What are the disadvantages of being an OTR LTL driver?

That’s a pretty good summary.

Different companies use different terms too - a ‘bag run’ or ‘bagging out’ were two -

‘bag run’ - take an overnight bag with you to ‘lay down’ away from home terminal for one night.

‘bagging out’ or wild solo - take your bag and see home after 4 or 5 days or when your hours are close.

Meet and turn - KCI driver and DAL driver leave at the same time, swap trailers at mid point and return’home’.

Somebody else can explain the bid process.

Then publish a book on LTL terminology

 

Not that I do LTL anymore, but I’ll take it up.

That crummy p and d driver operates in cities with short miles, higher incident/accident risk - multiple stops, for which personal skills are needed.

They can usually back and maneuver circles around your mega carriers.

Higher risk of personal injury. Usually in much better shape.

If I was hiring a driver for a rig I owned - I’d take a P&D driver with a years experience over a 5 year seasoned steering wheel holder.

 

That's a typical answer local drivers give , everybody knows that rookies are more inclined to have an accident . The local driver never leaves his own state, he's not familiar with being in wyoming winds then dealing with new England traffic to find parking. But the biggest biased opinion I have is there is a saying "trucking gets in your blood" if a driver doesn't have the desire to hit the road crossing state lines while sleeping in a truck. I don't think they are a true trucker in the first place . This type of industry is a lifestyle , most truckers love the freedom of the road and feel like working at food service job like sysco is just a dead end indentured servant job .

 

work to live. not the other way around..

 

So,how many months do you have under your belt now?????

 

It became unglued on the second post. Banker answered what he thought the OP's question was, but the OP was asking an entirely different question. Then they both got snippy instead of recognizing they were talking around each other. I run into this a lot and will often make my trainee ask the same question in a different way, or ask him how he is defining a certain word. I also try and look for the question "behind" the question - ie, why is he asking this? When my guy asks a dumb follow up question, I assume something in the way I answered wasn't clear, so I start breaking things down.

I get paid to do that, Banker doesn't get paid, so I am in no way faulting his response, just pointing some things out.

It all depends.

Years ago I had a guy (Travis) come thru my truck. Travis worked in a factory for most of his life, then when the factory closed he got a cdl and drove for UPS for 5 years. Guy "retired" for a couple years before he realized he didn't have enough to support his lifestyle. He came to us because of the flex fleet - 1 week on, 1 week off. I assumed it was going to be an easy week, teach him some trip planning and company polices then sit back and relax. Boy was I wrong - guy had no clue. Turns out Travis ran from the UPS hub in the Twin Cities to the airport and back. He never had to back up - ever. Travis would pull into a spot at the hub, drop the trailer, hook to the next one, drive to the airport, pull into a spot, rinse and repeat.

We recently hired Derrick, an "experienced" local driver. He'd been doing food service, but with the pandemic Reinhart laid off a bunch of drivers. Guy had no clue about the HOS/logging, sliding tandems, and didn't get that a sleeper with a 53 is going to handle differently than a single screw day cab with a 48 footer.

It's not the type of work a driver has been doing that matters - its the quality of the work he's doing. Plenty of steering wheel holders and window lickers doing p and d work. A couple of our rookies are better hands than guys that have been around for more than a decade.