Not Looking to get rich

No offense intended, but posts like that are the reason some drivers think that others are lazy.

At the mega-crap you will average 1700 miles anyway you run your hours. Except for the christmas season surge, these companies just don't have the freight.

It will never be an 8 hour day. If you wait around for the 'right' load that will allow you run 8 hours and have decent sleep, you will be waiting forever. Half the drivers in the fleet are waiting for a load! You will run super hard for a day or two and then sit waiting to run hard again. The excess capacity costs these companies almost nothing and that is what you will be.

As mentioned before 8hr x 50mph = 400 miles a day or 2800 miles a week. Not only is there no way you could log like that; truck drivers do more than hold the steering wheel and have enough line 4 to log. But, there is no way mega-crap would plan like that;Your time is just to cheep for them to care about you.

 

I have seen some truck's with 3 people in them,they may be working 8 hours.

 

Like others have already posted, you wont be able to stay at an 8 hours day in this industry, Loads will determin length of time you will need to drive per day, Please don't fall for the large amount of money you can make, the recruiters promise you, Just not going to happen with the above mentioned companies, And please don't get trapped into a lease purchuse, from what I understand Swift isn't a walk away, Lot of new driver find this isn't the job for them, even some that thought it would be, just do the company thing for a while, at least a year, and then decide if OTR is for you, Still! leasing with the above mentioned companies is not recommended, Good luck and stay safe

 

I am with werner.. I am account and home on weekends... I bring home consistently over $1200 a week, have good health, dental a vision insurance at a reasonable cost, got a nice well kept Peterbilt, will be getting a new truck in a couple months...

You cant just look at your drive time.. it is often about your 14 hour clock.. which, as stated can get eaten up if doing a live load or unload..

I am out here to make money... so I run as many loads as I can, and use my hours up.. not one for enjoying hanging out at a truck stop... I do t have a tv in my cab.. when my day is done I shower and got to sleep, wake up and do it all over again tile mh hometime...

 

You know, it's not even about that... that actually happens a lot less often than you might expect. It's just that, I have this job to do, and when they get to talking, they're pretty incessant. I mean, yeah, you need to get something out of your truck, that's fine... meanwhile, I just got a mouthful of coolant, I'm already pissed off about that, and now they'll be standing there, wanting to talk my ear off, when all I really want is to get this truck and get it the hell out of here. Or these drivers who'll put one thing on the writeup, then suddenly have a bunch more to add once it's done. Or instances such as the driver who wore down two of his steer tires (both on the RH side) spinning them, but insists the alignment of the axle is off... so we told him we did a three axle alignment (even though we only checked toe in on the steer axle), and suddenly the issue is no more, and he hasn't had that problem with his tires again... the power of willpower, perhaps? That's the stuff which gets under my skin. Drivers trying to tell me how to do my job... even more so, but it's really not that commonplace.. at least, not on the shop floor. I'm sure there's plenty of, "maybe I should go and show them how it's done" comments made in the driver's lounge, but of that I'm not so concerned.

 

Toomanybikes... what do you mean the mega carriers dont have freight... I am with Werner and I am assigned my next load as soon as I send my macro saying I am done unloading and ready for a load.. more often that not, They have sent me my preassigned load information for my next load before I am done with my current..

Also, many times when I am at a truck stop for my 10 reset, I see non mega carrier trucks there.. and they are still there in the morning when my 10 hour reset is done and I am headed out...

 

It can differ a lot in the megas, may depend more on dispatchers. I work for usx, and I can count the amount of times ive had to wait for a load with one hand, and those were inly for a matter of hours. Some guys here get low miles ive heard, bad luck maybe. Course, sometimes they're just on the $#!÷ list on their own merit.

 

It's a good thing you aren't looking to get rich because you'll never get rich driving a truck. You'll work a whole lot and when you get experience and learn the game you'll make a decent living, have a decent benefit package and maybe a decent retirement plan. That's about it and you'll work hard (as in a lot of hours compared to other fields) to earn that.

 

$1200 take home. Add in tax at about 30% that is: $1200 x 1.3 = $1560. Divide that by 70 hours: $1560/ 70 hours = $22.29 a hour! I doubt any compilation of mega-crap pay could add up to $22.29 a hour!

LTL drivers often do not bring that much. Turnover in LTL is around 8%. In truckload, including Werner, turnover is over 100%. So what is the problem if that places like Werner offer those kind of wages?

Your whole post reads like the pablum that recruiters/dispatchers put out:

Please. Why do all the newbies say that crap? Is it that they repeat what they hear from a recruiter/dispatcher? Do they not know any of the facts and figures in the trucking world? It appears so when you hear they all drive 4000 miles a week and bring home thousands of dollars.

 

If other people are dispatching you ..... especially at one of those starter companies, it is hard for you to decide how much you work each day. If you worked local or choose your freight, then you could.
My wife and I don't work very much each day with Landstar, since we choose the loads.