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

kylefitzy · Jun 27, 2019

I never understood guys doing otr work for 25k a year? I doubt their earning potential would be any better in another career.

With no otr experience I made mid 40’s my first year. 6 years in now I wouldn’t even think I about only making 45k a year. Keep your nose clean, learn something specialized, and you can make close to a dollar a mile as a company driver pretty easy. You just have to put in the work.

Last Time Around · Jun 27, 2019

tucker said: ↑

I'll tell you why, to be a modern day gypsy, to see the country, to see America, to wake up every day and not know where they'll spend the night,
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Wanderlust

Last Time Around · Jun 27, 2019

MartinFromBC said: ↑

A nice local driving job, by the hour, sounds at least twice as lucrative as OTR on mileage. To be honest, I don't begin to understand 98% of the reason why OTR drivers do what they do. I am not cut out for that lifestyle at all.
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It is a lifestyle.
No local hourly job is even close to paying twice OTR. If two drivers start off at same time, one OTR and one local...same day, same experience....probably a wash first year. First year probably work the dock more than drive, probably on call as well.
Now if someone is comparing a driver with seniority on a feeder route, top pay ( years of seniority ) or even a day gig P&D vs a rookie driver outta the gate....probably twice for sure.
But that isn't comparing apples to apples.

rcelmo · Jun 28, 2019

After working for a lot of years.....I have done OTR, local driving, and
worked hourly jobs.

As for OTR the only way to make money OTR is to put in a lot of hours.
Weekends, holidays, late nights, early morning. Doing OTR I don't think I
ever worked less than 60 hours a week. I also found the only way to make
any real money OTR means running mainly Eastern US......big cities, etc. I
am a farm boy.....I hate traffic jams.....I hate driving the Eastern US.
If a person wants to work 40 hours a week.....have time for a personal
life...…..a 7 to 5 job gets pretty close to the same money. If you are willing
to work 45 hours week...…...live in a "not to expensive house"......a 7 to 5
lifestyle will match a OTR job, money wise.

The only Good money I ever earned was local truck driver. The problem is
I was working 70 hours a week. Leaving the house at 4:30AM not getting home till
6PM or later......working most Saturdays. Great money, really bad equipment, illegal
equipment, running heavy, etc.

My point is each has to decide for himself what type of lifestyle each person wants.

tinytim · Jun 28, 2019

thelushlarry said: ↑

Truckin ain't about the money. It is all about the glory and respect. Plus all the chicks.
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KillingTime · Jun 28, 2019

x1Heavy said: ↑

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.
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I vandalized a sign today while at my drop. It was a sign stuck on an 8'6" container. I don't know what was in it & I didn't smell it, but it reminded me of you.... it'd be ironic if it were full of ####....

rolloverdude · Jun 28, 2019

thelushlarry said: ↑

Truckin ain't about the money. It is all about the glory and respect. Plus all the chicks.
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What chicks? you mean them old ladies who just like us shower once every two or three days. even worse,

MGE Dawn · Jun 28, 2019

rolloverdude said: ↑

What chicks? you mean them old ladies who just like us shower once every two or three days. even worse,
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There's always a second hole. Just sometimes it's at the end of a rod

layover6 · Jun 29, 2019

I make 30.50 a hour ot after 40 hauling fuel

MGE Dawn · Jun 29, 2019

layover6 said: ↑

I make 30.50 a hour ot after 40 hauling fuel
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#### man. I knew fuel tankering was a lucrative line of work, but that's something else. How many hours does your typical week entail?

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