Why do some on the forum say that truckers don't make more than a fast food worker

so i guess since i am paid percentage, i aint a 'true' driver? Well come to think of it, I DO sleep in my own bed every day...and I'll clear 65k this year...

 

sounds just like the stuff they say at mega-orientations

if you arent busting your hump slaving for them, you are lazy

no, they have designed their system to suck the life out of every newbie, and IF you make it past their bootcamp, you should be able to make it in the real world

 

i think the only way one can compare fast food wages to trucking wages is if count all the time the person is away from home working at mcD's vs all the time a person is away from home OTR.

we are away from home 168hrs per week, hence if you make $1,000 you have made $5.95/hr because actually we are working when we are sleep at a truckstop

dont believe me? have that load missing and tell them you were "not working" and see how long that excuse lasts

when mc'ds employees go home, the store could get robbed and there is no blame on them

not true for truck drivers, hence we include the entire 168hrs

 

At Mcdonalds you could get a paycheck for $0 for the week.

At a trucking company you could get a paycheck for -$250 for the week!

 

saying "truck drivers are a bunch of" anything is the same as blacks or women or (pick a minority) are a bunch of... anyone with 5 years behind the wheel knows better than to lump all drivers into a single category. much easier to believe you are in a support role, like a fm. "most truck drivers" havent been driving long enough to remember the smokey days. and as a group, there are few more important to the every day life of everyone else than truck drivers.

 

Truth cuts deep doesn't it?

 

truck drivers are cry babies, we cry about everything, from the traffic we have to deal with, to the chicken houses we have to cross, to the shippers and receivers that keep us hostage

my problem is that is all we do is cry, because we are not willing to do the work to change our conditions

we not only cry, but we lie down and allow others to dictate how we should do our job, whether the trucking company, the dispatcher, the DOT, FMCSA, insurers, shippers or receivers

we are even smiling as some companies put cameras in our cabs and "call for bad driver numbers on our trailers"

that being said, i love driving a truck, my wife and i were discussing out of all the jobs i have had, this one fits me to a T, my father was one as were my uncles, its been something i secretly wanted but was told by others "you can do better with your life"

as far as our importance to the world, to coin a phrase, aint nuttin you got that wasnt delivered by a truck. thats important

the individual driver isnt important,but the service we do is extremely important for EVERY AMERICAN. without us, stuff would never get to where it has to go

i like that too

so every box of pampers, ever pallet of nickels, every bottle of soda and all the stuff that makes it, it is up to each of us to get it from point A to point B. That is important

you may look at yourself and what you do as worthless, i most certainly do not

 

and regarding smokey and the bandit, i saw that for the first time a few months ago

what a stupid show

 

There are sectors of trucking that pay the driver for all work performed such as LTL or food service etc but those jobs don't offer the "open road" type of trucking and are labor intensive unless you're strictly a line haul driver and that position is often the repetitive same-O same-O. The road driver may get more variety with less manual labor involved but at a cost in wages for his/her choice.