Anyone getting a raise?

Nope, I am moving from trucking to hauling horses. I love driving, and I love horses. Win win! Plus I got me my own little house like setup with a little stove and a little oven and a little fridge...

Did I mention horses?

HORSES!

I am excited, of course it may fail and I may be back here in 3 months crying about losing my trailer but... since no one wants to hire me (and I checked my dac its not that bad sheesh! I thought MAYBE Werner put something about WHY they fired me, or that they wouldn't rehire or something... but nope just termianted rehirable subject to review.) I think the hiring issue is due to their being so many drivers whom have YEARS to my 18 months and the lack of freight but I had two choices, sit around and be a rider filling out the same apps repeatedly and crying about being broke... or try something new.

My hope is my plan will work I will make either enough to live offa until things are better in trucking, or make a lot and buy a big semi horse hauler. Anyway my base rate is .69 a mile (give or take), and my cost vary between .25-.30 cpm depending on a few things.

With a full trailer of horses at my cheapest rate I make 1.20 a mile, with a full trailer at my highest rate 3.40 a mile.

I mean... I'd really really have to suck to lose this. Trailer > 400 a month truck > 550 a month insusrance (still waiting for quote figuring at 800 to be safe) > 800 a month

1700 a month in 'business required' payments, pickup gets between 10-20 mpg depending on a few factors, so I should be good to go. Got USDOT # (have had it for a while just needed to admend it), working on MC but I don't NEED the MC # I am just finishing it out.

Horses are exempt so I can for hire haul horses, cattle, so forth provided they are personal horses and I am not hauling them to shows for hire.

 

The company I run for pays us a percentage of the line haul and overdimensional fees. That comes out to 21.5% of the total for Company Drivers, and 60.2%% of same to Owner-Operators. We were told at our last annual banquet that we could expect to work the same amount for 10-15% less pay this year. Basically it is because freight rates are coming down due to more trucks than available freight.

Instead of breaking into a truck-driver whine, I was relieved to hear we were not going to be losing our jobs. There are quite a few heavy haul outfits that are down-sizing and laying off drivers.

I'm just hanging on, hoping to weather the storm.

 

bduke,

Good luck on your raise. We just ratified our contract for the next three years. The first year, everything is frozen as is. $24.14 per hour plus all benefits. We were fine with this as the economy is in the dumper. We thought it would be best to help the company as anyone should. The second year has an increase of $.75 for wages and $.15 for the pension. The healthcare cost is going to be $70.00 per month. The third year will see an increase of $.75 for wages and near $80.00 per month for medical. The pension is increased another $.15. Everything else still remains the same. The only other item that was changed was having your birthday off. They deleted that and gave us another paid floating holiday for a total of 12 paid time off holidays. Doesn't make sence to me but, whatever.

I wish you luck with the future. You are going to need it. At least my company is offering us a wage and pension increase while so many others are not. Most compamies are talking about reducing wages and or laying people off.

At least we are not going backwards. Our drivers and warehouse employees recognized the need for the company to succeed. At least most of them did. Therefore, we all will succeed.

There is already talk about the next negotiations. We helped the company this time. Hopefully, in three years, they will return the favor. I doubt it though. You know how greedy companies can be. We will see.

Drive safe

 

We just got a new contract, 55c/hr each of the next four years. I am happy.

 

I haul with a covered wagon and make a % off of my loads. I received a 1% wage increase last week.