Why would anyone want to pull flatbed trailers?

Or you could, you know, just avoid the accident all together? I knew someone who would walk through parking lots with impunity. They said: "Pedestrians have the right of way in a parking lot." I said: "That's not going to matter much when you get ran over."

That's because their boss doesn't care if they get ran like dogs, as long as they're making him money. At 1,600 per week, I guarantee I'm making $5k per week more than them. Let me take a crack at how that reefer account works -

Step 1 - Undercut the competition and win the contract.
Step 2 - Hire anyone with a pulse to drive your white automatic truck. (preferably someone so scared of actual work, that they'll never leave you to pull open deck)
Step 3 - If they don't run enough miles to eclipse your overhead and make you money, fire them.
Step 4 - ????
Step 5 - Profit.

 

You are being deliberately obtuse.

Many of us on this forum in flatbed are owner operaters, i dont know if thats part of the miles versus $/load calculation that you are refusing to acknowledge, but i get the feeling that its probably more important than you realize. When you own the vehicle and have a stake in the % of the load (many here also have their own authority, so its 100 % of the load) your mentality shifts from "miles = money" to "best paying load for least amount of miles". if you want to call that "mileage pay" feel free, but dont expect us to buy your formulation when we own our equipment and you just drive someone elses truck.

What's getting you dogpiled is your lack of humility about what you dont know.

 

Always yield the right of way to idiots.

It doesn’t matter how many miles you need or how much the load is paying when you’re being towed.

 

For me, it's the unwillingness to take responsibility for anything he's not forced to take responsibility for.

Load shifted? Well, the dock secured it. Not my problem.

Car pulled out in front of me? Well, I had the right of way. Not my problem.

It's a weird way of thinking, when you could just put in some time on your part and prevent the issue from ever happening in the first place. I also can't stand people that run the other direction whenever work needs to get done. I've said in hundreds of safety meetings: "Make sure you're standing behind policy, not hiding behind it." OP seems to fit the latter category.

 

Heh, fair enough, but i have a feeling hed just be ignored if he had the same attitude and wasnt so insistent that his way was "right" for him

 

Maybe someday you’ll come to the realization that you don’t like getting treated like a piece of rented equipment. If you ever do get in a wreck the company isn’t going to care, you’ll still be looking for another job if you walk away from the accident. If it’s a fatality wreck the will dig through everything trying to put the blame on you. When I was a company driver I averaged about 2000-2200 miles a week, had weekends off at home, and my pay was about the same as what someone would make pulling a box 3000 miles a week and not being home. So keep chasing them miles while someone behind a computer digs their spurs into your ribs to keep you moving under the fear of being fired. Lots of us here with many years and millions of miles of experience have offered you good advice but you’re a little to thick headed to even entertain the thought that maybe we might know a little something about what we’re talking about. Once you stop living in fear of the person that dispatches you your life will change for the better. There are plenty of companies out there that reward good, safe drivers instead of encouraging poor driving habits.

 

In hindsight, that's probably what we should have done with this thread, lol.

 

Ehhhh, yeah but if we ignored all the dumb things people said, we'd be bored and there wouldnt be a point in 50 % (or more) of this forum

 

So you could kill someone and not care in the slightest, as long as the law says you won't be charged?

There's a word for that.