Picking my own freight baby! My journey to & of being on Schneider choice, the Adventure & Numbers!

$74k and home daily sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
See in LTL jobs like that are possible which is why once I got 1 year experience I debated closely going LTL vs doing the whole lease thing with Schneider.
However as you said.. you hated everyday of it which I had a feeling I would as well eventually.
Sure money is great and all but if your lifestyle sucks than what good is the money?
I ended up coming here because I felt I could be the best possible lifestyle being a truck driver here vs working anywhere else. Even if I made exactly the same I did as a company OTR driver I'd still choose my job now by light years simply because of how much better my lifestyle is. That's just me though.
Anyways as far as your question.. you pretty much could do whatever you want but that affects your bottom line.
It's on you to plan an operation and lifestyle you want to have and the numbers can change drastically simply by just those choices make for yourself.
Best I could say is to see what is possible in pulling off.. you could do that by reading how others run and what type of money they pull in their operation. That doesn't mean you will but just shows what is possible.
It's a lot of work.. more so mental work as to working here. Even though I've done tons of research and worked here for a bit now I still do my homework and my mind is going a lot. That just never ends and I'm sure others ICs would agree.
It's not for everybody, you really gotta use for brain here.

 

Fatdaddy beat me to it.. info is all over!

I mean really.... "if anyone has some good info".
Uhh go start reading and read some more. Tons in "good info" already out there.

 

update time..
I'm home! a rare feat! lol

Leaves are starting to change and it was a beautiful day.. decided to do something different and went a couple miles away from home to go up the mountains and also went out to eat in the area.

 

$74k and home everyday sounds great to me. Not that I'd want to be home everyday myself but it seems like a great job.
More money usually means more work, less time at home and working in areas that aren't fun
Yeah you could earn more here with leasing but in my opinion that would mean staying out longer and working in areas that aren't easy and fun... like say Nebraska and Kansas area vs the Northeast lol.
This is just my opinion but the way I view percentage is the more it sucks and I'd hate doing it is the more it will pay lol. Just the way it is.
Oh and well no not really on the governed trucks... I think mine is governed at 80 cause I got it up that high in Texas. Yeah you're pullin their trailers but it's you paying for the fuel