When is it time to start looking elsewhere?

After thirty years of driving a truck I will share some of my thoughts with you and your husband. I have seen the good, bad and lots of ugly out here on the road. I was a O.O. for three and lost my butt back in 1985 and had to file bankruptcy to get out of debt so that I could start over, this is only to let you know how low I got not to get any sympathy. At the time this was the best thing I could have done. But back to your life. You can look up financial information on any public held company on the web, you may have to dig deep but it will tell you how many trucks they own and how many miles they ran for a year or quarter. Always look for the best ratio of miles to trucks. Also look at the turn over ratio of drivers.

Trucking is what you and your husband makes out of it and whether he enjoys it thru the good and bad. Take a look at priorities of your husband work habits. Is getting home more important then making money? The reason why I ask is because I learned that making money sometimes requires you to take loads away from home instead of heading back to the house. I have heard drivers say that they have to get home every week to see their kids but I would rather work and make sure that they are fed instead of looking at hungry kids at the house. Never take for granted that his dispatcher has his best interest in mind, if dispatch tries to send him home or on a short run then he needs to call back in and check for other loads that might make him more money. Never refuse a load but always question the dispatchers decision. Even ask for loads that others don't want, this will not only get him more miles in bad times but dispatch knows that he is welling to work. I wish I had a dollar for every time I took a load going to a bad area or away from home my first ten years. If your husband wants to get on a dispatchers bad list then let him call in with comments like: I don't like to go to that part of the country, I want to go home right now, I don't haul that kind of product because I have to hand unload it or I would rather set here then haul that crap. When it is slow ask for New York, go north in the winter, go to the NE in the winter, just go where no other driver wants to go. I ran Canada for two and a half years because no one else would do it but it give me good miles and got me home. Dispatch has enough whiners to listen to and they enjoy getting a call from a pro driver that wants to work and they remember these drivers in a good way. Learn the chain of command at his company, just because a dispatcher says he has nothing for him doesn't mean that some one higher can't find that load. I always had a working relationship with dispatch not a friendship because if dispatch didn't work me then we definitely wasn't friends and I had no problem going above his head to get work as dispatch had no problem reporting me for not working.

After a year look for better job. I recommend looking for a private fleet job because from 1991 until 2000 I worked for a private fleet and it was great with good money and home time. From 2000 until present I have worked for a second private fleet with better home time and money. These jobs are hard to come by so tell him to keep his record spotless and don't start jumping jobs because both will keep him from getting a excellent driving job. My last speeding ticket was in 1983, after I delivered a hot load going to LA from IN and got two speeding tickets on the way. When I returned to the office I turned these in to the boss and he laughed and said that he was not dumb enough to pay for my tickets and that was the last speeding ticket I got. In my opinion any driver that takes the chance on getting tickets for a hot load is a idiot or a suckup. I was a idiot but not to dumb to learn.

Life on the road is hard on a husband, father and lover. Never tell him about problems at home unless you need his help with solving these problems. Its hard to drive mile after mile thinking about things at home that you can't fix or help to fix. My wife learned to do a lot of repairs around the house to keep me from working all day on my days off. One time she replaced a spacer between the carb. and intake on a car so that I wouldn't have to when I got home. I was in the military for three years in the early seventies and since I have learned two things that I don't want to be in life and that is a military or a truck drivers wife, your job is way harder then any other job on earth. Lots of luck and happy New Year.

 

Hometime..if your husband graduated from a certified PTDI school he should be getting at least an extra $100 or more on his paycheck each month..most of the well known carriers usually offer tuition reimbursement up to 4 or 5k as an incentive for employment; you didnt mention who he worked for so I can't say if his does, you might want to ask him about that..

 

Sometimes just talking to your dispatcher can help, especially if you are relatively new to a company. It takes a while for the people on the other end to get to know you because it's all done by qualcomm or satcom and the telephone. He doesn't want to be abusive, he just wants to let the dispatcher know that he needs more miles. It's definitely rough out here right now but some people are getting decent miles. A friendly conversation can go a long ways toward making a "personal" relationship with the person or person's who control the loads. If he otherwise likes the company he's with he should stick it out and have that friendly conversation. Everyone here is right, if he starts jumping from one carrier to another sooner rather than later he'll make himself unhireable. Companies see job jumping as someone who's never satisfied and they figure he'll leave them in a couple of months too so why bother hiring him.