Truck Driving Jobs

echoy97 · Joined: 25 Sep 2006 Posts: 23

Before I decided what kind of job to do, I want to know more about OTR drivers. For those of you doing OTR and dont get to go home often, even if you are earning a big pay check, what do you do with it?

Lets say I am doing OTR , spending lots of time on the road and go home once a weeks or less than once a week.. Lets say I have $ to buy a $1000 TV or a $100,000 car. I only get to watch big screen TV once a week, or drive my dream car once a week ?

For those if you have experience driving OTR, i would really like to know how you enjoy spending your $$$.

And then there are things $ cant buy. Anyone got problem with family members after starting a OTR job ?

marcel27208 · Joined: 19 Aug 2006 Posts: 793

who doesnt have problems w/family members after going OTR :D ?

Uturn2001 · Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 9:41 am Post subject:

Ok....reality check.

First year realistic income for OTR drivers is $30-$32.000.
Many 5-10 year drivers do not break the $50,000 mark.

Road expenses are going to run around $100-$140 a week on average, depending on how often you eat in a resteraunt and how often you buy your snacks in the truck stop.

So if you have a family you are not going to be buying $1000 TV's and $100,000 cars, unless your spouse is making a lot more money than you will as a driver.

As far as family members it is important to discuss the realities of what OTR driving is going to mean with them before starting. 2-3 weeks out, home for 2-3 days and do it all over again. You will likely miss some b-days, little league games, school plays, and whatever else your kids/family are involved in. You spouse is going to have to handle most things around the house and you will have to understand that there is little you can do except offer support and advice because you are hundreds of miles away. Also everyone will need to understand that except for deaths or very, very serious injuries/illnes to imediate family you will not be able to get home just because grandma fell and broke her hip or little Johnny needed 10 stiches from falling off his bike.

Longsnowsm · Joined: 29 Dec 2005 Posts: 563

echoy97 wrote: Before I decided what kind of job to do, I want to know more about OTR drivers. For those of you doing OTR and dont get to go home often, even if you are earning a big pay check, what do you do with it?

Lets say I am doing OTR , spending lots of time on the road and go home once a weeks or less than once a week.. Lets say I have $ to buy a $1000 TV or a $100,000 car. I only get to watch big screen TV once a week, or drive my dream car once a week ?

For those if you have experience driving OTR, i would really like to know how you enjoy spending your $$$.

And then there are things $ cant buy. Anyone got problem with family members after starting a OTR job ?

Like Uturn2001 said, your not making much as an OTR driver. First you need to ask yourself what expenses you have at home. Rent? Car payment? Utilities? Cable TV? Phone? Cell Phone? Insurance? Credit Card payment? What does all that stuff add up to? So let's throw out a fiction example:

Rent $600
Car Payment $200
Cable TV $50
Phone $25
Garbage pickup $15
Cell Phone $40
Insurance $100
Credit Card $50
Utilities $100
Fuel $80
Misc expenses $100

So in this fiction example you have $1360 a month in basic expenses. Now lets look a a typical newbie starting off and lets say you landed a job paying .30 cpm with a decent company and lets assume an average weekly miles at 2500.

.30 X 2500 = $750 (gross pay)

After Uncle Sugar gets done with you, social security, benefits etc your take home is going to be roughly $525 give or take. Oh you want to retire some day??? Ok, lets say $472.50 a week pay. That is $1890 a month take home. Oh yeah, road expenses for you living on the road will set you back at leat $100 a week, or $400 a month. So now you take home pay is $1490.

$1490(take home) - $1360(basic expenses) = $130 (your money)

So as you can see from a pretty simple example your not going to be buying $100,000 cars, $1000 TV's(unless you save for a very long time), or buying a mansion somewhere unless you have a spouse that also works and makes good money and you can afford to bank her checks.

