PAY SCALE? Please share for new driver.

out of all the starter companies USXpress pays new drivers the most at between 32-37 cpm.

 

i haven't started driving on my own yet, but ill be working driving a vac tanker in the oil feilds, working for a small company that works for a larger company, pay is 35 bucks a hour 100 mile radius normal day is 14 hours a day paper logs, home time varies im told i can expect a week of home time every 3-4 weeks. but sometimes less sometimes more can request time off with notice. no vacation pay or benifits or additional pay but get paid your hourly wage on wait time. average weekly pay before taxes (1099) of around $3k. if you own your own truck and trailer pay is 135 a hour. but you pay all your own expenses. ill report back in after i pass my skill test and start working on my own out there.

 

The reason I left was lack of truck maintenance, and the more important one is I got a job that does 2000-2500 miles a week at .38cpm, and proper maintenance

 

OK Men. I use to drive a TT in the 70's prior to CDL. So to make it short my ? is what is the best company to work for coming out of Sage School with Class A, Hazmat, Tanker training. Already have a TWIC card.
Any help or comments would be appreciated..What miles so do I team up with a pro?
Thanks for your assistance,
Bill

 

Just dropped an application with a local Oilfield water hauling company a couple hours ago. The other Oilfield company I have an application in with is very slow to return phone calls on updates to me working with them and road test, so I thought I would apply at a different place. These folks have an actual office here and I sat down with them for a little bit, and tomorrow their head guy should be calling me to set up a time for a road test.

I was thinking of doing the ND thing but figure working down here will save wear and tear on my Jeep from not having to drive back and forth on days off. And working here I should be in my own bed at night/day. Pay is not as much as ND, but the savings on gas and maintaining "dual" residents is there, so I think in the end it should come out to about the same amount of money in the bank. They try to keep the schedules at 6 on 2 off. The lady said my recent (today) graduation from SAGE is a bonus, so I have my fingers crossed.

 

iv heard things are picking back up in your area, there were several drivers from wy up in nd a little while ago and a lot of them were heading back down that way as things were picking back up. the big company i will be driving for is Pauper, but i got in threw sort of a family sort of thing, where my uncle in law got another truck and trailer and called me looking for someone to drive it for him, he has been a O/O for about 15 years and been in the oil feild for about 3. this is now his second company he has hauled water for out there, i guess the first was a real nightmare to work for but has nothing but good things to say about Pauper. for me living in Bismarck is good we are typically in NW-ND and NE-MT always within a few hour drive of home. going to be looking for a fuel efficient car for the times of running back and forth that i don't need to drive the semi. my pickup cost me right around 100 in fuel from Bismarck to willistion and back.


edit: also when you take your test drive, i don't know how your roads are in your oilfeilds there but make sure you avoid all the pot hole and chuck holes in the road on the gravel roads watch out for the soft spots try to run your tires in the high spots that will help pack the dirt down and avoid oil pan/radiator damage. you will get good quick at avoiding things in the road. the guy that hired me stressed to me to avoid damage to the truck. also beware not to stop anywhere the ground looks soft switch to a low gear before entering something that looks soft. and keep the rpm up it doesn't take much to get a semi stuck. im sure that when you test for them they will be looking to see that you are going to avoid that stuff. i think its a challenge to drive in the oilfields in the summer i think wintertime will make iceroad truckers look like wimps. you dont have to worried to much about other cars where im driving at but you gotta scan neer and far on the road for obsticals. like my uncle in law told me if you tear up something on the truck it cost everyone money cost him money to repair it and if my truck is broken i cant earn any money till its repaired.

 

Oh, I plan on taking it easy on the equipment. Not sure if he'll take me on dirt right off, or just a road test to see how my driving is. Not sure about the roads in the Oilfield, but if they are anything like the county roads in NE/CO where I drove pickups for the last five years in the ICBM Missile Complex, they shouldn't be that bad...just wash-boarded from the graders. When I took a training drive (Sage Driving School) down to Hereford a week or so ago we drove by a well operation, and it looked like they were right off the county dirt road. Heck, the asphalt roads in that part of Wyoming/Colorado seem to be worse then the dirt/gravel roads LOL. The asphalt road we rolled back to Cheyenne on was in bad shape, very narrow, and full of patches and pot-holes.

Another student in my class should have arrived up there in ND today, at least he was trying to get up there today. His Dad is an O/O, and he followed in his footsteps; bought him a tractor, and now is going to haul water up there. Hopefully he does well.

 

Honestly any company that will take you fresh out of training most of them will but dont expect great pay