Crunching The Numbers, Am I Missing Something?? (newb)

@Opus is an old Cobra pilot.

 

A warning about Expediting, where the lease-op or owner-op is paying the truck expenses, they like to have lots of trucks everywhere, just in case they have a customer in the area. While you wait, you may not be earning any money. The expectation is the fewer loads pay so much more than spot market or OTR rates that it overcomes the lower productivity. There is little financial risk for the company to have to many trucks and not enough freight available.

 

Think about this . Team drive . Apologize in advance , do you have a CDL too ? Husband and wife teams I know made over 100k with the right company . They saved and purchased a truck from the dealer . Then they didn't lease to a company . They built a rapport with shippers and done great . It's all about your goals . Your business acumen and skill and in the end preference.

 

Seems we are saying the exact same thing.
Find the right candidate , sit in the passenger seat and watch ‘em drive normal sized loads , then let ‘em drive the rgn empty while you are in the passenger seat , if they do good , you let ‘em drive a few thousand miles with a not too heavy load etc

so tell us how you got into heavy haul?
How did You go from rookie to expert ?

found someone that let you ease into it and taught you what to do ?
Let you ride along and taught you how to secure the loads and balance the loads ?

let you ride along and show you how the permit process works etc ?

let you drive a hour or so with a not too overweight load ?

then let you drive with a real heavy load ?
Then if you did good with that for a while , they let you do it solo ?

same with a surgeon, all the time in classrooms is great , but at some point , every surgeon has to do their first operation , with an experienced doc watching closely sure, but at some point they gotta do that first one with a mentor watching , then they have to do it all by themselves at some point .

the only way you get experience is to do the job .



I guess you’d flip out watching 19 year olds learn to fly helicopters .

you screen the candidates properly and that’s 90% of the battle right there .


If some one has had their car repossessed or been arrested several times or doesn’t pay their child support or has had more than one traffic ticket every four or five years , they are not your candidate .
If they don’t obey the traffic laws in their car , they won’t obey them in a big truck either .
If they have had several fender benders in their car , they are not suddenly going to start being super careful and have great situational awareness in a big truck


You want someone that’s squeaky clean in every way , and doesn’t have a history of making poor decisions .
And does not have a lot of close family or close friends that have a history of making poor decisions .

I’d say less than 1% of the licensed cdl drivers would have a squeaky clean enough credit , criminal and driving record to be eligible to apply to one of these heavy haul outfits that are willing to train drivers who don’t have heavy haul experience . And the criminal background check extends to the parents and siblings and in laws as well. Because the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
If your parent or your brother or sister is a loser with 7 speeding tickets , two DUIs and unpaid child support , or a couple of arrests for drunk and disorderly or drug possession, or up to their eyeballs in credit card debt , you Probabaly ain’t getting hired .


the CDL class at the vocational school/ community college in my state is a 12 week 320 hour class , and it’s far better than any three or four week private CDL school .

 

I learned moving my fathers equipment. All I can tell you is it was a lot more than 12 weeks training and a year in the truck before I chained my dads favourite D9 on the trailer and headed out through the gate with it. I don’t know if I’m an expert or not, but after 40 years of operating 8 to 11 axle trucks I might have half an idea what I’m talking about. A truck 70,000lbs or more empty, in 4 pieces and over 100’ long is not where you put a green driver. Anybody that would sit in it with a green driver should probably be drug tested or sent for mental help.

 

I don’t have a dog in the fight so I’m only an observer
But
I believe you are a rare exception to the rule and putting a total greenhorn in is the polar opposite so unless a company can find more exceptions like you then they need to start somewhere

I think they need to do their best to find that person like @roundhouse mentions. Someone in the middle that has a brain and goals

Anyone in my opinion that is in the industry or coming into it with your type of background probably already has a job or has been scouted ahead of time like sports

 

Those people have a job alright. They’re the ones that have the good jobs that don’t get advertised. And you’re right, a lot of those were identified and picked for it early, some were able truck drivers before they were old enough to put through a CDL course. It’s still not the best idea to fire them into a multi-axle and send them out to learn on the job. An operator that you would want training people would have no part of that in the first place. My poor reaction isn’t toward the individuals themselves. My reaction is to them being sold a bill of goods the same as any Mega recruit. That’s what I’m dead set against, people who appear to be trying to apply the Mega business model to a sector of the industry that just has no room for it. And that’s exactly what was being described to me. Want to get into heavy haul? Show up at a real heavy haul company with a couple years experience on open deck without tearing anything up. If they like what they see they’ll hire you and train you. Show some ability you’ll end up running a bed. But that happening in a year isn’t very realistic. Two maybe for someone that gets right onto it. But that’s 2 yrs of working around the bed with the rest of the crew learning while you drive one of the support trucks. That’s an important part of it, that’s where you get fed progressively more weight right up to max permit loads hauling parts that had to come off whatever is on the big truck. You make it for a while there you’re first up for the next opening on a bed. Someone being told they’re going to go from wet ink on their licence to lowbed operator in a year is being put at risk and taken advantage of the same way the Mega freight outfits do in a way more dangerous environment. I don't want that for anybody. If you’re being offered an easy button way into it, that sounds like a pretty sketchy place to go to work to me.

 

Maybe he can chime in and tell us the military trains does in fact train teenagers right out of high school to fly choppers .
I think it’s a four year program, and I’m not sure how far into the program they start getting to actually take the stick with a instructor in the other seat .

 

He is currently M.I.A. from TTR.

 

Figured it would be better to hear it from someone else .

my neighbors kid did well on the asvab and got heavily recruited by the military,
Told him he was qualified for any position.
Only thing he was interested in was helicopter pilot . And they do take 18 yr olds and have them flying helicopters before they are old enough to buy beer or drive a big truck across state lines .