kill and I would hide in said truckstop telling Boss to shut. up. Stop whining. See you in the morning.

That is the difference between living well and living with no future. Dead man driving. Don't be that.

 

I carefully explained that to you. Get a wife, with a CDL, have her as a team with you. They are valuable to trucking. Bonus in some companies pay you both thousands.

As a trainer, you are approved after some time with a company and no problems. Not everyone gets to be a trainer. I was a company driver with FFE for a couple years and no trouble. One day wife wants to go with me and they made me trainer for her. 8 weeks later they tested her and found her skills acceptable to run team offically the rest of the year. 9-11 came along later. We were running for another company out of Memphis by then.

6000-8000 miles come in when you leave Avenel NJ on a sunday afternoon with a WED am appt in LA and back to Avenel by Friday or sat same week. Twice across the USA as a team. Very intense. Racing to save accounts by grabbing loads away from single drivers who are late and twice a trainer and his trainee who were late by gambling in Vegas and AZ, NM too much on a chicago load. Lost our home time on that call but we raced and got it in just barely.

As a single, stay out of trouble. Always communicate to your Dispatcher and Safety. Do no vices or drugs etc. Do your best. In time, sometime in your life time you will also have oppertunities that we have had. It's actually earned, not something to be handed out like gold stars in school.

Ive almost 30 years out there, that one year 2001 was the very best ever of all the years good and bad. And frankly I would not have it any other way. We ended it hauling million dollar medicine loads for McKesson of Memphis via a lease contracted carrier. First as a team and later myself when wife hit her limit and stopped trucking for several very good reasons, obesity being one of them. We got the weight off her too but later cancer showed up and I think it was good she stopped when she did.

I don't have any other way to explain, my time is something most young ones will hopefully never see in this life time what the industry was once upon a time in a world of three paper logs, 100 plus mph trucks and no computers anywhere. All of that is over.