It sounds like you have a pretty unrealistic view of what an OTR driver makes. BOL

Longsnowsm

DesertRat · Joined: 28 Sep 2006 Posts: 95 Location: SE Arizona

I'm not exactly sure. I just get my allowance (road money) for the week, my wife spends the rest (actually she does a good job of saving a lot of it.) Truth is, I'm not home to spend the money. The bills, the groceries, the rent, all of that falls on my wife. My bit of the money is spent on food while I'm out there. On a rare occasion I will treat myself to something and then it's not an expensive something. And my wife usually sets aside a good amount of savings, so when I do get home there's always money to splurge on a good dinner, or an evening out. But that isn't because of my obscenely high income (ha ha) it's because my wife knows how to handle the money. I dunno what would happen if she weren't, and I don't want to.

TomB985 · Joined: 14 Sep 2006 Posts: 243 Location: Columbus, OH

Longsnowsm, you have some good points.

BUT, that also depends on a lot of things. I am looking at driving for Roehl when I get back, and they start me at $.30 a mile. BUT, after a year, that goes to $.36 a mile. Assuming 2500 miles a week, that works out to a little over $46,000 gross for the year.

You can save quite a bit on $46,000 a year, if you know how to handle your money.

geeshock · Joined: 26 Jan 2006 Posts: 350 Location: Hertford, NC

As the others said, you realy don't usualy make big paychecks, and when you do the next one is small or non existant so they sorta cancel out eachother, lol. When on the road I get little things, like tools for the truck, books, locks, groceries at the local walmart, etc. at home Me and the wife go out to eat one night, and mabe a movie. nothing big

Longsnowsm · Joined: 29 Dec 2005 Posts: 563

TomB985,

Good point. Roehl is a good company.

The toughest time for the newbie is surviving the first year(things are tight no matter how you slice it even with a good company). If your with a good company things will work out well once you get to that 1 year mark and beyond.

The thing that everyone should notice is that there is a huge difference between starting with a company as a newbie making .30+ cpm vs other major carriers that start the newbie at .25-.27 cpm. If you rerun that fictitious scenario at these lower pay rates you see just how tight it would be trying to live at those pay rates. BOL at Roehl.

Oh, and on that little work of fiction list of expenses I omitted groceries... People gotta eat and with only a little money left for the month it better be mac n cheese or ramen...

Longsnowsm

One · Joined: 13 Mar 2005 Posts: 953 Location: Alabama

Pah! I've been saving for a new PC for a month+! Your not exactly white collar as a truck driver you know!

ben45750 · Joined: 23 Apr 2005 Posts: 1759

TomB985 wrote: Assuming 2500 miles a week, that works out to a little over $46,000 gross for the year.

Don't count on getting 2500 every week, even having a weekly average of 2500 miles is alot harder than it sounds.... prolly not going to happen your first year. Your going to have them 500 mile weeks. You cannot control freight, traffic, mechanical failures and weather. Your going to have some 3000 mile weeks and some 500 mile weeks.

Longsnowsm · Joined: 29 Dec 2005 Posts: 563

ben45750 speaks the truth. Go searching through the archives here... Especially in the Jan-Mar months of the year. Your going to see a lot of folks screaming bloody murder about being starved out, and how this company or that company is to blame. The truth is that everyone is slow that time of the year and you have to have the reserves to make it.

If you hang around here for a while you also notice that there are highs and lows as far as freight is concerned. The number of people you will see on this site during the summer talking 3000-3500 mile weeks is really great and it makes ya think... Wow, this is great... BUT you hang around long enough you also see the winter months after the holidays and freight dries up and you hear some of the same folks talking about being starved out! They are lucky to get a 2000 mile week and this can last for months. Are you going to have the money in savings to survive it?

So if your getting miles and making more than you need to cover the bills you better be socking it away cause some lean times are coming in a few months.

Longsnowsm

syl77dar · Joined: 09 Jul 2006 Posts: 371

good luck

ghost_ryder · Joined: 12 Mar 2005 Posts: 136

Longsnowsm wrote: echoy97 wrote: Before I decided what kind of job to do, I want to know more about OTR drivers. For those of you doing OTR and dont get to go home often, even if you are earning a big pay check, what do you do with it?

