Maverick: Want to hear why people are quiting

Even though I have never ran flatbed, I can tell you that pulling a flat bed on average, makes more money than pulling a dry van of general freight. Flatbeding has its extra pains and quirks, just as expediting does. Its a different animal. From my research the worst area for loss of revenue due to downtime is pulling a refer and dealing with hand unloads.

 

Here is a link of average earnings of trucking by specialty:

http://www.thetruckersreport.com/truckerreport.html

 

People who have no personal clue about the industry, pull out clueless "statistics" somebody else pulled from their arse. Are you trying to "self-medicate" before jumping on a flatbed wagon? Perception is reality, huh? Come back in 2 years, tell us how that 60K/year flatbedding worked for ya.

60k/year is an average flatbed salary, it's beyond ridiculous. Sure, some do make 60k, but an average flatbed driver doesn't come near to that number.
Flatbed and van compensations are fairly similar, you do NOT do flatbed for the money (unless you are gullible and on the dull side).

US government provides equally ridiculous statics, the clowns from bureau of labor statistics claim that "Median hourly wages of heavy truck and tractor-trailer drivers were $17.92 in May 2008." It's beyond ridiculous. How did they even come up with the number without access to log books? My "by logbook" OTR wages never exceeded $14/hr. Realistically I made about $11-12/hr considering all hours worked. 60k/$12= 5000 hrs of work. Let's look at DOT regulations. 70 hrs in 8 days. 365days/8=45 of eight day work cycles per year. 45*70=3150 of hours YOU CAN LEGALLY WORK per year. Even at $15/hr, it takes $60,000/15= 4000 hours to make 60k of wages. At $18/hr (as claimed by labor statistics clowns), it takes 60k/$18=3333 hours of work to make 60k in wages. Somebody is smoking serious pot or (most likely) ATA & government "sponsor" the right kind of statistics.

The national average wage index for 2010 is $41673.83, let's assume that an average wage slave works 45 hours/week, 365/7=52 weeks, 52*45=2340 hours. I guess that national average wage for OTR truckers (considering revolving doors and constant inflow of new drivers) is fairly similar to the national average wage. Considering all of that, an average trucker works about 1000 hours more per year to make the same amount of $ that an average wage slave makes. That's 1000 hours less to live a life, you'll spend them sitting on your vibrating butt.

 

I looked at that link myself and was pretty surprised at how false and misleading the statistics were. Not even close.

 

The devil is in the details cuz nobody is workn every wk of the year 1st.
2nd. With layover,weather,traffic,breakdowns,oh yeah hometime
how many people are workn 300 days a yr.
3rd. All stats are manipulated for the benefit of whoever is displaying then
4th when I wanna go home I wanna go home butt the only way I can do it is 2 have a ld tht goes thru home cuz the mile dropp off is so bad I wont take off w/out a trip thru the home it has 2 bee an emergency

 

colorectal surgeons get paid huge loot to look up the poop shoot.​

 

The way I look at flatbedding is that I get paid to work out. Instead of having to find the time to drag my butt to a gym or force myself to go out and exercise....it is already figured into my daily schedule. I do not even have to think about it. I do not dread it, I actually look forward to it.
I lost 20 lbs in the first three weeks with my trainer and have not had to worry about it coming back.
I am definitely stronger than I was before I started. Found that out the first time I pulled my compound bow back.
In my research...which I am always doing, for someone with almost 2 years of driving experience, I am going to get paid more from the flatbed companies....per mile and then on top of that tarp pay.

The nice thing about trucking is that there are so many different things you can do in this industry and still be trucking.
To call anyone stupid because they choose one over an other shows a lack of respect!
Everyone of these is essential to our economy working and for us to have the lives that we do.
I had no clue what trucking was about when I first started this adventure.
Now I have total respect for anyone in this industry regardless of what part they play it it. I go out of my way to educate people not associated with this industry exactly how it is...at least from the knowledge that I have gained in it so far.
I have met some of the most wonderful people and some I would just as soon never met...but that is life.
There are good points and not so good points about every trucking company.
The key is to do your research as best you can and then go for it. If it does not work out, then ok, move on to the next one.
Treat everyone with respect, take pride in what you do, and you will always be able to move on to the next company.
Attitude is most important in everything in life, but especially in Trucking!

I have certainly run into drivers at Maverick who were not happy. But I can go to any trucking company and find people that are not happy. I can go into any company in the world and find employees that are not happy.
Does that make them bad companies.....no....does that make them bad employees....no...that is just life.

