Thinking about trucking for a living

It's all different. If you work local but do 14 hour days you basicly just work, commute, and sleep. In that scenario you'd sleep more if your bed was 4' behind you at all times. There are plenty of local gigs where you work 8-10 hours on the average and make probably 250 average per day. Think grocery distribution, short haul auto parts, all those garbage trucks, etc. There's tons.

 

As far as at truck stops or rest areas? Almost never. There are certain areas that are worse than others, you learn very quickly where to sleep and where not to. Or where to find that type of entertainment if that's your thing.

I sleep at customers a fair bit. They wake me up early morning when they're ready to unload it or load it.

I never was one who could sleep easy if parked in a non designated spot or at a fuel pump or beside a scale or a ramp or any of that. I bet those guys get harassed more. I know the fuel pump sleepers do because I am the harasser. Get your business done or move on!

 

I have a number of quiet spots where it's:

Away from any city. No thug, lumper or hooker or deviant is going to walk or drive one to two hours to where I am.

OUT of any shipper and reciever. (NEED A LUMPER!? BAM BAM BAM....)

Sleep next week properly. Worry about the work undone asap so you can get to working on that sleep.

A quiet spot with no Law bothering you, no idiots asking questions and especially no home owners telling you to take your smoke and go down the road. Is a very good spot indeed.

If you stop to sleep be prepared (Positioned) so that no matter how many others squeeze their rigs in to sleep with yours you can still get out.

Driving tired is worse than driving drunk. You are going to get someone killed doing that.

That's about all. You aint sleeping this week. Maybe next week.

 

Do you love to drive? Do you love driving on the 400 highways constantly on a daily basis and never get frustrated by the sheer number of stupidity you see behind the wheel of other people around you? Do you like not getting paid for work you've done, and sitting around waiting for other people to tell you what to do?

Trucking isn't a job, it's a lifestyle. You have to love driving with your entire being and be energized and uplifted by it to go anywhere in this industry. The days are long, anywhere from 12 to 16 hours on the books (but everyone knows that drivers do even more work off the books). You are going to work 60-70 hours in a 5-6 day period (or if you get unlucky, you'll be sitting around somewhere waiting for dispatch to respond).

You can't just go to school, get your AZ license and start making $50,000+ a year. You'll make far less than that in your first year (think closer to $30-35k), it'll be the toughest working year of your life up until this point and chances are greater than 90% that you won't make it past 6 months before giving up and leaving the industry.

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Spend some time, do some research, learn about the trucking industry by browsing this website and talking to drivers. It is a great career for the right people, but it isn't for everyone. It's not something someone can just "pick up and do". It requires as much skills training as any other red seal skilled trade, but there is no mandate on how that training needs to be given.

You can go to a school, hand them $2500 and they'll "guarantee" that you'll get your license. But that isn't enough to be a professional driver. Getting a license means you can now hold a steering wheel of a 100,000 lb (or greater) vehicle. But you still aren't a professional. You need skills training in various facets of the industry beyond setting the cruise control and holding a wheel.

If you do decide that this is the career for you, find a school that'll give you the training you need to be a professional driver, not just hold the steering wheel. And look to get on with a company that wants to develop you into a professional, not just fill an empty seat with a warm bum.

 

I hate to say it, but there is no driver shortage. There are plenty of good drivers out there, especially in Canada, but companies have spent the last 10-15 years driving down freight rates, and new Canadians coming in, starting businesses, and not helping this any is making it even worse.

Trucking companies can't AFFORD to pay the good drivers what they deserve. They would rather take the inexperienced student out of school at 25-30 cpm and stick them on a team where the truck is constantly moving and take the risk of having to pay their insurance deductible a couple times than pay the driver with 15 years experience and no accidents 50+ cpm to run solo. They hurt their profit margins by doing that.

I'm starting to believe a lot of the big companies in Canada are in bed with the magazines like Today's Trucking to sell the idea there is a shortage (almost every issue I've seen in the last three years has been almost yelling about it on the cover) so they can convince more inexperienced people with no reason to be in trucking to enter this industry on the promise of big money payouts.

 

Yes.

I spent a life time driving sleepy. I improved on that by enforcing the HOS into my own favor. Dispatch does not like that. But they will just have to wait until the mid day siesta is finished.