Industry stuck on the letters OTR... but why?

I would agree that I think OTR basically means a company is looking for a driver who knows what life is like running for weeks (or months) on end... They know what it's like to be away from home, family, hobbies and not having a "normal" personal life... Most people in life have friends and family they see everyday after work.. Drivers out on the road do not have this luxury so it's not a job everyone can do.. Heck I did it for 3 years and I couldn't stand it anymore, it wasn't the life for me.. I wanted to be home everyday and see my friends/family... So now I have been doing local for the last 10 years and I am home everyday of the week.. I could never do OTR again unless it was something I had to do to pay my bills.. Even then it would be a fight for me to make the choice.. So I think OTR is more for that reason then it is driving... Now granted companies will still more then likely hire you even without the OTR, look at the new drivers who get hired and they don't know what "being out on the road" is like nor do they have the experience of driving a truck period... Also I think if a experience driver goes from local to OTR I think they should still get the pay rate of an experienced OTR guy because pay shouldn't be based on if you have OTR or LOCAL experience it should be only based year of driving...

Like the rest.. I have experienced stuff most OTR driver will not... It also says OTR guys have more experience in other situations then I do.. I can bump docks too and I have with the company I am with but not very many times... I am used to backing up into empty muddy fields and big garage door buildings.. Sure I have to back up to waste hoppers but you have room to play and trucks are not right beside each other in hopper bays.. Each truck is like 10 feet apart... I do have tricky places to back up but it doesn't usually involved backing up between 2 long nosed pete's... The first dock I backed into a couple years ago (one of the few) I was nervous with the trucks beside me... The funny thing is when I was OTR I was always bumping docks between trucks (when on van work) and I was confident and never had a issue... Funny how when you stop doing something you lose a bit of confidence but still know what your doing...

It's basically like this.. We ALL do the same thing "drive" that is where the similarities end.. Drivers are merely a "Division" of a company... What we do (tanker, flatbed, van, local, otr etc...) are a "Department" of such company...

 

He works for MBM they will take anybody who has a pulse and will put up with their nonsense. He is a regular on the rant thread constantly crying about the crappy company and equipment. He is a trooper though to continue to work at that place.

 

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you are probably right there.
Funny thing is though, MBM corporate is ridiculously strict. Pretty much one (accident) and done from what I've seen.

 

They rejected me when I applied, but at the time I was new to the state and still had old driver's license. Funny thing is I still kept getting emails to come to their hiring events. Kinda glad I dodged a bullet. I've done food service before but not @ that capacity. I think I would have liked the challenge. But I can recall the aches and pains that food service did to my body earlier in my career.

You do deserve an award for all the hardwork you put in. Keep up the good work.

 

The majority of drivers that get experience driving Class A but never go OTR are never and I mean never trained correctly. I see it every day out here in just the dry van segment. I run across tanker drivers that switch to pulling 53 foot vans and have no idea about bridge law. I see Military guys that can't back up or swing way wider than necessary because they came from driving in huge sand lots. The oil industry is full of guys that can sort of handle a rig but know nothing about regulations, and that's how big oil likes it.

That's not to say that guys that get trained at CR England or Western Express are any better of course. They at least get real world experience, but because that is the bottom of the barrel those companies can't be as choosy as to who can train or who they will hire. The progression really needs to be training company 1 year, to middle of the road 3 years to top outfit for the rest of your career in an ideal situation. Unfortunately most people are not qualified, barely know how to drive, yet feel they are cream of the crop. They want top pay but aren't willing to put in the work. IE: sweeping trailers, doing proper pretrips, getting equipment fixed.

Are you one of those looking for a short cut to the top?

 

asked a guy this morning who just switched companies
what kind of engine in his new truck
he was on second run and hadn't lifted the hood

 

Asked a JB hunt company driver with 20 claimed years of experience and claimed own authority, if he had the DD15 or Cummins in his new Cascadia he'd been driving 30,000 miles. He didn't know.

 

Well stated. I would recommend LANDSTAR to you then. You could be in control of your own destination over there. If you sound as intelligent in person as you come across in that last post you will be very successful there.

From there you can get into entertainment / TV more easily.

 

DRTDEVL, I have often wondered this myself. The jobs you are looking for should not require traditional OTR experience, I would think they would want to shy away from the dock bumpers and look for a more well rounded driver. Personally, I can operate almost any piece of equipment out there, although my specialty is car haul and heavy duty towing but I have pulled vans, refer, cryogenic tanker, oil tank, vac trailer, RGN, etc. Just before I came back east, I tried to get a typical local delivery position pulling a 53' van with a small sleeper, was tired of car haul and had to come home for family reasons, it took what felt like an act of congress just to get hired onto the fleet. I eventually went up the food chain to the safety director, explained in a one on one conversation with him that in my current job I was one of their towing vendors, so why was I qualified to tow their entire tractor trailer unit (legal in NM) or recovery it from the crazy stupid positions their drivers put it in, yet I couldn't be hired by them to drive their truck. He didn't have a valid reason and eventually made the call to grant me an exception to the experience requirements. What really bugs me, this was a local type position, only one or two nights a week in the sleeper, yet they wanted 6 month OTR. I would think my intimate knowledge of New York City would have counted for something, we were running in NYC daily, heck it was the first place I even drove a tractor trailer, talk about trial by fire, I got my cdl with a dump truck and tag behind trailer then got a car haul job, first day I went to the Bronx with a 75' stinger.

Word of advice, even though the ad says OTR required, try talking to the company, some of them will work with you to help you qualify without the OTR. I would prefer hiring an oil field or off-road experienced driver over a typical mega fleet trained dock bumper any day. Not saying they are not good at what they do or good drivers, but the off-road and tight quarters of some jobsites gives you experience that highway drivers just don't get. I have been on pipeline jobs that the work area was so tight they had to lift the rear of my trailer with an excavator and spin it around so you could get in and out of the site.