Getting back home everytime ?

These threads are pointless. 1 post and he'll get what info he wants to hear then never return. Plus, 4 years experience and you don't know the difference between regional, OTR and dedicated? There's hundreds of other threads explaining everything you asked. Quit being lazy and search.

 

Does it really matter?

 

There is no "ticket" home to be bought. You stop by the house every time you have freight going past the house and there is time to stop without making you late for your scheduled appointments. If there is no freight going past your house, you don't go home.

OTR you will typically run all over the place, going anywhere the freight takes you. When you are ready to go home, you tell your dispatcher and they try to find freight to get you there. Don't count on getting home on the exact day you requested...might be a few days earlier or a few days later....and if you got home a few days early, you might have to leave out again to get the load delivered before you were able to do what you wanted to be home to do.

Line haul is going to have you home to sleep in your own bed. You hook to a trailer and run out, swap trailers and run back.

Regional is going to have you home weekends and typically home a time or two during the week because you are running in a smaller geographic area than you would be OTR...so you're more likely to have freight going past the house.

Dedicated usually involves a specific customer. You might be loading at a single location and running out from there to anywhere, then making your way back again...sometimes with a back haul, sometimes not...or a dedicated run with the same exact stops on each end every trip. When I hauled dedicated for the auto industry, I had 5 stops loading products up in the Detroit area, then 2 stops in the Dallas area...one to deliver the products and the other to pick up empty shipping containers going back to my 5 pickups in Detroit. Since I lived about half way between the two ends, I was home 4 nights per week....stopping to take my (at that time) 8 hour break at the house each and every time I passed it, never out for more than a night or two at a time. If you lived on either end, you'd see less home time and more nights spent in the truck.

What will work best for you has more to do with what you want and where you live than anything else. If there are no dedicated lanes going past your house, you aren't going to get a dedicated run. If there isn't much regional freight, regional jobs will be few & far between. Line haul is typically going to be LTL type freight or mail carriers. Anyone can run OTR, but home time becomes harder and harder to see the farther you are from the heavily traveled freight lanes.

As for pay, that depends upon a lot of factors. How much experience do you have? What qualifications do you have? Are you good at the job? Where do you live? What is the average cost of living where you live? A regional driver in Chicago, New York, or LA is going to earn more than a regional driver in Memphis, Little Rock, or Birmingham....they have to just to live in those cities because the cost of living is higher.

 

OTR don't get a dog
LONGHAUL don't get a dog
REGIONAL get someone to feed your dog
DEDICATED leave dog extra food and water
LINEHAUL get a dog

 

the company pays all tickets so often, but the driver pays every week.

2.733 degrees

OTR - 59828809 dingles per jibs with one weekend off per hibjab
Line Haul - 874.3 femjingles per happyshmigs
Regional - 18 consecutive hjjkim's for every 4 jimshickles and 2 kabob's
dedicated - not advisable due to high kimflappers.

 

dedicated - not advisable due to high kimflappers.

Yeah gotta love those kimflappers

 

No, you don't have it right. I've worked OTR, regional, and local....never took a pay cut switching from one to the next.