Two Questions come to mind!

Actually, I don't drive a SwiftQuit truck these days. I quit those guys way back in the stone age. At least that is the era I was living in knowlege-wise when it came to the trucking industry. I was a loin-cloth-wearin', club-wielding, naive driver in my Swifty days.

 

Glad I could help, just wish I could help my poor grammar. Sheesh, I just re-read my post, and I'm glad you were able to make sense of it.

Time to fire that trained monkey of mine, no more posting under my name...

 

Okay, sorry I hadn't gotten back to this, but I have been out for the last couple of days. I too have to get out and make money, or my dogs start looking at me funny when there is no money available for dog biscuits.

Lets assume that whatever company you work for actually has the goal of making money from it's trucks and wants to have them produce the maximum income. I know there are some wacko theories bandied about on the site that trucking companies run the trucks at a loss and make all their money by training new drivers, but no one has ever come up with a single bit of evidence to back up that kind of goofball claim. Lets assume, that a trucking company actually wants to make the maximum return on their investment in trucks and trailers.

If they do, then the company will have a vested interest in finding as much good paying work as they can for each truck, will try to minimize empty, non paying miles, and will want to limit the amount of time the truck spends not being productive. So the dispatchers or load planners are going to do everything they can to get loads onto the trailer, and get the driver the time to make the load on time. They are going to want to get repeat business from the customers, and will try to satisfy them, through their agents, the drivers.

So a company will do what they can to maximize the work the truck can perform, within the limits imposed by the laws governing the amount of hours a driver can work in a given time frame. They will regard the driver as an asset, not merely a pawn in the game to be thrown away at will. Good companies will always try to make the best utilization of their drivers and will view them as assets.

There are some companies out there that are not suitable for some drivers to work for. There are a few companies that are downright lousy, and no one should work for. But there are a great many companies out there, and what you have to do is find one that fits in with what you want from them, and that meets your expectations. Some companies pay more than others, but you can find that the work is not to your liking, regardless of the pay. Some companies may pay more, but require you to run places you would rather not run, NYC being the classic example. Some drivers will actually take lower pay, so they can drive a specific brand or model of truck, as bizarre as that sounds. Some drivers work by the mile, and want as many miles as they can get their hands on, and some drivers wouldn't work for mileage pay under any circumstances. The key is in finding something that you enjoy, and are comfortable doing that fits in with your needs.

I notice that you live in MT, and that can be as much of an issue as anything else. It is not, in and of itself, a freight rich area, and that tends to push drivers there into longer distance jobs and more time away from home. As with anything else, location can play a big hand in what work is available and how that work is scheduled. Some areas are more freight rich than others and have a greater proportion of jobs that stay closer to the local area. For example, where I live in Mi, I am about equidistant of Indy, Chicago and Detroit, with lost of freight moving between those cities, and other cities in the midwest manufacturing belt. And having that much freight works out to my advantage, both financially and in making hometime available.

As for the question of how much a driver can make, it does vary some, since there are a lot of different factors involved. There are many people making 1000 per week, and there are many making 400 per week. A driver has to look for good work as well as good paying work. If he works on a mileage basis, then there are de facto limits on the income from the mileage pay, since in the hours available there is a realistioc limit to the amount of miles that can possibly be driven. And there are other pays that get figured in, such as stop pay, where they pay you for making multiple cargo stops on a trip, or detention pay, where they pay you for time wasted through no fault of your own. As an exampley, I picked up a load earlier today that came out of a railroad car, and I got paid an extra $25 in loading pay, since I loaded the trailer myself off of the railcar. That is paid in addition to the money for delivering the load.

If the driver is an O/O, while he may have more choice in loads and the ability to say no, trucking is no different in that respect than any other business. A dispatcher is going to have an assortment of loads, some great, some not so great. And they all have to be moved, one way or another. if a driver constantly tries to cherry pick the greatest loads and leave the not so great for others, the dispatcher is going to notice that, and he probably won't get offered his share of the great ones. I try to take my full share of loads, good and bad, and I think that by doing so, I tend to get my full share (and maybe a little bit more) of the good loads. The dispatcher remembers who cries and whines and who doesn't, and whether he factors that in intentionally or not, he does factor that into load assignments. Taking your share of the bad as well as the good tend to work out better than rejection of all the bad loads. I could be wrong there, but that has always seemed to work for me.

Okay, I have to bail for now, gotta grab some sleep, make a delivery in the morn, then pick up a load for Green Bay for friday Am delivery.

 

By the way, there was commentary implying that since I am somewhat of a niche hauler, all that I am capable of doing is hauling flour. That;s far from the truth. I haul flour, various grades of it, but I also handle all different varieties of starches, sugar, dextrose, wheat, potato flakes, organic products, popcorn for our good friend Orville Redenbacher, and practically anything you can put inside of a food grade trailer and deliver through an air system.

I also handle numerous non food grade products, including soda ash, lime for concrete making, sodium bicarbonate, silica sand, calcium carbonate, and many other products.

On the plastics side, I handle polyethylene, polypropolene, polyvinylcholride, in both pellet and powdered form, and many other grades and forms of plastics.

I am trained and qualified on operating every type of bulk rail car there is, and can load them or unload them through the various methods used. I am capable of finding a railcar in the middle of a railyard and loading my truck with no other assistance.

I am also a vacuum trailer operator, and go to factories and clear out contaminated product using specialized trailers.

I do far more than merely handling flour, though it is one of the mainstays of my employers bsuiness and we move about 20 million pounds a day for bakeries around the country. it is probably a rare day when you do not eat a product that has ingredients that have been delivered by one of our trucks. The loads are handled properly, delivered safely, and without contamination, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. When the trains derail, or the tracks get wiped out in flooding, we take up the slack and keep the product coming in so that your local bakery continues to supply you with bread and buns.

Regardless of what anyone says, I am well aware of what my job entails, and while it is a somewhat specialized form of trucking, it's far from being routine. To do it right takes certain skills, and those who don't have those skills will not prosper in this part of the business.

 

And I'm sitting here, reading what Burky just posted, enjoying some of Orville's popcorn. Thanks Burky!

 

Why, you're welcome!!!!!