Is it possible to get a DECENT paying home every night job with no experience?

Money mike lots of companies offer that, but when you get to orientation. They tell you oh you don't live in the right area. Some will get you home every weekend. The question is can you afford to live off what you will be making. This is the saying in trucking. IF THE WHEELS AINT ROLLIN THE MONEY AIN'T FLOWING. or something to that effect. Some people can be home every weekend, but they have to stay out the extra week to make their bills. If you are Money Mike and got it like that. Then After the 6 or 7 weeks of training where you won't be home every weekend. Then you can pull that off, but if you are like most of us, and living pay check to pay check. You are going to be worried about the miles and not the off time.

 

Are you talking about a class B job? I'll just assume you mean a class A job.The gravy run where you just take a line haul trailer 200 miles,drop it in a dock ,wait for it to be unloaded,and reloaded then drive back 200 miles to your base (drop it in the dock and go home) is a truckers dream.I was hired for a loca/ regional gig like your talking about with no experience though so it is possible. Forget about the $20an hr. Though. My Aunt knew a dispatcher that took a chance on hiring me.Spend a few days driving around,researching talking to people.The idea is to find a greenhorn company that is just starting up (preferablly privately owned)that doesnt really know what they are doing( with an owner with deep pockets). Maybe they are a courier company wanting to expand to Semi's. This is what I did( got hired and learned as I went.Ask around maybe a friend of a friend has heard about something. Also since you dont have any experience(offer to start at a lower wage) Once you start helping grow the company you can always negotiate a raise every year. Anyway this is how I done it. Im almost to $20 an hour. This is after about 7 years though.

 

Money Mike I worked a year otr and listened and talked to drivers. I found a ltl that put me home a lot and paid great after that for about 4 years. I have been home most nights since except during the great recession. I wanted to keep my pay high so I went otr. The real problem is that you need to be around where you want to work to find the jobs. Most of the decent paying jobs you find word of mouth or by following day cabs till they stop and asking questions. I hear drivers say they want to be local all the time but mostly they are not willing to do what it takes. the easiest jobs to get involve physical labor. With six months experience you can get a good job that pays well if you are willing to work and have a clean record (bondable). You can also get jobs doing dedicated runs where all your loads come out of someplace near home. JB Swift all the biggies have these kind of job. I have taken several jobs and when I found out they were lying I just went and got another job. there are 1000s of home every night jobs that run containers off the railroad where I live. there are more of these jobs every day. The trend in trucking is toward shorter runs. You can get what you want if you try and dont give up. It will take time to get the money but not long. If you want to know about local jobs dont talk to otr drivers.

 

post up your location....lots of food service companies have DC"s all over the country , the beverage companies are the same , some grocery store chains have multiple DC's also. It's already been said a couple times , but it's worth repeating again..the type of job the you are trying to find most times will come with a cost....not always , but most times. That cost is work/manual labor , some of it pretty hard , but if being home to sleep in your bed at night, watch your kids grow-up and be a part of that , make a much better than average wage , with the bonuses of decent health care/retirement plans , is what you desire , well then it's worth that sacrifice....you may have to look really hard , but those jobs are out there...if you see a driver delivering a fast-food restaurant ( McDonald's/Burger King/Hardee's , etc ) stop and ask him some questions , AND watch him do his job..that will help you decide if that is the route you want to take. I did it for over 30 years , was home every night , (unless I chose to take a lay-over route) , made a great living (enough for my wife to be a stay at home Mom til our boys were in college . retired in 2011 at 62 , still able to go and do what I love to do...no health issues , at all..no knee problems/back trouble...It can be done...Good Luck ! I will say that I had started driving a semi as a teen on my uncles dairy farm , then after the army , came home and did OTR for around 3 years before landing the fast-food job...so I was already experienced. You may have to do that or something like it , but try looking around locally to you...you might get lucky!

 

I'm regional long haul in Ontario Canada and we all got the job here from experience and hard work ethic. It's possible but not easy to get!

 

Dunno where your located, but look for a dry bulk tanker company that hauls cement or lime. I know here in PA there's lots of small companies with say 5 or 10 trucks. Nobody wants to play in cement and lime all day so there's always a need for drivers. Most cement hauling companies stay local and home every day and weekends. Pay is usually on percentage or hourly. Around my area, the going rate seems to be 18-20 per hour or 25%. I'm paid 25% and average around 1200 a week. Summer I usually gross 14-1500 a week and over the winter around 1000. But like Tony said- you have to look for such companies, they usually don't advertise much, it weeds out the slackers.

 

That is the route I went. Got on board with a small beverage distributor from GA that just ran straight trucks around Atlanta. They are expanding in Florida to meet a customers needs and they are starting to deal with Semi's. They don't know anything about trucking but I used them to get experience and now I am off to a bigger, reputable, trucking company after only 6 months. It's possible just go down to the industrial side of town and start asking around.

 

I got on with a local beverage delivery company after seven months of OTR. I make $16, get 15-20 hours of OT per week, home every night and I have weekends off. Anything is possible.

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