How much more do you make than a 9-5 job

Seems like an impossible question to answer. As a driver you will probably make 1% of the salary a CEO does in your city. I haven't seen a lot of drivers making millions per year. And there is no real normal wage, and lots of the lower income jobs are service jobs with tips. My wife is a waitress, her wage is about 20% of her income.

 

Never had a 9-5 before so couldn't tell ya.

 

Truckin ain't about the money. It is all about the glory and respect. Plus all the chicks.

 

I added up my hourly rate for what I would make if if I was getting paid by the hour and it made me sick so I decided not to do it ever again

 

Funny, I add up my hourly pay for all my time and come to well over the average pay for the area. Not just in trucking, but in all fields.
Pays to work at a job that actually pays by the hour....

 

The 9 to 5 job is more profitable UNLESS the salary provides at least a 1000 net weekly regardless of truck miles run. My focus under salary would simply be quality of service and precision scheduling etc. Rather than obsession about miles.

There are many thousands here in Arkansas who find themselves Chronic College Students going for 6, 8 or more year degrees to gain a leverage in Govt Positions of power and wages of at least 115K annual. With doctorates etc. That's the main thing right now in my area which is a college area. So many climbing over each other now that the two and four year degrees are out of the way they work on the 6's and 8's and hope to just bury the debt

Trucking in my time during the 70's and 80's was a extremely profitable life. Until after deregulation, death of the ICC, bingo and so forth and the rise of the CDL laws to stop the drinking and later drugging. (And now we see those becoming lawful drugs at the state level ugh...) Money had real value back then. Inflation since then ate it away just like a rotting linen eaten up by moths over a long time. You want a 1000 net or better each week in trucking whatever it is to make it profitable each month. That's approximately a 52K minimum salary for the year without taking into math the benefits if any.

I just finished talking with several of my insurance providers and we have so far in the last 20 years ball park spent approximately 160K in medical repairs to me by surgery and other processes in the last 10 years alone. Wear and tear from trucking. Ive also been facing next month about 5 to 10K in dental work (Max) and a Cardio exam which will decide once and for all if I am in heart failure. Which will be another 5K in testing not including the surgery that would be required on the order of 30 to 90K on up.

Benefits? HA. Trucking generally do not have benefits. I played with one company that paid blue cross and shield and when I was fired, I was handed a Cobra 18 month bill at 750 per three months due. Total of3000 dollars which unemployment will not provide for in full.

That was the decision year in the 90's to cut the benefits loose, claim the perdiem for myself only and save money from paychecks regardless of what I grossed or even had deducted below $0.00 for unreimbursed tolls, and other things that were paid in cash before the rise of the Toll ways with prepass etc. I remember being 100 to 150 dollars in the hole each week paying tolls on GWB and other Borough Bridges. And waiting for two to three weeks for the company to pay me back. Then to find out they think the toll reciepts have rotted, got wet under coffee or some other lame excuses. That hurt the earning power. So I migrated from the east coast towards the west where there is no #### toll in sight. Not for 2000 miles.

Then only then things got more profitable than trucking. If you consider the hours spent on the road about 100 to 135 hours weekly awake time dealing with the truck in my mind instead of resting properly and sleeping well or eating etc. I am seriously underpaid. So I am in the wrong industry.

Ive washed dishes for a year in a fast food fish joint back home and my savings from the minimum wages was accumulating at a rate of 1000 cash per 6 weeks. Because I lived at home with no bills to speak of. Eventually a few thousand cash was very useful for needful things in life when the time was right back then.

Carefully considering my life with the opposite sex, avoidance of having children and incurring the bills of such support to spouse and children plus housing same. Trucking is not for kids in those days so it's easy. The other part was to keep the health in a good order. Unfortunately by 2002 I was very sick and worn out with a group of about 7 total health issues that need attention. 4 have been repaired. Taking on the last three this summer of 2019. That's 17 years of medical fixing what trucking wore and tore out physically.

Remind me to go back in time to tell my 18 year old self that trucking is not a life. Nor should I sit in a fast food joint stacking 1000's while avoiding any debt of any kind. That means not being materialistic, piles of keeping up with jonesies etc etc etc.

I can go on. But when you consider if I was to be reincarnated at 21 and say would I do trucking? Yes. With two important thoughts. One, McKesson only (Medical pharmacy loads) and going west and deep south only. none of that East coast NE bs. At that point I would be saving money.

As I sit today trucking is not a financial success over my lifetime. It is actually a failed life, failed in financing and spent so much getting out of debt first as a home owner then repairing the things broken in the body from trucking. Which took a excessively amount of dollars. Survived cancer with the spouse at the VA who did good, but it's 1.4 million dollars worth of good. Otherwise she would have died in her second year more or less. 1.4 million bought her at least a extra 15 years of life. That's 100K yearly.

Trucking can never raise that kind of cash for future life problems and retirement until salary replaces mile structure in pay. And the BS of paying 0.24 to anything less than 0.50 with a stack of Bamboozling BS list of added pay this pay that pay something else pay pay pay

ONLY IF YOU DID.. this, that and other and gotchas, you don't get paid any of the accessoral because you never did this that or other in a timely manner. And there you are scraping along on a dish of Chili three times a week.

And companies continue to bloat on income sufficient to buy 150,000 dollar tractors and 50K trailers with a eye towards half a million dollar Robots in 10 years or less Replacing you as the costly Human out of the cab. Eliminating the last redoubt of profitability in a land full of falling rates per Amazon etc. To do that, they have to eliminate the Human and the roughly 60 to 110K annual cost of that human times say 1000 trucks. Or perhaps like JBH 14000 humans on the sidelines replaced by Robot.

Then we will see companies loll on mounds of enormous profitablity, the ones that survived the falling rates long enough to see them double or triple in 15 years. You and I will not be around to enjoy that.

We will be competing for that same tired minimuim wage job asking do you want fries with that.

In some cases that has been more profitable than trucking.

 

Enough.

 

Add up your average weekly gross pay and divide it by 40. My guess is that you'll wonder why the heck you're a truck driver and not working retail or some other menial job for the same or more money.

 

Started driving OTR in 2005 to pay for my teaching degree; graduated in 2013; started doing local work for Averitt in 2014. Teaching pays about $25k less than Averitt does, and there are considerably fewer headaches doing this than teaching (even with Houston traffic!).