Hired by Trans Am

How many weeks do you have left? The only turn off i have for trams am is the whole force to lease deal, has anyone addressed that in your classes yet?

 

From what I'm seeing, you can either drive 'new equipment' and work for much less than you're worth, or drive 'less than new' equipment and get a decent wage. At the end of the day, you're both doing the same work.

 

The only driving I've found that pays a "decent wage" during your first year of driving is flatbeding, but that goes with the job description.

TA's pay per mile isn't that bad considering most dry van companies will start you at 20-28 cents, and you'll be driving a 7 year old truck. This doesn't even include the fact that TransAm has miles and miles of loads. I've always had a load within 2 hours of my empty call, and unless the shipper is late to load, it's normally ready within 24 hours if not immediately. Not many drivers I've talked to out there are averaging 3000 miles a week.


Along the lines of the turnover rate of truck drivers in "Starting companies", I can not even count the amount of people who got into truck driving because it was an "easy big money" job. Most of these people can't live the lifestyle, or they can't handle being the new guy and getting the bad loads.

I'm driving because I want to, and I don't plan on leaving this job unless I mess up(I may not be able to handle driving an old mack right away, but I'd be more than willing to figure it out)

 

What you make of driving automatics is up to you. I can tell you that I love the "hill hold button" and that I've gotten good at feathering the throttle when backing up. I love the APU. I love the fifth wheel release button(prevents trailer drops or roll aways). I love the air assist tandem pins(no more messing up my already skinny arm muscles).

I can handle the moments when the auto shift has its occasional "blonde moments". For the most part, the technology is getting smarter.

A GPS is hooked up to the communications system, and everything seems to be driven by it. This might be a bad thing, as they haven't invented a 100% totally smart GPS, and yet there is no directions macro. When you get your load information, it automatically generates the stops' addresses, and you touch the stop and press "start navigation". Of course you can also manually enter the street address. It seems they've done a system upgrade, as the stop generated navigation now does it from the beginning whereas before, the stop generated navigation only picked up within twenty miles of the customer and would always override your manual input navigation. The trouble was when the system would hiccup and drop both versions, leaving you with nothing to look at unless you came to a complete stop and entered the inputs all over again.

The GPS doesn't seem to be as flexible as a Garmin. On the other hand, it seems to recognize truck restricted areas and would try not to get you in trouble like a car GPS would.

 

My total fixed costs is $909.34 The base pay is 84 cpm for l/o but there are a couple mileage charges that bring it down to 74 cpm(until I cap out my maintenance). $909.34/0.74 =1229 miles. That's how much I need to drive to pay for my weekly payment and the other fixed costs. Now there's fuel, too, but the fuel economy of these apu equipped KWs is such that getting a fuel bill equal to or even less than what you get in fuel surcharges is entirely doable. The Rockwall guy even told the class to try to end the week on a quarter tank so that you don't get a paycheck where you overfueled. C.R. England never trains their lease drivers like this. In fact, you never get to own the truck with them!

Trans Am also passes off their fuel discounts to the driver, but they never gave me a formula to calculate how much I'm actually paying, so it's guesswork until I see my actual statement. Supposedly it's 20 cents off or more. My first week, I think I actually got a price per gallon of around $3.60 or so. After my fuel surcharge, my price per gallon was negative.

 

I'll have to give it a couple months and see. I certainly don't feel like I have to struggle like with C.R. England. But the big numbers probably won't be seen until the truck is paid off and the weekly costs are no longer an issue. That's four years from now. But supposedly the Paccar MX has a long life, and I've been satisfied with my truck's fuel economy. And you do decide whether you want to own the truck or just take the completion bonus as cash.

I don't recommend leasing to someone who's new and who still has the school tuition to worry about.

 

You won't get hammered about leasing, till you come back from being with your trainer. Thats when they'll start pushing it and hard.

 

We got a presentation today and no line 5 was on it. You can go back and edit all lines except line 3 even after you have submitted prior days logs. You just have to submit again. The trucks automatically put you on line 3 when you start driving. Some say at 5 mph, some say 15 mph. Don't know yet for sure till I get my truck. I am going company driver by the way when many other guys are opting for the lease. Overall my experience with TransAm has been good so far. Testing out tomorrow or friday in Rockwall.