Educate me on becoming a trucker........

dont do it unless ya got thick skin & the patience of a saint. true story. lol

 

Trucking is fun..what makes it suck is hearing people whine about the same stuff.....wait times at shippers/receivers, parking at the truck stop, regulations, dispatch, blah blah blah and a yackety smackety. Trucking will only be a good experience if put a lot in it. If you can help it, limit how often you go to truck stops. I don't always think it's a good thing to talk to other truckers. Too many of them are out of touch with people who don't think and act like them. Many will do so much griping, and misery loves company. In order for this to work for you, you'll have to block out the negatives. They've been touched on in this thread, so theyll be in your head. You'll have to focus on the good things, like scenery, good food, cool people(as in upbeat and positive truckers, and they dont have to be truckers). You'll need patience, and the ability to make chicken salad out of chicken ####. Most importantly, mental toughness will get you through. Things won't always go your way, but to bounce back and live to run another load is key.

As for your original question, pacing is very important. Early on, you'll have to build driving endurance, then running these loads become so easy. If they give you a couple of days to run it, split it in ½. That way you won't get burned out. I think pacing is also good if you can't get a 34 hour reset and you end up running recaps. Then you'll always have hours to work.

 

Those will only burn a driver out if they have no BS tolerance, or if they let it. Drivers gotta understand that there will be delays, and those delays can be overcome with multiple plans for that particular run. Honestly, drivers really don't get held up by shippers/receivers that much. There are a lot of good ones thay will load/unload and get you on the road but they get drowned by the bad apples. The less time a driver spends at a truck stop, the better....I think that's the spot that burns drivers out more, because new drivers get to listening to the ones that hang out there and complain about a lack of miles or whatever.

 

Too bad he didn't think to just square up and back it in...he made that so much more difficult than necessary. By the way, he forgot to turn his flashers on lol

 

Such a thing exists? What wonders never cease!

 

Lol hell yeah they do but not in the truck stop!

 

Don't worry. Your customers, the 4-wheelers, and your dispatcher will all try very hard to make sure you spend hours and hours waiting on them. Some days you are lucky to drive 6 hours.

 

You are expected to be able to drive the maximum legal hours any and every day so the people in offices can go home before their 8 hour shift is over or before their weekend starts.

 

There are no lot lizards in 99% of truck stops. Other parts of the industry will scr3w you for free

 

OOIDA, what do they know, say about 40% of the truck driver's clocks are spent waiting on customers, stuck in traffic, and other non-paying activities. The only trucking jobs I've ever had that didn't have tons of unpaid waiting was picking up parts for a just-in-time auto maker, and another job that paid when I waited. Trucking has lot of waiting. Not every driver, not every company, not every day, etc.