The truth about trucking....

Training is the biggest liability to anyone considering taking up trucking as a life journey. This is the one thing that most newbies do not understand until it's almost too late.

If you are being indentured to schooling at a 9000 dollar cost that you have to repay which is approiaching twice retail for school tuition in CDL.. then you learn just enough to pass a 10 minute driving test and a stack of written tests for the endorsements.

You are not being told what will happen, how long it will take to hire on, what equiptment it's best to test at (Manuals so you avoid the auto restrictions being applied by states left and right...) and your first year is the most dangerous for what you don't know.

Most of what I put on here is cleaned up strictly for the internet. On the CB radio in real life, nothing is cleaned up. It is what it is. I believe in many cases the radio has become a liability long before there was even a internet in common use by people. Much less smart phones talking to one another on the interstate now with certain apps. With G5 coming, there is a very real chance the older Internet that we all are used to will go away or become slow and free for those who cannot or will not pay for the fancy G5 net. We would be two seperate castes in society, those who have online, those who have not. The have nots will not enjoy the benefits of knowing and learning. If they are taught anything at all.

Trucking has been losing very good people for far too many decades, Im one of them. A bit rough around the edges certainly. But when I pass on, if any of this is left behind for others to learn, great. If not? Erase it all. better for you to learn on your own than someone to tell you what's for. I believe each and every newbie should have what I call a trucker daddy. Not just a trainer but to play the role of a trucker daddy.

Dispatchers are a fading breed. Eventually the cost of maintaining a office filled with dispatchers will go away in favor of keeping a server, a IT nerd to feed it. And a pack of drivers who are feasting on the good loads and experiencing famine on the bad loads served up by the load board within your future company. Half the problems will go bye bye because there will literally be no more dispatchers left to create these problems by making promises of appt times without consulting with the professional driver who will physically have to do that delivery date and time.

What is left is either going to be a race to the bottom as the industry filled with newbies and immigrants who know nothng, learn very little and only a percentage of that will survive the first year. Until.... here it comes boys and girls...

Until... the office also filled with newbies and immigrants of the same host country that sources many drivers today. Once that happens, the trucking culture, what's left of it will die a quiet death. It will be all about who you know and dont know. Everything else will be papered over. Or half million dollars will begin to be spent on OTTOS to do it for you. Tap in a desitantion stick a computer intern into the back to babysit the thing as it delivers the load cross country.

Or better yet. dispose of the OTR sleeper crap. Buy Day cabs and purchase stock in your local shortline railroad or class I railroad to deliver your trailers and containers across the USA. Let someone else deal with the hassle of delivery. Ive always said in the past when Baltimore's Seagirt opened up, we can stick 400 loads on that train and see it off to Chicago in 16 hours. No more looking for 400 truckers to deliver them all.

Now we have ships showing up with 14,000 boxes. Half of which need in chicago by morning. You need like 50 trains. Thankfully for you CSX will whistle up 50 trains and make it happen. Space em 15 minutes apart, stage the power and dogcatch crews dead on the hog law and roll em out. Tomorrow will bring in another ship with another 14000 boxes to moe. Do it again next day and so on. 4 trains a hour, departed. 10 hours, = 40 trains gone. You are doing pretty good keeping up. Now you need either 5000 trucks or 200 trains today. Thankfully immigrants are very cheap labor into the truck. Offer them .30 a mile and stick em in any old truck. Pretend to pay 5000 dollar bonuses in a stack of impossible restrictions on that money, one of which last one year in employment with you prior to pay out. Most everyone knows you will fire that person in the 11th month rather than pay out 5grand.

 

One thing I know quite a bit about is technology.... Never listen to the lying media and all this driver-less this and that. It is all crap! What does not fail can be hacked with a smart phone by a kid in mom's basement and watch him rack up wrecks. It is years and years away from being a reality if ever at all. I think in metro areas it will be so so but not crossing the nation. It would take reinvention of highways and you can never have both human drivers and machines. Try getting us Americans to give up our cars...trucks and cycles. Christ it would be really all out war... The 2,578 Problems With Self-Driving Cars

 

You're right driver. Trucking is not a perfect environment. Been out here 37 years and I've seen a lot of changes. Like drivers, trucking companies come in all different shapes and sizes that's for sure. I work for a great company hauling cars and I make probably better money than probably 90% of the drivers out here.

But car hauling like the rest of the divisions has gone downhill too. As far as leasing a truck from a company, you just learned a very hard lesson.
One of the first rules about buying or leasing a truck is you never do it from a company that controls your dispatch. The only right way to purchase the truck is through your bank or from the dealership.

The best advice that I can give any driver is the more divisions you get experience in the more you will be worth and the more options you will have. One of the sorry replies that I hear from a lot of drivers when I tell them about car hauling is "that sounds like a lot of work to me." Do you really think as a truck driver you're going to get something for nothing?

One of the things I've learned about drivers out here is that most drivers are very lazy. I was not implying that you are because I don't know you personally. I'm just speaking about truck drivers in general. There actually are some good companies out here because some companies have learned that if you want to keep drivers you have to treat them right. You're just have to do the research and maybe talk to other drivers of that company before you hop on board. Just keep on researching and learning and you will find the right company for you.

 

Well, if a person is an inconsiderate idiot in all other respects of their lives, they will be one as a driver. That's why you have the people who don't move over for a breakdown, drive behind someone backing, etc. It's not younger drivers, or older drivers, or rookie drivers, or experienced drivers, foreigners, black, white, yellow, or red, it's the person behind the wheel. Their upbringing, what they were taught over the years.

 

just look at avg rate for dry van freight and it is always lowest. you can do very well w/ logistic and LTL but you will earn it. best for van (besides bedbug) is trade show but there will be a lot of sitting

 

I am sorry for your bad experiences. But let me share my experience with you because they started very similiar but ended with a different result. I knew from the beginning (because every conversation with every old timer yielded the same wisdom) that the goal immediately upon being released was to keep your record clean and improve your job situation because the mega carriers are just grinders always on the hunt for fresh meat. I did 6 months and 1 week with the worst job I ever had in my life. I was laid over for 76 hours one time without pay. That was when we ran paper and they wanted you to stretch it for them as well. I have experienced the worst of this industry but I never lost sight of my goal. I knew that people were making a LOT more money than I was doing the same work and being home a lot more. I spent a lot of time preparing a resume and started pumping out applications at the six month mark and knew I would eventually luck into a better job. I applied for jobs I didn't even qualify for. I got an interview with a private company that I knew wouldn't hire me so I went all out. New dress pants, shirt tie, polished shoes, haircut, and my best smile. I charmed the interview lady and after a few more interviews got the job. I made $63,000 my first year being home weekends and home every other day. I have been there 6 years now and love it. I make very good money and get treated with dignity and basically get what I want. You need to set goals to improve yourself and make it happen. Or you could improve your credit and buy your own truck. Either way, you should not be with mega carriers for so long. We all know they suck. I am sure you heard that over the years.

 

Maybe do something other than swing doors..van is going to be relatively cheap anywhere...