The best trucking jobs for a day driver? Class A

Yes, I would look for jobs in your area that hire local, home every night types. Ask a vague question, get a vague response. Now, respond with where you live, your driving experience etc and we can help.

 

Ha! Good stuff shogun!


Yeah.. details man... details...


(Oh, and my #1 response is always...

Private fleet.

 

Plenty of home every day jobs depending on where he lives. Private fleet pays well. My first job was Ashley Distribution, i would still be there if I didn't move and get married.

 

I work for a private fleet. Well im a newly minted dm for a private fleet ... (i know i know but 20 years in, i need a back up)

 

LTL can be good. However, i might recommend truckload grocery, department store, or US postal service over LTL.

i DO NOT think food service or beverage service is worth it UNLESS it paid at least $2000 per week gross AND a 4 day work week, with WEEKENDS OFF AND benefits that equal or exceed UPS's (completely free health and dental; i had to get medicine last week which was $258, but i only had to pay $3)
a) The customers of food and beverage are usually stupid and lazy. And don't start with me with the whole anti-immigration bs, because it's ALL immigrants; They come from a country that doesn't do things the right way----which is why they came here (as if WE do things the right way......)

b) The food and beverage customers that ARE native born citizens are often rude a-holes, and lazy.

So, in sum, if you like self-torture and you are an agony seeker then do food service----and make what? $1300-$1400 to kill yourself? Hell, i make around $1300-$1400 and i sit around a lot doing volume loads.

Food service IS THE MOST LABOR INTENSIVE JOB PERIOD. Not just in trucking, but ANY industry.

Sears and K-mart seem to be shrinking, so you may want to be careful about going there. Nordstrom's seems growing and Kohl's seems to be doing good.

LTL is still good though.

 

My first local job did mostly truckload shuttle work for different customers around Columbus and some automotive shuttle work around Ohio for Honda suppliers. We local guys would also deliver stuff the OTR guys brought in off the road and get trailers loaded for them to take out so they could do drop/hooks at the yard and keep rolling.

The schedule was ideal: 7am - 5pm give or take for the most part. The pay was seriously lacking, though. It was impossible to make very much more than $40k, but it was perfect for what I needed at the time with very little experience.

My second local job was with another smallish company running reefers around in daycabs. The schedule was a little weirder, but the money was better. The money disparity between many jobs seems to be largely dependent on the amount of physical work involved or the craziness of the hours. For that reason, easy daytime jobs don't tend to pay very well.

Around here, JB Hunt and Schneider have railyard work that is mostly days. I've heard they do ok, but oftentimes it's the little mom n pop companies that will have those sweet banker hours schedules. Good luck!

 

Foodservice IS labor intensive. No doubt about that. But there are jobs out there that are just as labor intensive...if not more. Milk delivery for one is back breaking work...and I do mean BACK BREAKING... LITERALLY. Dragging stacked milk crates with a hook is no easy task. And A LOT of them wind up having back problems later in life as a result. Logistics companies like Keystone Freight, XTL, and CPC are ALL HAND UNLOAD. From floor to ceiling, nose to tail, throwing retail freight onto rollers. Unloading every square inch of a '53 trailer is extremely labor intensive and completely exhausting work. Especially if the trailer has sun roofs, which makes it feel like 130 degrees inside the box during the summer. You wind up completely drenched in sweat, exhausted, and lose about 10-20 pounds by the end of the day. I think Walgreens and Rite Aid are like that too. Not to mention those nightmare Dollar Store deliveries as well.

But going back to the OP's original question...it all depends on what your definition of THE BEST daytime work means. Is it just for the money? Physical or non physical? Best benefits? Union or Non Union? Commute distance? Tankers, doubles, flatbed, etc. Too many variables and too vague a question. But in a nutshell, most daytime work involves some type of physical labor. Not all...but most do. LTL P&D, Foodservice or Food Delivery in general, Beverage, Logistics, Waste Management, Mail, Flooring, etc. are a couple daytime work you can look into. Or basically look for anything that has daycabs during the day or anything that has to do with services or making deliveries within daytime store hours.

 

I found the niche of Trucking I really like I dare say. I’m runnin local end dump and it’s fantastic. Everyday is something different, I haven’t touched a pallet jack or hand unloaded anything, and this company has major contracts with the city and a lot of municipalities around the city for salt, so it’s year round work. I usually start around 7sh and outta there by 4. I’m home every night, off the entire weekend, and holidays too. It’s sketchy sending a trailer up in the air, but a lot of times I feed area concrete plants rock or sand so it’s level and on a hard surface. I will say the pay is less than my LTL days, but the stress level and quality of life, for me, is well worth the little bit I’m giving up on pay.

 

Bob, you've mentioned before that you pull a box for linehaul. Who are you with? Pyle, Pitt-Ohio, Ward? Just curious...