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

Why do the "real" working time at all? Can't you just log it as you do it? Instead of putting 15mins for unload, load, fuel, pre-trip,whatever, put down the time it actually takes.

What's so bad about doing it the right way?

 

No, every thing you log takes away from the time per week you can drive. So if you're sitting at a shipper for 2 hours logged as on duty, your're not making any money, and you are taking 2 hours away from miles you can drive that week. You want to log 'on duty' as little as possible so it leaves the rest of your time for miles to make money.

Remember you get paid per mile, so you want to maximize your miles, you don't get paid for any other time, so you can't choke yourself logging unessary time.

Also, to add, I am at a company now on elogs so I only have to log 5 minutes for pre, post, and fuel. So I definitely can maxamize my drive time.

 

i have been asked that very same question

but to me, it doesnt really matter, 15min load, 15min unload, 15min fuel, 15min pretrip............if thats all i have to put down, it doesnt affect my overall logging one bit

the extra time of fueling 8min and driving the remaining 7min (firstly, i will be at the truckstop the full 15, if not longer) and (secondly, i can make up that 7min wasted fueling during my drive time)

for example, if i arrive at the truckstop at 13:47, i get to the fuel island at 13:50, i finish fueling at 14:00, i go inside, potty break, soda break, back in the truck and ready to go by 14:15, i log that i arrived at 13:45, finished at 14:00

so lets say i have another 190mi to go in a 65mph state

however, as i am driving down the road, by the time i get to my destination or shut down for the night, that 15min difference will be eaten up because i will arrive at my destination at 17:00

so what did i lose?

 

When a burger flipper is off duty he goes home to his family. Truck drivers watch TV at the flyin' J a thousand miles from home... So are you really "off duty" just because your wheels aren't turning? If sitting at a truckstop were figured into your hourly average, how much do you make?
I saw a post on the first page asking "will a fast food place let you work 70 hours a week"??? Yeah, if you work at two of them. Min wage is 7.50 an hour times 70 hours $525 a week is what plenty of truck drivers earn.

 

If you're only making $525 a week, you need to look for a new company! With say 34 cents per mile, that's only 1500 miles a week, that's not running!

 

In the unlikely event of being involved in a traffic accident with serious injury/fatality, can/will investigators dig deeply enough to see that time logged for fuel stop/whatever doesn't match to any fuel receipts/waybills?

Or do you try to log it to make all that match up? And, do e-logs significantly reduce the chances that things like that won't add up? I mean, if you log 1400-1415 for fuel and drive time starting at 1416 but the receipt says 1430 or whatever, can the case be made that the accident shouldn't have happened because you should still be at the truck stop/somewhere else according to your logs?

Don't know if that is coming out the way I mean.

 

my receipts and locations always match

if you remember, i completed fueling at 14:00 my receipt will say that, my logs will say that

 

Elogs does help, because you can't forget to put it in, you have to do it in real time. So start your time as soon as you fuel, then go off duty. You cannot change, manipulate, or log later your drive time, the truck computer locks you out when driving automatically, so you cannot mistake where you were. As long as your logged fuel time is within the time on the receipt your fine. Pull up to the pump, change your elogs to on duty fueling, get out an fuel. It's simple.

Also you computer tracks where you are at all times. All they have to do is pull it up. Easily able to prove what you were doing when without you doing anything.

 

When I was OTR I looked at it another way. I can only pay my bills with whatever comes on that check. I didin't care how many hours it took or what I thought I should be paid for. I agreed to the terms of the job. I never comaperd my pay to hourly cause I didn't care, and I wasn't getting it anyway. I was working for the check, not the specifics of how I got there.


Did this make any #### sense? LOL

 

Makes perfect sense We go by how many total miles we get in a week. And our company doesn't let us sit!