Are full weekends off common in local driving

im working on my dream of working the weekend and taking monday thru fri off.

 

I do line haul and never work weekends. Latest is 6am Friday. Currently having 4 days off due to long weekend. When I worked OTR I departed Mondays and had my 3000 miles off and back home by Thursday afternoon, Friday morning at latest. Depends on your employer.

 

I run auto parts, expedite, but I own the truck. Work when I want, normally Mon-Fri, sometimes Saturday if the weather sucks. Most of the guys though that I run with, company guys, they are working 4 to 5 days a week and doing just fine. My buddy Ed is over at Universal, he normally works four days a week and takes Fri-Sun off. My buddy Pat, he is driving for Pam, running Chrysler parts, sweet gig, off Friday after noon, back Monday morning. Both are happy, and money is pretty good. Both are taking home around $1000 a week.

 

"Average driver clock is 8.2 hours"

So you, the new guy, will be doing the 14 hour days, while the higher-paid, senior drivers will be running the 4-6 hour days.

Unless you happened across a true gravy train, no local work is an 8-hour a day job. Most companies want you to maximize your driving/work time while they have you. Means you'll be running a 14-hour day 5 days straight, and doing lots of physical work to boot.

I did the local thing at my company, and found I barely got any time to myself in the evenings between sleep, showering and commuting (and I only had a 30 minute drive).

Now I'm working 5-6 days out, home for a "weekend", and actually get time to myself at night and 2-3 days during that week, all I'm doing is driving, not even breaking a sweat (or if I'm running a pneumatic, almost never breaking a sweat).

 

I'm sorry but that's simply not unilaterally true. Some companies certainly operate that way.

I've had two local jobs, before going regional. Both jobs I simply couldn't get the hours I wanted. My first job started with a route that was seven hours if you milked the clock. Then it changed to a reasonable eight hour day most days. Shortly after I moved to a different route that was a ten hour route.

Next job wasn't a consistent route but deliveries to job sites. During the really busy season I rarely broke 60 hours a week, and as we moved into the slow season my hours dropped hard and then I was laid off.

My biggest concern with looking at doin going back to local work is finding a company that will consistently have the hours to make it worthwhile. Tons of companies have jobs that just don't have more than 45 or so hours a week for you.

 

It depends on pay also. Some of the lower paying jobs have weekends off cause they know you want to work days, Work 8-9 hrs,and have the weekends off so they pay crappy. Somebody will take this position just for the schedule.

 

True, but it's more common unless you land the gravy train on the regular route. Most regional work where I'm from, at almost any company, is "go where we tell you" first thing in the morning. You don't have any idea where you are going the next day. I do agree though, set routes with set customers would be great local work.

Personally though, I like going new places and doing new things to the same thing every week. It's a major reason why I went back out on the highway rather than go regional again.

 

The big name LTL carriers have weekends off, but they usually have some weekend freight runs and hot deliveries on Saturday. They assign weekend work if you are short of 40 hours for the previous week, or on a voluntary basis depending on seniority. You may be forced to work the weekend if you are low seniority or low on hours.

 

There it is. That’s exactly right.

 

Yes local driving is usually Monday - Friday if that's what the companies operating hours are even some OTR companies although I strongly suspect it'd be the smaller ones like the one i worked for out of Logan Utah We'd usually have a load ready by Saturday afternoon we could choose to leave on Saturday or leave Sunday. I'd usually run late Saturday run down to Nephi pull up at the Flying J there and rest up for the night then get up bright and early head down through Nevada and pull up at Whishy Petes on the California / Nevada border i'd camp there till about 11 pm then run straight through to LA for an early Monday morning delivery. We'd then reload back to Utah unload then reload freight bound for Sacramento, Modesto , reload with a load of wine from there then straight back to SLC so it'd now be late Thursday we'd run empty back to Logan then have whats left of Thursday through to Saturday off and that routine would continue week after week.