Dumb Truck Questions?

[Molson]

I am trying to figure out exactly what I want to do. Not sure if I truly want to do OTR or what.

1. Is this the site to answer Dump questions or is there somewhere else?
2. What type of Income can you expect?
3. Do you need as much experience driving a dump for a company as much as you do a trailer? Or will anyone pretty much take you?
4. Is the industry keeping busy or is it hard to find jobs?
5. Is it something you can go straight into as an o/o?

These are some of the things on my mind, any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[YoungZ.W.]

I don't think think that these are DUMB truck questions as stated in your title, I think they are rather good and interesting. Good luck bud.

[Kranky]

Dump trucking is a completely different skill set than OTR.

There is some common ground however.

To get a dump truck job without any experience you'll probably have to resort to a small "bottom feeder" company with low wages, and poor equipment.

When I had my own dump truck business I hired experienced drivers only, but I know there are a couple companies in this area that will hire newbies, at lower than average wages of course

Once you get some experience however,if you keep a good driving record, there are good dump truck driving jobs out there.

I would not recommend starting out as a dump truck O/O without any experience.

Learn and make your mistakes on someone elses stuff, rather than your own.

[Mr. Ford95]

Depends on where your at for dump truck work. Around me in VA, not much going on at all. I've heard other area's of the country are still rocking and rolling for dumps.

Pay can be by the hour, by the load(how many you haul per day, cna be considered percentage) or by the weight/tonnage. I had a friend getting paid a percentage of each load, he was usually seeing $500-600 a week.

You can go in as an O/O but as Splitshifter said, not a wise choice, especially if your in an area where there is very little dump work right now.

[Malaki86]

I talked to a guy about running a local job in a quad axle dump truck (straight truck). He wants me to have 2 years tri/quad experience before he'll hire me, even though I've been driving OTR over 3 years now.

[oldrookie]

He may have a point. Some thing are very different. I never drove a dump but I did drive cement mixers. 60 to 70,000 lbs. on three axles. Absurdly top heavy. Flotation tires take the truck in every direction. You cannot take your eyes off the road for much more than half a second and you don't want to be jerking a top heavy short wheel based vehicle around. Dumps have their own problems with turn over while dumping. It's too easy to do.