so how much did you gross this year?

Expect 45k your first year with Prime. If you clear 50, you had a nice year. Otherwise you're going to be sorely disappointed if you think you'll make what these top end of the pay scale LTL guys are making.

 

Ltl definitely the way to go hands down. I don't put in 8 hours a day or work holidays and weekends. We get the 24/25 of Dec 31/1st new years and both thanksgiving days

 

If he makes out of training he did good. If he makes it 3 months in one of those closet size trucks he did good. If he makes it 6 months their b4 he throws in the towel he did super good. Way too much competition for loads. Competing with the Lease guys, the trainer guys, and the teams. Yes he will get the extra heavy loads and will have fun pulling hills with that little motor. He doesn't know about the frozen loads that pick up at 8 am and deliver 4 or 500 miles for the next day to walmart that deliver at 8 oclock at night. Or sitting at a meat plant for 2 days waiting for the beef or chicken to be boxed up. He'll probably run to a company paying him .31 or .32 after 6 months with prime. Hope it works out for the chap, but I tell all those with $ sign goggles on. Keep your expectations low, and bring your Vaseline. There's a reason very few make it through their first year in this industry.

 

You seem to be real negative on this business. I mean that genuinely, I have no personal experience of it myself other than what I read here.

 

More the company,

than the business.

 

But he's not that far off the mark honestly. Trucking is a hard industry. Lots of guys talk to old timers and hear stories about making big bucks and driving the open road and blah blah blah and when they are hit with reality they leave. You have to want to drive. It's not a profession you can just do for a paycheck like many others. If you don't truly love trucking it will chew you up and spit you out and not think twice about it. Long hours, no respect, low pay (to start), no home time, no time with family or friends, living in a 12'x10' box for weeks at a time. It's no glory out here. But I still wake up every day with a smile on my face knowing I'm doing what I love.

 

I can't believe I've lasted as long as I have. It's funny. As the years pass, I don't stress all the things I did when I first started driving. I just pickup, steer, deliver. Repeat. This year I made about $45,000. I get home about every 12 days for 3 days so I guess I'm really not working that hard. But, I like my job and my family is taken care of. It does help that my wife makes about $38,000 a year teaching, so together we keep the bank account filled up.

 

forgot to pickup my paystub today (direct deposit), gross should be $63,000, gone maybe 2 nights per month, occasionally work weekends on a voluntary basis.

 

Sir sadly we live in an age. Where anything but bells and lollipops are negative. We live in an age when no one wants the truth. The truth is real. The truth doesn't always feel good. The truth is when you in a foot of manure. It stinks. Stop it will all this It is what you make it. No it stinks.

Mattbnr hit it on the head. This guy nailed it. I have over 14 years doing this. I have lived it my friend. I have set in orientations with people who have lived it. I have talked to drivers on the dock who have lived it. This is the internet. Everybody is 6'4, 175 pounds of muscle, and making 6 figures and home every night with there super model wife. And 3 darling angel kids. Why be bothered listening to a POSITIVE lie when what you need is to save your hard earned money for a cdl that you won't be using after a year or 2. Hopefully you won't be divorced or bankrupt because of the lie's.

Truck drivers love telling stories, usually they involve US marshalls and black helicopters or 6 figure salaries that anybody off the street can come right on end and make. What some of the LTL guys don't tell you is how hard it is to get on at some of those carriers. Or How you work part time for no telling how long until I spot opens up for you. Those guys who make big bucks now. Wasn't doing it in the first few years, and all you have to do is look at all the common carriers pulling their trailers. You won't hear them talk about the layoff's and the slow season. Just big numbers and how easy it is. You pull 1 trailer in 40 and 50 mile an hr winds. Let alone 2 or 3. Please don't let there be ice. Then that really messes you up.

We have enough steering wheel holders who come in because somebody on some sight or commercial said how easy it is to make money. Or how nice it is of that company to offer the pay for your schooling on the sign of the back of that trailer. Those billboards advertising 50,000 or all the classified adds in the paper. I love driving. I love my career, and we need people who know what they are getting into. Who take pride in what they do. To be prepared for the scams they will find once they have took a 2 day greyhound bus ride from across the country. That awaits them the first or second day of orientation. Yes to some its a just a job, and they drive like it. But to those who love what they do. They know its a career, and the drive like it because they plan on being in it for a long time.

Like some of these guys said maybe they didn't work hard, maybe they are home every night. But to make what I made. I only spent about a 30 days if that much at home normally in 2 or 3 days a month stints. I'm married and have kids. I have also been through a divorce because of this job, and the marriage of have now is on the rocks. Hopefully I can land one of these sweet ltl gigs and do something local which I hate, but I really don't want to go through another divorce. I also spent nights freezing and or sweating so I can get my fuel bonus. I also spent days in the middle of nowhere doing a 34 hr restart so I can maximize my hours. So my friend trucking is more then reading a thread. There are tons of people who don't know about this site, and would laugh at what they see posted on here.

So forgive me for being brutally honest, but I'm willing to bet there are more people that will find what Mattbnr and I are saying to be more of the reality. Then going to some ltl or other gig and being showered with money for working 8 to 10 hrs a day and being home every night waiting to give those jobs to fresh face rookies who come from these schools that can barely teach them how to pass a road test.

Well sorry for such a long post. This industry eats people up and spits them out. Just preparing people for the water. Good night.

 

What you said.

 

*applaud*...

....*standing ovation*