New to Intermodal

Before someone asks, I should say that the reason for this question of mine, is because I am a female...
I wonder why, in almost 9 yrs doing OTR in 48 states, I have never seen a female doing intermodal.... What is up with this intermodal truck driving job that doesn't attract females like all the other ones...?

 

Do not get suckered into a mileage job in intermodal unless it is regional. If you are doing local, hourly pay is THE ONLY WAY to go.

 

There are woman doing Intermodel, I see them around Chicago all the time.

I never wanted to be paid by the hour, I always worked on %, but that's me. The only time if consider hourly is if I was doing a lot of city work with liftons/offs.

 

How many hrs does one work a day in general?

 

Right now 8-10, when things pick back up 12-14. It can be a tough job with long hours, but if you get with the right company, you can earn a decent living.

 

What decent money ? Anyone haul for central state

 

Rocks,
For the first question, yes there are females running intermodal. Today I actually convoyed from to and from a drop with a female driver. I run for JB and I get payed milage, drop/hook, live load/unload, detention pay, brake down pay and for anything else that the company requires me to be at work such as training I get hourly for that. I average about 1500/2000 a week m-f and being home every day. If you have any questions you can pm me.

 

Depends on the market, in the Denver area, I know two or three female intermodal drivers, but that varies, at one time there were 10, at other times there might be one or two. When I first started back in '97, there were three, two of which were L/O's. One retired, the other moved on to a different company.

Depends on the market and type of intermodal freight. I haul out of Denver, Co., we do a lot of grain during certain times of the year, I've had weeks where I spent 60 hrs running local and a whopping 600 miles for the week, and I've had long haul weeks where I've run 3,500 to 4,000 miles. There is a thread on million mile drivers I started a long time ago, someone asked me how running regional I could have well over 1 million miles (actually I'm almost at two million), Denver to Grand Junction, Co. and back is 520 miles rnd trip, I've had months where I make that run 5 days a week for the entire month. Then again, Denver to Casper, Wyo. and back is just shy of 500 miles, same with Denver to Alliance, Ne. and back.

There is some limited coast to coast intermodal, TSL out of Omaha, Ne. does Omaha/Denver/K.C. to Oakland. Monson used to do it out of Iowa. There are guys running intermodal out of Houston that take cans to Seattle on a regular basis.

Again, this depends on the company. IMO, intermodal companies are more likely to charge detention than OTR companies are, as you're on a tighter schedule, the driver goes home every night. We charge detention after two hours, if it's a driver assist there is no free time and detention starts at minute one. I would say our loads are 60/40 live vs. drop/hook. Our O/O's are paid on percentage of what we bill the broker, depending on how busy we are, I've seen them make $5,000 to the truck for the week, and I've seen them make $1,500 to the truck for the week.

 

Yep, right now it's dead, most days are 8 to 10, when it's "normal", it's 10 to 12 hr days, a busy day is 14 to 15, and during certain times of the year, two 15 hr days in a week are not uncommon.

I agree, I'm paid on a split of hourly and percentage, anything beyond a 100 air mile radius of Denver is percentage, with detention charged/paid after 2 hrs. Anything within 100 air miles is hourly, again, I'm a company driver. I will almost always make more on a percentage load than an hourly load.