Career Change

Add ons . Free health insurance, etc. Some companies charge. Fuel bonus for beating the fleet average. Passing inspections, keeping truck clean. Just like any job-ask about the perks. See the thread with the guy broke down? Ask how they handle that. How much they pay after the first hour at the dock. Sick time, holidays and such. Some places make you work Saturdays sometimes. Make a list. You can't dictate being new, but you can make an educated decision about who to work for. Plenty of feedback on you tube also.

 

Accessorial Pay:

Layover pay, sitting around waiting for preplans?
Insurance cost
Safety Bonus
How long is it before you get paid when sitting at a shipper or receiver? 2 hours, 4 hours? At all?
Driver facing cams in trucks? Outward facing? Any?
Schooling reimbursement?
Breakdown pay?
Riders, pet policy?
CPM? Raises how often?
Avg miles.per week
Avg run length, ( longer the better less time screwing around with shippers and receivers).
Home time policy?

There are others

 

Here's an example from Freymiller website, but may not be all inclusive:
Pay Package & Bonuses

• Paid three day orientation
• Pay for performance bonus
• Paid by experience
• Paid practical route miles
• Weekly payroll
• Pay for multiple stops
• Rider and pet policies
• Direct deposit
• Safety award & bonus
• Driver referral bonus
• Affordable Lease Program
• Detention and layover pay
• Benefits
  • Blue Cross Blue Shield medical insurance
  • Delta Dental insurance
  • Vision insurance
  • Paid vacation – 1 week after 1 year; 2 weeks after 2 years
  • 401k savings plan

 

One company I worked for also paid:
drop & hook pay
Pre-trip inspection
Post-trip inspection
layover pay
34 hr. restart pay,
fuel the truck pay
detention pay at shipper/receiver
breakdown pay
There's some other pays, but can't remember them all right now.

 

Benefits = we have them if you want to pay for them. Even if furnished, measure the cost against pay. For example, cheap dental is only about $30 a month. No biggie.

 

Check Southwest Truck Driver Training in Phoenix.
Must be a good school; it's GI Bill approved.
They finance the tuition and the first payment isn't due until 45 days after starting your first job.
Some trucking companies will reimburse the tuition back to you.
Freymiller is one of them, but there's others also.

 

If I were a young guy and I was starting out and wanted to have a really good profitable secure career in trucking, I would go to one of the p&d places like ABF or Old Dominion.

I don't know how things are set up out west, someone can probably give you more information than I can, but some of these local pickup and delivery places if you work on the docks for a short period of time or if you go through the actual new driver process they will train you how to drive.

Like I said I don't know if these companies are out west but someone on this forum will be able to give you more information about that. Some of those companies are even Union and I would imagine pensions are available.

 

In the 80's its per load. Potentially 350-400 a day if you got 6 loads to a particular plant next to the Pentagon. Speeding was key in those days.

Then .24 a mile. Then percentage 25 to whatever the truck makes. This is still the 80's GWB toll was like 12.50, lumpers 60 and so on.

In the 90's I slowly moved along to about .32 for years. .40 was a pipedream. Moved to Arkansas and got .36 I think it was late 90's Ran so many miles and had so much money hand over fist those days two or three logbooks. They finally started busted me when I turn in tractor for TWO oil changes in 30 days. (Don't ask... it's quite alot of miles) I learned to carry enough oil in the one side box and a wrench big enough to take engine nut off, and do my own change. Just need a shop bay for a minute while everyone went to lunch to drain that old oil. Off books, oil change done by little old moi. That worked for a while. (I did not bother with the filter. that became a problem later) And company fuel card refused to allow me to by 5 gallons of oil here 5 more there. ugh.

Anyway.

Fast forward many years. Find FFE. Paid about .40 roughly. Then wife passed her schooling and joined me as a trainer. Salary was imposed to 6000 gross a month and Wife was given a .26 cents to start. (UGH.) Eventually when she was accepted to full team with me. Salary went away and .75 to the truck.
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221000 miles later in 9 months and three weeks roughly actual rate was 0.29 to the truck based on 67K gross for 2001. Too many empty miles chasing late singles.DO I have a claim with FFE? Probably. But frankly it's water under the bridge because they were bought by KLLM. So the board members/owners got like 13 mil each outright to enjoy the good life there in texas. NO worries. I am happy for them.

What FFE did was put a McKesson Medicine high dollar load on us. If you think about all the ABUSE, the BAD, Ugly and trouble in all of the grocery, produce and so on. All of that went AWAY with such a first class medicine load. Empty in 40 minutes, reload in 20 with carboard going to Memphis. Drop, hook another medicine load for detriot next morning. Gone.

That little taste revealed a bunch of Little Rock based tractors, those drivers talked to us a little bit. (Alot a bit) We quit FFE and moved into Medicine only. Oh the Joy.

If I was 25 and wanted out of the reefer based BS I would have gone straight to McKesson. Probably have a 160 acres of trees, 10 kids and a big house with all the toys by now. But no. Wife got sick. (Pre cancer believe it or not...) so that was the end of teaming.

I changed to supporting western teams running back and forth from Memphis to Little Rock with Medicine loads to drop in our yard for them so they don't have to burn 5 hours doing Memphis and then all the way back across for say LA. I ended up doing Memphis and Little Rock on little sleep logs be ######. (That was not exactly professional, it turned out they had a small number of drivers I could have called to take the empty and go get a load to little rock until I had my required sleeper rest.)

Once in a while a yakima apple load to Safeway in NW Atlanta off I-20 (A pretty dirty place) was my reward and a chance to get out and pretend I am doing some OTR trucking essentially a little break from routine and a reward for doing good work. So it was not a bad run as long as Miss WHARMIAPPLES at 7 am sharp had me saying here you go. What dock.

Bottom line.

Inflation. 24 was good pay in the 80's 30 not too bad in the 90's getting close to 50's in the 2001's after 9-11.

Because of inflation of everything you were not making money. You were constantly being held in whatever social station you were in with that low paycheck. You could not get ahead on just one paycheck.

When I said two little words "I Do" I was a instant homeowner, land owner, debt owner. something on a order of about 40000 dollars owed in total. That was paid off in 7 years flat. Now I am a free and clear home owner. That was when the money really started getting good. Sittting with over 20,000 in the bank paying all bills once a year was very good.

Until the house broke. a total of about 87000 dollars over 5 more years in cold, hard cash paid to bring the entire home back up to code. Sewer, electric, water, power most especially and a number of other problems that finally demanded fixing or the home would be condemned.

6 years later we had a essentially brand new home. Both of us got sick enough to have to downsize and let it go via sale. And so it was sold. Sad huh? Hell no. We enjoyed every bit of our time here.

Now we live in a building where if something breaks, someone has to pay to fix it. We don't worry about that crap anymore.