Simple question about waiting as a truck driver?

NewNashGuy,

Unless the company you go with freight is so slow they have to many drivers, then I doubt you will be waiting alot. You will run into a 34hr reset, you have a mandatory 10hr down time.. As for saving, you also spending alot to on the road. You can do what ever you want during your downtime. If you waiting on a preplan, I'm assuming the QC will alert you, or your dispatcher will call you. It also depends if your dispatcher keeps you in a area to wait for a load to be ready for pick up or ready for live load. I think live loads / unloads are timely depending on what places you go to.

As for car situation, most company's you park the truck where you live. Some want it parked in the terminal / drop yard. It really depends. However, you may not have enough space if you have to bring a load / empty trailer home at times. Just make sure you have a plan in place, and a secure plan at that. Not just dropping it at a random walmart near your house.

As for negatives don't bother you know, but it might be something that will be extremely bothering when it actually happens. Just make sure you are mentally prepared for what is to come. Just know that you can not and will not learn everything as trucking is a everyday learning experience so take it as it comes.

Welcome to TTR. Researching does go along ways, and I wish you the best in your search.

 

Welcome to the TTR Forum. I'll share my standard advice with you. Maybe you will find something of use in it.

You need to research and find out what the important questions are. You can make an above average living but you will make sacrifices that other jobs don't require. Read the "good companies" and "bad companies" section on this forum and get an idea of what company you want to work for and what kind of trailer you want to pull. Don't just go to school and then try to figure out where to go.

I don't know your financial situation. Don't take training from a company if you can afford it or get it with financial aid. You will be their slave for up to year. If you leave they will trash you DAC and credit record. Check out your local community colleges and employment office.

Just know that most training and trucking company recruiters will do nothing but lie to you. They will let you talk about what you want and then tell you what you want to hear. Trucking is about moving freight to make money for the company. Your home time, family, paycheck and everything else comes second.

It is not like any other job. Local is usually backbreaking delivery work 10+ hours a day, 6 days a week. Often you unload dozens of times a day or you are a salesman. In my area most dump truck jobs pay less than a good factory job. Regional is lots of loading and unloading time, fewer miles than OTR and not as hard as local but will wear on you and push your HOS limits. OTR is out 3 - 5 weeks with 3 - 4 days home, less manual labor and more miles.

You'll probably have to pay your dues before you get the gravy job. Weekends off, if you are lucky enough to get something like that starting out, may be home Thursday afternoon and leave Saturday night or home Friday night and leave Sunday afternoon. Loads deliver on Monday early and you leave in time to get them there. Often your home time will be in the middle of the week.

Regardless of your driving choice, after school you will go through company training. For OTR this can be six weeks to three months with little or no home time. The first phase is usually $400 a week and the second phase is $500-550 a week. Some pay less. One company pays 12 CPM for training.

You don't want to wait around too long after training or you'll have trouble finding a job. If you get out before you have a year in, when you try to come back a few months later you will find they want you to start over.

One last thing, if you have anything that makes you less desirable than your competing job applicants, a phone or in-person interview will often bring the best results. Even if I am the best candidate I will choose face-to-face if at all possible and phone if not. Sure you may have to fill out that online application but that isn't the best way to get a good job. You have to do something or be someone who stands out from the crowd. Do regular follow-ups by phone on the jobs you really want.

 

part of trucking is hurry up and wait, eather at customers, the terminals, truck stops, ect... but its not to bad, and you can usaly do what you want on your down time. there might be times when u will be stading around doing nothing but in my experance ive always found something to do, read a book, watch a movie, make phone calls, or catch up on paper work. waiting is part of driving. as for your question about waiting for hrs, im guessing eather a 34hr reset or a 10brk was what ur talking about, again thats your time do as u will. i pulled into a rest stop the other day next to a lake and went swimming for a bit on my 10hr. as for the parking, all depends on the company, most will let u park the rig at home though. this website is a good insite into trucking, but in all honesty you wont truly know how it is for you until your out here doing it. there are a lot of ups and downs to this line of work, if you can roll with the punches and stand being on the road for weeks on end, you should be alright. good luck

 

Waiting means I'm am still making money, just without driving. I sat around the other day for about 24 hours, maybe moved 25 feet. Took a cat nap here and there when the Sanjel guys had to pull the coil back out of the hole. Other then that I would fire up my masport and either suck or push water into tanks.

Like right now...I have been sitting for about an hour for the winch trucks to show back up to move these clean tanks off the stands so we can get to cleaning a couple more. Not all days are like this. Some days we drive a few hundred miles to haul loads of flowback water to the disposals down in Colorado. But this isn't your typical type of trucking job: mud, dirt, sun, rain, doesn't matter...you will be working outdoors and getting in and out of your truck all day.

Now if you get paid by the mile, sitting still would stink...that's why I went this route in trucking. Not a glamorous clean new truck or fancy sleeper, but I enjoy the work I do. Feels good to be keeping busy and it's a good weight loss program...went from 200 down to 190 in less then a month LOL.

 

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I'll be waiting over the weekend to make a delivery Monday morning. Just so happens there's an air show less then a mile from the t/s I'll be parked at. Guess what I'll be doing?

 

There are several different kinds of waiting. Some are far more irritating than others.

One kind of waiting is during your 34 hour restart or waiting because you have a set appointment that you had a lot more time than needed to arrive in that town. Personally I rarely minded this kind of waiting because you know how long the wait is, when it will end and can do things largely by your choosing to fill this time. I actually enjoyed 34 hour restarts as I got caught up on laundry, did some sightseeing once in a while or just relaxed with a good book, movie or caught up on sleep.

The second kind of waiting would be waiting at the shipper or receiver to be loaded or unloaded or to be called to a dock for either. This is a little more aggravating as your 14 hr clock is burning up as you wait and often it is unclear whether your wait time will be 1 hour or 8 hours. If you are in a dock you can read, sleep or surf the internet if you have a wireless connection. If you are in a holding lot waiting to be called for a dock on the CB, you can forget about the sleeping option, the CB crackle will prevent any sleeping and you need to be alert for when it is your turn for a door.

Third kind of waiting is waiting for a load assignment. This can be frustrating if your FM or load planner plans everything JIT or just in time. It's frustrating cause you can't start a load of laundry, you can't go into the truckstop restaurant because when that darn qualcomm does beep it will be with a plan that needs to get to its destination with no time to spare. Not all trucking is JIT so it may not be that way for you but that'll keep you on edge. It can be frustrating if they send ya up to Canada with a load and then after you're empty you sit for two days waiting for them to find you a plan back. They don't tell you it's a two day wait. They say, oh you're unloaded, go to a truckstop or rest area and will send you something as soon as we have it. So you start thinking it will be two or three hours maybe. Then it becomes six hours, then 12 hours. You go to bed thinking you'll have a plan in the morning. You get up and no plan. You think: "well I get something by noon, right?" Before you know it you sat there 48 hours burning through your own money but not making any. This has a way of wearing you down if it starts happening regularly.

 

Most companies want you to park the truck at the terminal when you take your time off. So you drive your vehicle to their terminal which in some cases could be a couple hours away from your home, take the truck out for days, weeks or even months at a time while your personal vehicle sits at their facility getting dirt, dust and bird crap on it. My first OTR job I had to jump start my car every time I returned back before I could drive home as the battery would be drained from several weeks of sitting.

Some companies may let you drive home in their truck if you live more than 100 miles away from a company terminal but they are in the minority. And in those cases you have to figure out where you are going to legally park a 75 foot long vehicle.