Question from a complete newbie.

That's because there isn't an answer for that. Trucking, especially OTR has many different schedules. Some jobs, you'll leave home on a Sunday, for a destination 4 days away with many stops in between, some a day apart, so it will take you all week. Hopefully, it stops on a Thursday, so you can reload something heading back towards home, but don't hold your breath. Many times, you sit all weekend, and start a new week where ever. Or, there's one delivery, but with the silly hours of service regulations today, that could take all week . Weather plays a big part in schedules too. Local or regional work is much more predictable, with daily( or nightly) runs, but that too can run long, and I think my OTR friends got more sleep than I did regionally.

 

U go where the freight goes and u go home whenever. Some companies require u to be out for 3 weeks before going home.

 

When will you be 21 yrs. old?
Do you want to see the country or stay close to your zip code?
Where is your location; state & nearest city/town?

 

Truth!! When I signed on for OTR, my company told me that (based on where I live) I was going to be out 7 weeks at a time. They weren't kidding.

 

As others have mentioned the schedule is dependent on many factors. “Home” For me could be considered northern wi as that is where I am from. I ain’t been there in two years though. I went right from trucking crude in the oilfield, to three months in the Philippines and then right to driving otr for the last six months and haven’t been home since by choice.

 

It varies tremendously. You could leave your trucking company yard, pull an emty trailer 5 miles to a shipper, and then drive it 2,000 miles to the receiver. Or you could drive 300 miles to shipper and get loaded with freight, and deliver to 6 stops over 200 miles. There is no average, but trucking companies have their own patterns among their customers. You only work for 1 company at a time. So what they do is what you will do. What other trucking companies do is irrelevant to your job at whatever particular company you work for.

Refrigerated (reefer) freight often has more stops than other freight. Their customers are a pain in the rump, IMO.

Find the trucking company you want to work for and then decide what kind of CDL school to attend and how to pay for it. Not the other way around.

 

If your run OTR just think as the whole USA is your working area. You can leaving home with load to California. Delivery their and reload going to Oregon. Then you might go to Wisconsin then maybe to Laredo Texes. Unless you sign up for a company that runs more regional then you might stay within say 700 miles of your home.

I ran OTR and switched to regional OTR as they call it. I'm basically 700 miles from home, but end up working 2-3 weeks straight. They claim or tell everyone you will be home 3 out of 4 weekend. Their idea of a weekend at the house is 34 hours Ha ha. Dispatch they go home for the weekend on Fridays.

Their are some trade off I now have a guarantee weekly minimum pay. I get paid $100 when they don't get me home for the weekend. So I get paid not to work !. When I ran real OTR I only got paid for the miles. So if I had slow week or no load over the weekend, no pay also. I miss driving out west thru North Dakota or Montana or Nevada.

 

Exciting?

HA....

Try SCARED. Honest to goodness gut fire scared for your life sometimes when nature has it's way. She is a powerful ##### at times.

My personal favorite thought for trucker newbies? You will scare yourself so bad at least once... ready to run home to mama. Don't. Get back up on that horse. Shake it off.

 

My best work is in ultra long hauls. Say Yakima to Boston with onions over 6 days (Usually in 5, reserving one day to replace whatever breaks in winter. Dowdy should know...(Out of business and engaged elsewhere)

Stay out say Feb 25 to Nov 5th and go home for the winter to nest in the oh... 20,000 or more dollars saved up in cash form. (The more the better, anything less is BS and a waste of your time.)

However FFE gave us about 7 weeks stretch of LA FFE to Avenel FFE drop hook ever 53 hours (Give or take 1 hour) as part of our Husband Wife team. I get fuzzy when I count miles way beyond 6000 for the week. its about 2900 to 3000 by hub miles paid about 2750ish give or take and we would put down that 6000 in 4 days and part of day 5. If the logbooks were in sync we put in another 1600 or so by day 7. Thats breaching 7000 odometer miles for 140 hours driving give or take and VERY little on duty in those days.

Thats about 14000 gross, minus 40% 8500 dollars net at .50 a mile. to me and 7000 gross to the wife at .25 training pay. and her net is 4200 for four weeks. (1050 net per week)

Total check to the house was to be 12700 a month, or 25400 net for two months push non stop.

But no.

My trainer salary 1550 net week, Wife's TRAINING salary 235 net salary flat during her 12 weeks.

Those 8 weeks were. 12400 to me, 1880 to spouse NET, total about 14280 give or take in 2001.
spring time. A loss of 11,100 due to training salary pay for me fixed and training salary for spouse being so low.

That went into FFE's pocket. It was not long before going into the 8th week that big coast to coast battle plan got stopped. It literally was not worth it.

The 12 weeks my spouse endured the 235 net pay, requiring me to essentially burn my salary to feed, house, pay bills and everything besides savings building up was not a good situation at all. She deserved to be paid the 1550 a week net for the equal team driving she did standing up to me even though she was newbie and a trainee. She was a FULL reefer team after day ten. So I can consider FFE being able to show us or her rather, a loss of about 10,250 for the work she put in those 8 weeks.

She actually developed 4 new lines in her face that period of time from the intensity and grind of that run. Thats when I started working a seed of thought, thats quite enough of that on her, it was breaking her spirit those pathetic paychecks for nothing. MWAH.

I got angry a little bit. I am still today even though it's totally water under the bridge.