As a 20+ year veteran trucker, I must warn you newbies that most OTR carriers will mistreat and/or underpay their drivers. The key term here is "common carrier." The trucks you see on the highways/roads across the USA can either be classified as either a "common carrier" or "private fleet" trucks. Common carriers generate revenue by providing service of transporting product from point-A to point-B. In contrast, private fleets are an extension of a retailer, or manufacturing company. Much as a company will have an accounting department, maintenance department, procurement, etc..., a private fleet provides supporting service to a business organization. Take Walmart for example; they're a retailer who buys merchandise wholesale, then resells the merchandise at retail price. Their primary source of revenue are the public consumer/shoppers. Walmart maintains a fleet of trucks which hauls merchandise from their distribution warehouse, to its final destination at the Walmart/W-supercenter retail stores.
Another example of a private fleet are the grocery supermarket chains in your area, Coca-cola beverage, Anheiser Bush, Costco, etc... Unlike common carriers, these private fleets pay their drivers well and have practically zero accidents every year. You rarely see these private fleets advertise for drivers, because they have a very high driver retention rate. The only time theres an opening for a driver is when they're buying more trucks to expand the fleet, a driver is retiring, resigning (very rare), or been terminated. As newbie drivers, it should be your goal to secure a position with one of these private fleets. It won't be easy. They require at least 1-year verifiable driving experience with a clean DMV printout. And you must not have a history of job-hopping. Private fleets prefer you averaged no more than one employer a year. Some grocery chains require at least 5 years driving experience! After you've completed one year of OTR driving, you should prepare a resume and begin submitting a copy to the Human Resource/Personnel department of every private fleet you see within 20 miles of your residence. The driver position usually pays hourly. If its OTR, its usually within 200-300 miles radius of the terminal and pays hub miles or hourly, based on what you've reported on your logbook. Hub miles is actual miles, as what your odometer shows. So if you're loss and you drive around in circles trying to find an address, you're still getting paid the miles you incur.
When they call you for an interview, they might say it starts off as part time (20-30 hours per week), but will later become a full-time position after a month or so. This is a probationary period to allow them to gauge your productivity as a driver. Accept the position, even if its only a part-time position. This is to get your foot in the door, and on your way to earning over $1,000 a week gross, and still come home every night !!
In conclusion, all these common carriers who are crying "driver shortage !!" are misrepresenting the fact of the situation. Its really a serious driver retention/turnover problem. Across the nation, drivers are quitting by the thousands every month and settling down to an hourly-paying local job! The long hours, constant deadline pressure, periods of sleep deprivation, and being away from home and friends/loved ones is not worth the pay, when you can make just as much $$ or more--and be home everynight--as an hourly-paid local driver.
Newbies!! All common carriers are usually bad !!
Discussion in 'Report A BAD Trucking Company Here' started by passingtrucker, Nov 16, 2007.
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I have pulled a lot of pepsi loads OTR they were always ate up. The pepsi in marion Il is ate up. They have a yard in benton KY and I know a lot of their former drivers, plus my wife is a manager at walmart and has had to deal with them a lot. She said they are their worst vendor and all th drivers I know said it was low pay and they ripped you off all the time. They offered me a job and I brought this up and they said yeah we used to have those problems. Coke pays better, but I know some of pepsi drivers were taking home about 300 bucks a week. When they do set ups at places whatever gets sent back is taken out of their pay.
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Trucking Jobs in 30 seconds
Every month 400 people find a job with the help of TruckersReport.
