Why recent OTR experience?

I was wondering why companies often specify recent OTR experience. I can definitely understand driving experience, but why specifically OTR? I have been driving OTR for a little over a year now. If I were to take a local driving job for a couple of years, what skills are companies worried I will have lost?

 

It's just a way for them to screw drivers. Locals don't count otr...otr doesn't count local...you get the point.

 

They wanna make sure you can read a map know how to get to customers without calling your boss every five minutes.some companies will overlook so many yrs exp as long as you have some exp and your mvr is acceptable.

 

With the GPS taking over, I bet 80% of new drivers couldn't find Texas on a map.

 

Lots of folks walk out of trucking school right into nice local jobs. After they screw that up try to hitch up with OTR companies.

Those asking for OTR experience are not only looking for experience to fill the insurance requirement but the OTR skill set that just may not exist in a local driver. Trip planning, time management, log books, 53' trailers, all require some skills.

Just a lot of misunderstandings and disappointment with a driver that was paid for his time and home every night now over the road for months at a time with lots of free work.

 

It's another way to control pay and keep it low. I drive 3 years OTR, then 6 years local, valuing doubles, then went back to OTR and had to fight to keep from being paid at their bare minimum. You don't forget how to read a map. You don't forget how to trip plan, and you don't forget where Texas is. I don't know, maybe the interstates move around or something.

 

Don't be a wise guy driver. Everyone knows that Texas is over there by Japan.

 

If you have 1 year driving experience but it was several years ago that's probably not going to hold much weight with the insurance companies. Now if you have 20 yrs experience and you've been absent for a couple of years the door will still be open a little wider than a newbie. However there are DOT boundaries for all levels of experience. The other thing is that you could have 5 yrs of experience and have a break or two of say 2 months a piece. Companies will tell you that they don't define that as "consecutive" years of experience and will use that in order to lower your qualified starting mileage rate.

Update: I forgot to mention that OTR in the term "recent OTR" simply means that you are capable and familiar with OTR lifestyle because it is in fact a lifestyle like no other and it isn't for everyone..

 

Where is Japan?

 

South of Florida silly, don't you read the news about them swimming over?