Tanker Vs. Van

i pulled a tanker trailer for MISSION PETROLEUM out of San Benito Tx.. What i liked the most is less wait time! ya you have to wait the occasional minute in refineries, but most of the time its in and out!!

 

And when you do wait you know you'll get detention time . Several times I've been paid my detention time while getting 10 hours sleeper time .

 

It all gets down to what you like. Fo me to drive a truck and raise a young boy I needed time home alot. But I also needed good pay and benefits that would take care of us. Local tanker driving is much different that OTR tanker driving. Local you'll haul one type of product like gasoline or diesel. 9 times out of 10 you'll come back to the loading facility empty, load you truck for your next drop then away you go. If you're hauling fuel then there's three different types of setups there to. You have the common carrier that will haul anyones fuel. They are the one with the lowest pay. Then you have a dedicated carrier where their truck is set up to haul one company's product. Then there's the top. The major oil company that drills, ships, refines, transport the refined product to the station. There're the best. It's easy to tell them apart by just lookinh on the door. The company must place it's company's headquarters or ther door. I say that because you can have a dedicated carrier all painted up with the same colors as the companys but the door might say Jim's fuel hauling ....

There are drawbacks of course. The gasoline business is a 24 hour a day operation. So the new guys get stuck with the night shift working weekends. Some guys like the $1 an hour more for shift differential. Most are still on the 10 hour a day 4 day work week. Anything over 10 hours is time and 1/2. Anything over 40 hours a week is time and half.

I liked all the excitement that went on during the night. There were no bosses around and the weather was cooler. We had over 75 stations that took a load about once a day so we were busy. There was never any time that you couldn't get OT if you wanted it and some guys lived for it. You could make $20K to $30K a year extra in OT. You'll also find that a company at that level treats their drivers with respect and there's hardly any management problems. So check them out.