Need some insight from you experienced drivers

Expect annual salary to be around $35k to $45k the first year and maybe as high as $50k the second year. Once you get a couple years under your belt with no tickets or accidents, you can go about anywhere and make $60k to $80k depending on how hard you want to work.

 

Do not focus on just "Pay me"

DO focus on "Spending"

Example, they send me to Little Rock tonight to load in the morning for Baltimore, call it 1100 trip miles. At .50 a mile you are looking at $550.00 gross, 40% gone in withholding ($220.00) give or take a little bit. If you are not carrying benefits on top of that. You are looking at a net of about $300.00

Since it will take you potentially half a day to load in Little Rock you can expect roughly a two day drive. *(This is midnight to midnight, 11 hours max. 8 hours being much more reasonable) between sleeper berth times and breaks etc. Since your pay miles will be 20% less of actual miles plan on about a 1300 mile run. (Ive done this trip in my car twice and it's very close to 1300 miles the way I run it takes two full days to do this) And half a day to unload. Potentially Friday or following monday morning.

So a 5 day trip. If you ate on 20.00 a day (That really crimps your Petro menu for example eh?) or cooked the food in your cab with dutch ovens one for morning food as you sleep and one for dinner food as you drove you can probably source cheaper food at the grocery store and not spend the full 20 daily.

That should leave you 200 for savings. Monday morning, you should be empty sometime that day, bills signed and officially have 200 dollars untouched and something left over out of that 100 expense money. If you are lucky and are with a company that instapays you when loaded on or unloaded by satellite/direct deposit your next load should come in and from there you build a trip plan, and then a expense amount expected to eat on and the rest go into savings. By next friday you should be up 400+ Even if all you did was take a second load back to little rock.

It will become routine. With one big exception.

Every dollar you put into savings is a dollar against either another 9-11 (Our payroll people were destroyed, and we were told two choices. Unemployement for months or use our savings and roll medicines for months. No pay for a while. We had over 12K savings (9 something of that committed to replacing a storm wrecked room in our home) and rolled on the rest 6 weeks rather than sit unemployed.

Or ...

Against a famine week when you sit in a stupid cold storage for three days load for 1000 miles and need another two to unload. (That is waiting three whole days and nights, driving a day and then waiting two whole days and nights to unload as a team for us... it was a absolute BS load ever anywhere with the exception of Tiles by seacan long ago) There was literally no money in a load like that for us. No week at all. Takes three good weeks to catch up on what was lost.

Document everything. Down to the issued trip numbers. Keep copies of your bills delivered. Always have them signed shipper load and count. Unless you want to be personally liable and responsible for the actual count in that trailer. (I can count. But there have been loads that taught me otherwise... and lose money)

Always seek out loads with NO LUMPERS. You are looking potentially at 300 dollars per trailer these days. (In my time was maxed at maybe 110 at most. Routine was 60, such tightwad dispatchers and greedy lumpers at the Grocer. You get to pay if you screw up the three ring circus of forms and papers that must all come out perfect to be reimbursed.

Have electronic transponders for tolls everywhere. Much better than cash. Keep a couple hundred on hand so you CAN use that toll road once a year yourself against being told not to by Dispatch. It's a option. I once crossed over into Maryland's Tidewater via Norfolk for 30 bucks to visit my parents for time off. The company made sure that I ate that toll. What they really wanted me to do is drive AROUND richmond, DC, Baltimore into Delaware and then south. (Ya right.... that eats into time off)

Pay is nice as long you get .40 and better. They were paying .30 to top hands in the early 90's Just so you know. What you really should be getting as a newbie in 2018 will be around .65 But no one will pay that. Because there are too many who chirp "OK!" and sign at .28 or something.