Port work?

That’s super cheap. These bozos are trying to get rich having someone else do the work. $300 maybe we’ll talk. If you work 50 out of 52 weeks that is still only $75000/yr or $25/hr if you figure 12 hr days M-F, which they would be, plus commute each way.

Try to get on with Old Dominion bumping docks. Top pay after 2 years must be up around $27-28/hr plus OT after 40 if you live in WA State. I worked for them 5-6 years ago...probably should have stuck around.

 

I will comment regarding you observation that you can set your own hours OTR. The answer is NO. You are at the mercy of available loads, receiving or shipping hours at customers, etc. One day you are starting your day at 6:00 am, run hard, and make delivery at 6:00 pm.

You wake up the next morning at 6:00 am and there's no dispatch. You wait all day and suddenly get dispatched at 6:00 pm on an overnight run that can't be late for that 6:00 am appointment.

The only way you can set your own hours is if you are an owner operator, WITH your own authority. Then you book your own loads and can say "no" to anything you don't like.

Don't even think about becoming any kind of owner operator without at LEAST a year or two experience.

Regarding the port position, I have never met a port driver making real money, EXCEPT for one owner operator. He had a direct customer, a car manufacturer just east of Atlanta. Every day he picked up a container in Savannah and delivered to the car plant. One round trip a day, M-F, and home every night and weekends.

If you are a company driver, just starting out, avoid port work. Do a Google search about news stories of port drivers on 1099 that were getting ripped off. I believe Long Beach was the port where companies classified their "workers' as independent contractors, then got nailed because by law they should have been classified as employees.

Do your homework. There are FAR better jobs out there. Use Google Maps, zoom into the area you want to work, and search for "trucking companies", "tanker companies", "flatbed companies", etc. A bunch of icons will appear on the map. Select one and you have a phone number, web site link, reviews and rating, etc. That's how I found my current gig and I have no complaints.

 

Customer appointments decide what hours you will work if you go OTR. Even if the recruiter said you can sleep in, take off on sunny days, and never drive in the rain.

 

Some trips into the ports were not good and some worked better than others. Getting rid of a loaded container for export was usually the easy part, but if I was in there for a double move trying to get a new load put on with a bunch of other guys crowded into the aisle all fighting to get parked in front of the stack they needed it could be a long wait. APM in particular was the worst...the other ones were a little more organized. But sometimes I'd breeze in and out of APM in an hour or less also if it was a quiet day.

 

Depended on the day. "Double move" means you show up with one container (either empty or loaded) and leave with different one (also either empty or loaded). A single move would be either showing up or leaving with a bare chassis.