What happened to smoke stacks?

1st off in this day and age, there really is not much option for new drivers to not start at a mega. It's pretty much a given you will have to go do a year otr before getting enough experance that will allow a local company to hire you due to their insurance costs. Maybe there is the lucky guy here and there who starts off local driving a smelly trash truck or gets a local job after 6mths of over the road..

The simple fact is experance is needed to get hired at just about every decent local job aside from some farmer Joe's or random Dave's mom and pop company that you find through a friend of a friend..

Now with that said, most of the local industry jobs for bigger companies with benifits the drivers are starting at 4am in the morning or eariler and working long shifts.. so how do they really have more of a life than a Otr guy? They get up 3am drive 30 mins to their terminal go do a 10hr shift then drive 30 mins home to pass out in their bed a hour after getting home..

I'm pretty sure there isn't many guys in the trucking industry working 3 or 4 days making $100k/year or more or working 9 to 5 bankers hours.. This is a industry that lends its self to abusing your personal time and social life..

Much less no one is starting out with the best job at the highest pay and working minimal hours while doing it..

For the record, I'm a lease guy and I average $1.80/mile and I'm a new guy less than a year. I will continue doing that until next winter when I plan to stop driving for a few months then come back with my own truck that will be paid for.

Simple fact is everyone has to put their time in and some will still be driver for .50/ cents a mile 20 years later. Others will grind it out and make more but the reality is very few people in this industry own a truck.. specally local drivers..

You aren't making big money a mile with out owning your own truck and picking your loads and you arent getting to that point with out putting your time in and having no life for a bit.. No one starts out on top of the game..

 

The conversation was about fuel savings on a new aerodynamic emissions truck vs old square hoods. not about a company driver with a new license.

 

This convo is about a half dozen things..

 

You couldn't pay me enough to drive OTR. Or for a mega.

 

Two weeks out two weeks home isn't that bad. But these guys that do 21 days out, 2.5 days home and back out for another 21? Screw that.

 

Really the OTR vs Local depends a lot on location. Here where I live we have 2 pretty big food service companies 5 minutes from each other and they both hire with no experience. Both actually come to the local sage driving school and both deff pay better than otr. Besides that we have oilfield work around here with a lot of water truck jobs offering to train the right person. 2 fuel haulers also advertise they will train the right person

I think a lot of it has to do more with where your located. If your in the right area, with a little work you can find something local instead of otr.

 

I'm not sure what the conversation is about anymore but I can attest to the fact that emissions motors ARE NOT more efficient than pre dpf electronic motors. Don't even know why that myth is around. It's simply not true.
Aerodynamics play a huge role. Emissions just take that gain back.
You know this, just quoted your post because I'm not sure what this thread is about. Lol

 

Because they put on what the dealer "suggests" for better fuel economy and "lower costs".

The owner of the company I work for built a 389 glider with a C-15 CAT last fall with 7 inch Dynaflex exhaust. He bought three 389 with Cummins X15's in the winter with 13 foot stacks. And now he's on his way to building three new 388 gliders with C15 CAT's this year that I assume will probably have stacks as well, one of them likely to be Dynaflex exhaust (nearly) straight off the turbo.

It comes down to trucking companies not knowing what a truck is supposed to look like anymore.

EDIT: Here are the trucks:

 

The fuel mileage wasnt good today. 4.99 mpg on the tank. And probably worse since i got west of Amarillo. Wide load, 7 ft tall and running into the wind all day. Checked the national weather advisory to see what the wind was like in New Mexico and was supposedly 22 mph but when i stopped at the port of entry they measured it at 36 so I'm shut down till it drops below 25 and they let us roll again. At least she let me run a mile up to this hole in the wall taste of india truck stop. God what a dive. Should of stopped 20 miles back at Russell's.

Got out to remove my flags. Might have taken 2 minutes tops and I'm covered in sand. Worse than a day at the beach.