What To expect returning to trucking after 5 years away

A Little history about me to start.

I obtained my cdL in 1997 with Star Transport, Morton, Ill

Placed with the best trainer any one could ask for we got along great and he trusted my carefull driving style after only a day or two LOL.

He said he made more money with me than any other CDL mill driver before and I was very proud of him and happy for him.

Three weeks later I went solo and wow what a difference.

The great guy that had my back was gone and I was facing the scary world of driving solo,

Going days at a time without really talking to any one who knew me. I hated it. Missing my wife and two boys I stayed with them for there 1 year as promised

Star was very fair to me making rookie mistakes on my logs and such.

Then I got a local job driving around the Chattanooga , Tn area home every night . I loved it but only made 12.00 an hour , with 12 to 15 pick ups and drops a day, and some over time on week end loads to cook ville ,Tn,

Then a divorce, I got full custody of my two boys. still in elementary school.

I had to make more money or we were going to be poor our whole lives so I left trucking and started a business building homes and things were great.

Now the housing has gone bust . I am making less than I was driving local in 2003 if there is any work at all its heck to find and the bids are so low its time for a change.

My boys are 11 and 15 now I,m still single and thinking of letting my Mom move to my home to take care of the boys while I am gone . I know this is not a good time for me to be away but they are needing things I have got to provide for them , there first car, and such all the things a Dad should do

My Questions are .

I have 1 yr OTR and 3 city clean MVR but have not driven sense 2003 what are my chances of getting a job with so many other drivers out there with more experience and out of work.

If I go solo again does it take a long time to get loads?

I dont want to spend the week end in a truck with no load and missing my boys as we all do.

P>S. Solo bothers me I tend to get depressed and a side kick helps with that. waking up 10 hours from the last miserable stop I just made I like LOL.

or would i have a better chance of getting loads and more miles if I went with a team driver?

Thanks to all that respond, You Guys are the best drivers on the road . God Bless.

 

I wouldn't even bother, to be honest. you have too much to lose and any company that'll hire without recent experience is going to be a crapshoot.

I work for werner, they'll hire you and make you do 140 hours (3 weeks) of training and then put you solo, and i get a lot of money.

 

Just like anywhere else the trucking field has gone cheap too. It seems that the companies are going with the new drivers with no experience because they pay them hardly anything. The drivers that do have experience are finding it harder and harder to find the good companies that pay them what they made just a few years ago. I believe that my field of gasoline hauling is one of the last ones to do this but they are doing it just as bad in some areas. Chevron just announced that they are pulling out of 12 eastern states. That's alot of Chevron drivers that just went from making $27 to $30 an hour down to maybe $15. So what you'll see from 5 years ago is an industry that is going cheap with a flood of new drivers that will take any pay to drive.

 

how did you manage to make alot of money with werner? and how did you only train for 140 hours. I trained for 320 hours. Others were training for 400+. Werner is not competitive with their pay and I was even on the Dollar General account. You must have been there a long time or somethin huh.

 

Yes, afraid so. A large transporter of gasoline in florida started hiring younger, less experienced drivers, for less pay. There is one dry van outfit paying EXPERIENCED drivers .24 a mile...........PATHETIC !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

if you have previous experience, but either not enough or not recent enough, its 140. I actually did 145, LOL, had to drive to omaha to go solo. Also, i got $400/week training pay, which did not increase through training, and i was not elgible for paid time off or a graduation bonus. The training pay was really cool when the truck broke down and I didn't actually have to stress out about not making money. My trainer on the other hand..!!

So for him, it'd be 140 hours at $400/week also.

I've been here for 3 months. You probably don't consider what i make to be a lot, but I do...but I do have goals of making more. I'm usually getting around $500 to $800 a week, gross...mostly on the lower side of that.

But, you're missing one fact....Compare werner to the other training companies. Maybe some are better, but most are worse. I worked for CRST, was making around $100 a week, which was why I quit and screwed myself out of a job for a year...i couldnt deal with it anymore. I almost worked for Covenant, but ended up going to werner instead. Covenant forces you to team drive until you have 6 months experience in the last year. While i was in chattanooga, i made some friends with their drivers, and talk to a few on a regular basis still. One tells me about how she has to wait on hold forever to talk to dispatch. I usually don't get put on hold by my dispatchers, even at night, and its usually not very long. She also is making what I make. I'm not saying its bad money but it's very unfair to put you through the stress of team driving and have you making the same amount of money as a solo driver elsewhere. I went solo as soon as i got out of training. I have a friend who went through training at the same time i did with crst, did her 8 month contract (if i had a codriver like hers i wouldve lasted longer, honestly), and went to us xpress (i dont know why she thought that would be better, DUH), and i haven't asked her about her money, but they're teaming and getting the high end of what a solo driver can run. Thats not good at all.

As for other companies, I just know what i've seen. I've also read the websites of a lot of training companies, and almost all of them do the 6 months forced team driving thing, and werner doesnt, and team driving with strangers is BS, and that is the single biggest reason I suggest people start at werner. And if someone can't handle solo trucking after 300 hours behind the wheel, something is wrong. To think that they are somehow benefitted by driving with someone with the same or less experience than them is silly. I also had a codriver do something so stupid on a grade, that if we would've been hauling the maximum legal weight, I would have died! I had another one nearly attack me.


JTRNR, you sound like you're talking about werner, except i do make a few cents more than that. I have a friend that runs netops (daycab relaying) and has been driving for years, making 25 cents per mile, but he does make what I make on good-but-not-great weeks. I just don't see why people like that stay here so long.

 

Wow, 100 a week with CRST? thats rediculous. Ok so youre now making about the same as what I was with werner which is ok but not great considering the work youre doing. Youre away from home, driving in horrible weather at times and sometimes on roads that no truck should ever be on. Now here's what gets me: I have a friend who graduated from the same school I did at the same time. He went with prime because he could see right thru that werner recruiter who came to our school. If only I hadnt been so naive. Anyway, Prime started him out at 500 a week during training then it went to 600 and 800, whereas I topped out at 350 with werner. He stayed training a little longer so he could make more cpm when he got his own truck (2010 casscadia btw). I talked to him the other day and he told me his last check was $1600 take home. I spoke with him a few weeks before and it was $1200. I'm happy for him but at the same time I'm pretty peaved that I was getting paid so little and doing the exact same thing he's doing. Only difference is he's pullin reefers.