Loading

Some do, some dont.

 

There are a couple of things that come under the heading of loading your own truck, and we'll go through the possibilities. First thing is a drop and hook, where you pull into a shipper with an empty trailer, drop it somewhere in the yard, and hook up to an already loaded trailer. grab the paperwork, check the seal numbers, and you are on your way.

Second option is you show up at the customer with an empty trailer, are assigned a dock, and back in for someone with a forklift to place the load on the trailer. You pull out, seal the trailer, do the paperwork, and off you go. To some, this can be referred to as loading your own trailer.

Third option is actually loading the trailer yourself, ususlly with a hand operated pallet jack, or even doing the stacking in the trailer by hand. Not as common, but it happens, and this is clearly loading your own trailer. Driver should get paid an extra amount for doing this, but in my opinion, no driver should ever be doing that type of work. That's not what they are supposed to be doing. Someone else should supply the hand labor if it's needed to load the truck.

All those apply to van or refrigerated trailers. On other types, like flatbeds, it almost always involves a forklift and the shipper supplies that and the driver, so all the trucke driver does is chain down and secure the load.

in other types, such as tankers, the driver may load or unload the trailer, depending on the specifics of the product and the facilities. Those trucks are usually equipped with pumps or compressors as needed to unload the product. I frequently load my own trailers, loading flour, starch, or sugar into the trailer out of railroad cars in remote locations. All it involves is hooking up hoses between the truc, trailer, and railcar, and knowing how to operate the valves on the car and trailer. You also have to kno how to guesstimate the weight onboard before going to the scale for the official weight. And, that is an extra task, so whenever I load myself out of a railcar, I pick up an extra 25-35 dollars depending on the product.

 

Burky just about covered the whole ball game. Gasoline tankers are always loaded by the driver and the driver needs to be qualifed to do the loading. And guessing about the weight can be close sometimes because you need to know the exact weight and sometimes it changes with temperature. But that's all part of the job and the extra pay is included in your wages.