Lets say I am doing OTR , spending lots of time on the road and go home once a weeks or less than once a week.. Lets say I have $ to buy a $1000 TV or a $100,000 car. I only get to watch big screen TV once a week, or drive my dream car once a week ?

For those if you have experience driving OTR, i would really like to know how you enjoy spending your $$$.

And then there are things $ cant buy. Anyone got problem with family members after starting a OTR job ?

Like Uturn2001 said, your not making much as an OTR driver. First you need to ask yourself what expenses you have at home. Rent? Car payment? Utilities? Cable TV? Phone? Cell Phone? Insurance? Credit Card payment? What does all that stuff add up to? So let's throw out a fiction example:

Rent $600
Car Payment $200
Cable TV $50
Phone $25
Garbage pickup $15
Cell Phone $40
Insurance $100
Credit Card $50
Utilities $100
Fuel $80
Misc expenses $100

So in this fiction example you have $1360 a month in basic expenses. Now lets look a a typical newbie starting off and lets say you landed a job paying .30 cpm with a decent company and lets assume an average weekly miles at 2500.

.30 X 2500 = $750 (gross pay)

After Uncle Sugar gets done with you, social security, benefits etc your take home is going to be roughly $525 give or take. Oh you want to retire some day??? Ok, lets say $472.50 a week pay. That is $1890 a month take home. Oh yeah, road expenses for you living on the road will set you back at leat $100 a week, or $400 a month. So now you take home pay is $1490.

$1490(take home) - $1360(basic expenses) = $130 (your money)

So as you can see from a pretty simple example your not going to be buying $100,000 cars, $1000 TV's(unless you save for a very long time), or buying a mansion somewhere unless you have a spouse that also works and makes good money and you can afford to bank her checks.

It sounds like you have a pretty unrealistic view of what an OTR driver makes. BOL

Longsnowsm

Well, the thing is if you are OTR you can sell your car, put your stuff in storage so no rent. Then you can take off everything else but the cell phone. This is of course if you are single. Trust me, if you have any family at all, they will love to have you stay over their house for 2-3 days every now and then. If one could stand being out there for a few weeks for 5 years or more in this situation, sure they can become very wealthy. As far as eating out, I do it all the time anyway. Also I know I spend alot more money at home then what I did on the road. Besides I eat out anyway mostly and when I am home, the restaurants are alot more expensive then flying J or petro. So if you live while at home, the expenses may be the same but probably more. Think about the gas you put in your personal vehicle to travel to and from work? I have a Silverado V8 and gas alone costs me $160 a month. This would not be an expense if I was OTR.

So if I make 40 or 50k a year and I don't have a car note (and insurance), rent, or all the other expenses from an apartment or house, its very possible and from what I have read on this forum, has happened before. Think about it... why would you need a car if you are not using it? When you come home from the road, you want to just visit family and relax. Then why pay rent, cable TV and utilities? Your only home 2-3 days a month, you don't need to. It would even be cheaper to stay in a motel for those 2-3 days.

This is a different look at it and of course if you had a wife and family you could not do this. If you are young, single and paying rent, this could be an opportunity to pack alot of cash away. You just have to get rid of everything but your cell phone, you won't need none of it because you won't use it. Then that little food expenses and other things while on the road is nothing. Also you won't always have to eat out if you don't want, only once a day really. Thing is, I actually thought about doing this, I had a girlfriend at the time but we were not married. If I could have brought her with me, it would have been on then! :lol: Oh, I do know all of this sounds great but not as easy as it sounds to be out there constantly, but if one can do it, it will be rewarding.

Aligator · Joined: 06 Sep 2004 Posts: 880

Quote: Think about it... why would you need a car if you are not using it?

Great thinking....why don't you just whack off your peepee...you don't use it very much, either. :lol:

ben45750 · Joined: 23 Apr 2005 Posts: 1759

Aligator wrote: Quote: Think about it... why would you need a car if you are not using it?

Great thinking....why don't you just whack off your peepee...you don't use it very much, either. :lol: :nervous: :lol:

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