I sometimes wonder if the people that are always bashing companies spent as much effort in trying to figure out how to be a better employee....how things might be different.

The thing that comes to mind....Is "Empty Barrels Make the Most Noise"!
If your life is empty, no job in the world is going to fill it up!

 

I was merely responding to the poster that stated that you dont make money in flatbed trucking. The stats are what they are, just stats. (averages). It was to show that flatbedding pays over ten grand more that running a dry van. Dont make false assumption and read into people posts.

 

You are incorrect about the number of hours you can legally work in a year. Most of my drivers work 5 days per week at 14 hours per day = 70 hours (give or take a couple). They then take 34-48 hours off. One could repeat this cycle indefinitely, meaning you could work 3,640 hours in a year.

I would agree with you that $60K as an average is high. It is definitely an attainable number. 90% of my open deck drivers will make between $55-65K this year. The are home 1.5-2 days per week. It is a challenging professiong that requires long periods away from home. There are many people that prefer this lifestyle to working in a factory.

Krom--you seem to be someone that has a negative outlook on life. I don't think you have made a single positive comment. Perhaps you could share a suggestion with all these dumb flatbedders about what they should do to improve their life since you obviously have everything figured out.

 

I forgot about an added bonus of 34 hours restart, but people who mess with HOS remember about that.

You know, this emphasis on "poisitivity" of yours didn't come with your momma milk. You've been trained to be cheerful and positive from the ripe age of 2, corporate world and media world are saturated with positivity and for a reason. First reason is obvious - selling stuff of dubious value/necessity without (faked) positive attitude decreases sales. The rest are not that obvious. Cult of positivity is a new religion that was supposed to deliver us from all evils, yet as more folks trash their individuality to become a positive drone (as seen on TV), things are getting crappier and crappier all around (not speaking of boring sterile uniformity of everything). I don't want to go into lengthy discussion of details, just a main point - cult of positivity "helps" wage units to stick their heads deeper down their arses that, in its turn, creates a nation wide effect of the "Matrix". Cult of positivity is nothing but a corporate sponsored escape from sad reality. Way too many are eager to escape, if self-adjustment doesn't help, there are variety of pills to get positive and cheerful. how many are on Prosac etc.? 20, 25%, that's a huge number pointing at some major trouble.

Personally, I don't have a problem with naturally "positive" folks and never try to convert them into my personality, I dislike uniformity. By you are SO brainwashed, you don't think twice about hinting on abnormality of different outlooks than that of the religion you embraced. And that kind of righteousness doesn't come with your momma' milk either. Being positive, it's just another way to cope with reality, no matter what they say it doesn't increase your chances in the wild. Yup, with relatively recent corporate push for uniform positive attitude and corporate personality "positive" (fake and real) crowd has a definite edge in the rat race due to rampant personality discrimination. Yet, I'd rather be myself than a self-adjusting dron shaping and reshaping himself according to the latest race requirements. There is so much fakeness around already.

Look, if I'll ask you, "What you are positive about?". Most likely you'll answer, "I've got a good job, life, children, etc.". In other words you are positive in the sense "I've got mine, screw (or ignore) everything and everybody outside of my happy and positive world, nothing can rain on my parade". In a way, a pig on feedlot is positive and happy in the same way if his trough is full, a pig doesn't care about shiet leeching in drinking water, soil eroding, Mississipi blooming with algae, Mexican gulf dying, antibiotics, slaughterhouse, etc., etc.. His trough ("glass") is half full, and that's all that matters. And that's depressing. Honestly, if you have a little of knowledge and critical thinking (that's little bit self-aggrandizing, but oh well), there is nothing to be positive about UNLESS you concentrate on your trough (glass) and go for it. I guess some people are genetically incapable of creating mental states of obliviousness to be sufficiently positive, the way they like it.

I've been a flatbedder for 4 years, a good one, safe and stupidly helpful (that reciprocity is a biaatch), . I didn't do it to maximize my earnings, I knew stuff I posted here 4.5 years ago. I guess priorities change, at some point in time having less stress and extra 3 hours (at least) per day, 15 hours per week, 60 hrs per month, 1200 hrs per year to do other things (than securing & tarping) without sacrificing income and home time become more important to me. It's OK if 1200 extra hrs doesn't mean anything to hardcore flatbedders, but some naive souls are preparing to make a killing as a flatbed drivers because it pays extra 3cpm, I wrote for them. You cannot pull flatbed trucking out of context of economy (and ideology of two legged labor commodity) and fix it, it's not going to happen.