Want to drive but prefer to drive solo

Pretty sure it depends on the company. I think the companies that hire through Driver Solutions are solo operations.

 

Starting out solo, depending on the company, your first year will be around 30,000-35,000 a year, I think. http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos246.htm can give you an idea of earnings of truck drivers.

 

Solo drivers are usually paid mileage. Figure on 2500 miles per week at say .28 cpm and that will give you a ball park figure for weekly gross pay. The more loads you turn the more money you will get paid overall.

Team drivers also get paid mileage but they "split" the cpm (cent per mile) pay. Teams will get longer runs but they are expected to keep those tires turning.

A solo driver will be able to park the truck each day for 10 hours to get rest, food, and a shower while a team is hustling down the road.

As you get more experience your pay rate will go up so figure making around 50 grand per year in 2 to 3 years. Of course it depends on how hard you want to work.

 

Personally solo is way better then team.

Lets look at it like this, you are solo, you make .32 cents a mile, you run 2800 miles a week. You bring home close to 900.

Now, you are team, you make .37 cents a mile split, you run 5500 miles a week. You make slightly over 1k.

So you make more as team right? Money yes, slightly. But is 100 bucks worth:

Never getting to really sleep because truck is bouncing down highway.
Getting run to death.
Being #####ed at everytime the truck is stopped.
Having to justify any pushing off of your avaliablity.
Having a hard time getting time to shower/go to the bathroom/eat out of the truck.
Never REALLY having a 10 hour break, sure you are off for 10 hours, ON A MOVING TRUCK.
Having 0 time on loads, basically all loads are 50 mph nonstop ones, you barely get time to fuel.

Now teams get loads when solo's don't in Werner, if they have a team and a solo sitting, they will ALWAYS assign team first. You do get that perk, but you can get a solo load, that picks up at like 10 am goes 500 miles for a 10 am delivery tomorrow. Ha, no, they will push the delivery time to 8pm. >.>

For 100 bucks you are making a huge sacrifice in quality of life, you will be eating a lot of fast food and sandwiches (or in our case and unfathomable amount of subway... i am starting to hate subway...), you won't really get 'time off', your rest will be broken at best (thing bad construction bumpy roads), and it is something I'd only recommend if you were like sharing the cash in one household, or reallllly wanted to be with said other person 24/7

I'm not bitter I swear.

 

IROCUBabe pretty much covered it. There are advantages to both and I've done both. I much prefer solo to team, but team wasn't bad, especially when I was running with a good friend of mine (still trying to figure out how he was able to make 300 miles go by faster than I did without getting nailed for it ). Team driving can be difficult if your co-driver has issues with loud music, hygiene, less-than-smooth driving abilities... the list goes on.

Yeah, I liked solo a lot better.

 

Well put, I think that was a good descripsion,