Shortage of Drivers?

Then go spen 65k to get your pvt, commercial, inst., multi, cfi, cfii, add another (minimum) 20k for a bachelors degree, head on over to a commercial pilot forum and hope for the best. There's enough drivers out here, no need to do us the service of taking a spot. If you don't like it, don't do it.

 

I wasn't? I spent many unpaid hours sitting airport terminals waiting for my scheduled departure time while on trips. It would have been nice to be able to drive into town and get something to eat but I couldn't get the plane to fit through the parking lot gate and my arms aren't long enough to take it through the drive thru at McDonalds.

 

And when you get near your unload 20 hours early (no early deliv & not long enough time to relay) sit in a truck stop for 20 hours and wait it's what I just got done doing!

 

You are figuring it out a lot earlier than most. The only thing you forgot was the little to no home time part. Lots of people ask me how I do it, why I do it, isn't it boring, lonely, etc. The only true answer I can give them is simply "there's just somethin' about it." It's hard to understand 'til you do it. I am in a different boat, though. Not too sure how many on here are one truck shows with their own authority but that is how I'm doing it and I can honestly say I LOVE IT. I make good money, I go where I want (long as the loads pay enough) and when I want to go home I GO HOME. I know what my logbook looks like, what I can and can't do legally, and move myself accordingly. This has always been my goal and now I am living it. The biggest thing I like now is I have the choice of where I'm going when I'm going. My life has structure now. For now I am not looking at expanding with more trucks. One is enough for now, and have not made up my mind whether I want others to drive for me or not. However, this does leave the option, later when family comes, to set it up and have my own small company going and I can work the desk. All options are open.

 

wished i knew what my log book looked like.

every 3 months i have to buy a new laptop. they always seem to get broke.

 

Churning the labor pool keeps the pay scale down.
Newbies work their way up from .25 cpm to .38 cpm and a clean safetly record only to find they're not getting the miles after two years of hard safe work....BECAUSE the latest crop of newbies are getting the miles at .25 cpm - - and so the cycle continues.

Watch "The Grapes of Wrath", how the Joads go to work at a big corporate farm for .5 a bushel of peaches. Once they hook you in they change the rate to 2.5 cents a bushel. You leave after awhile and a new group comes in at .5 cents...and so the cycle continues. It's a business model that's very well thought out to stay competitive in a very competitive business. They keep the average cpm rate down, by cycling new/naive and sometimes desperate men and women.

 

IMHO the single largest change that could be made to improve the lot of OTR drivers would be to end the exemption from the FLSA. Even though I am an O/O I would still support this in any way possible.

 

So go do it already. new pilots at regionals (this is after you make pennies as an instructor for a year, or more like 3 under the new law) make about $24/ hr. Before you tell me thats a good rate, know that you are legally capped to 100 hours/month. You're gonna have to fit some more months in the year to make 42k.

This isn't just antidotal guess work. I'm a pilot, and I used to have aspirations of going pro at it until I read the pay scales at the regionals and learned how long it takes to make it to real money. It would take me 4-5 years at a regional PLUS at least 2 as a CFI to make what I make driving a truck with <1 year experience. And they say pilots are expensive bus drivers! They have it backwards.