What’s Good or Bad About Hopper Driving!?!

The word I hear from the company guys at places be it Prime, Foltz, and Drew is they kinda hate it. It’s hard to make good money sitting.

See anything pet food just becomes instantly harder than even human consumption type stuff. It’s a washout and wait to load then test etc. then wait to unload test etc. You never know what’s headed to the exact place you’re going. So I may be looking at it wrong but at a first come first serve place 15 minutes could cost you 6 hours if 2 trucks make it ahead of you in that 15 minutes. The wash outs are stupid cause you’re pouring everything down the same 1 to 3 grates anyway. Some places have a dedicated drag for grain. So Diamond at Meta for instance rice you’re in and out. But bran or hulls your screwed cause all the hard to unload #### uses the other drag. 2 trucks ahead of you waiting for it is or could be 6 to 8 hours. Pet food facilities pay decent but give 0 ####s about you. Purina in Edmond has held me 40 straight hours twice in a row now. It took a month to get my detention out of them which came to a whopping 450 flat on that 40 hours. They will just quit dumping trucks and start on train cars just because. No matter how backed up they were. Their purchasing agent ordered a boo coo amount of corn set it up to be delivered in 2 days. Well till all the corn was dumped the rest of us sat. Then after a few trucks they dumped rail cars. They are obviously the worse but I’m sure it happens other places.


Feeding the chickens ain’t bad they are kinda happy to see the #### but it’s not the best rate. I have run into some epic lines. And due to some cheese eatin low rent locals that count on 2 to 4 loads a day into places like Tyson they have a 30 or 45 minute rule on the dump. So if you got DDG that’s stuck you’re ####ed. You’ll close your door and go to back of line and wait your turn.


Cow chow ain’t just real crazy better. But I do like the people at the atmosphere of the feedlot better.


There was a time that this deal was fun. We’d load heavy and ride fast nap in line which wasn’t the greatest rest but it worked. We’d look out for each other and not worry about keeping the line tight as another 20 minutes of sleep for ol so an so may help him. And it ain’t getting us dumped no faster. You trucked all night to get empty first thing in am. Then you hauled ### to wash out (sometimes not always) then hauled ### to load most places quit at 3 to 4. Then trucked all night to get in the front of line again. Rinse and repeat. Again we looked out for each other gave them bear reports especially if we seen a diesel bear. Helped each other with our raggly ### ol trucks, and didn’t pass a guy in line that was grounds for an ### whoopin. If a guy over slept in morning we woke him up not pass him. It was always fun to come up on another hopper and it become apparent you was both headed to same place…..the race was on them last few miles lol. I guess I should clarify nothing dangerous or silly just a little gougin and horse play.

It’s not that way any longer. Knowing what it used to be and seeing what’s it’s become really makes me wanna throw up.

 

I haul sack feed out of a local feed mill and see hopper bottoms hauling in ingredients all the time. Sometimes they get lucky and immediately unload after weighing in. There have been times where I have seen them wait many hours to unload. The mill might break down or the bins are too full and there's no space available for the load. I've never seen the process when they get loaded so I don't know if they have to wait a lot there.


There's other mills in town and they sometimes have the same issues.


Still I wouldn't mind doing that for a couple of weeks just to see what kind of trucking it is.

 

Who could forget Camp Edmond?

 

I’ll give anybody 1 #### happens. 2 in a row and your page is officially torn out of my load book. I’ll drive right past their load to dead head a 1000 miles home. The pay isn’t worth the risk. They cost me right at 3 grand that last round by missing every thing I had lined up. I figured 24 hours to get empty ended up with 30. Then had to bounce home to Northest Arkansas for Christmas. So where did those pennies from heaven go they shelled out?
Anyone can have a little chaos from a bad purchasing agent, a break down etc. what they have is a case of don’t give a ####. Now it would never happen but enough trucks tear that same page outta they book and then purina has trouble getting product. That will bring them around. Bad luck and not caring are totally different. I won’t be used for storage because they over ordered product to be sure to have enough to get them through the holiday. They won’t ever miss me that’s a fact.

 

Currently….

 

Once was enough for me. Purina was on the local OKC news with trucks sitting on the street blocking traffic waiting to get in the place.

 

As Forest would say "I'm not a very smart man ", but there has to be a better way.

 

It is sad what this industry has become. You last sentence is pretty much true for any type of trucking.

 

Did I mention.. plenty of miles?

 

I load a lot of bulk and bagged beans, millet and popcorn for export so we encounter a lot of bulk haulers. One of our customers almost every morning there's an H&M driver there waiting to be loaded, facility opens at 8, he's usually loaded and gone before I am, and they're just blowing millet into my container. I've considered doing bulk grain, I've talked to drivers for a couple companies, some say they make good money, others say it's so-so, but they all seem to be kept super busy, very little sitting.