Pros and Cons of Driving Reefer??

Lots of hours wasted in your 14 hour window for live loads and unloads. Dealing with rejected loads. Arriving at a shipper just to be told you need a washout and the closest one is 60 miles away. You come back and have to wait in line behind 10 other drivers. A second engine and fuel tank to maintain. The noise.

There's a lot of cons, but most if not all can be minimized with proper planning.

 

proper planning exactly wright ...... thats why I am not planning to pull a reefer and will avoid all pitfalls lol

 

seriously its hard to plan around 3 or more hours unloading or loading ..... i still get it once in awhile in a dry van but not as often

 

And the issues listed in the beginning of the thread makes you wonder why a food crisis could too easily occur in the US.

 

BY OUR POWERS COMBINED...!

 

Well does the higher rate make the extra donkey pain worth it? Of all the 'made a killing' stories I've heard, 4 out of 5 were reefer loads. I guess on the flip side, 4 out of 5 horror stories I've heard were reefer too...

 

Has a lot to do with if you're a company driver or an O/O. Company drivers running reefer tend to do a lot of waiting around and night work with tight schedules for a few more cents per mile. I'm an O/O running reefer who gets to pick and choose my own loads that run mostly daylight hours, and they pay quite a bit better than dry loads in most areas. I'm picking up a small frozen load of 8 pallets today at 11:00AM in Reno and running them to Denver for $3.40 per mile. You just aren't seeing that kind of rate in the dry van market in this lane.