Man, i've been living on a budget during a boom and a bust now.....

Sorry ***** life i have had ha? ):

 

There is nothing wrong with living on a budget. Those who seem to accumulate a lot of assets over their lifetime are not necessarily the ones who make the most money. They just tend to be good money managers and stick to a budget.

 

I just completed orietation with Werner. There were many in school and several at orietation who didn't plan on being away from home for weeks on end. Some because they are single parents with a family member taking care of their kids and others who just hasn't considered reality. Most times they blamed the recruiter. Based on conversation I believe it was, more often tan not, selective listening. I mean really, does anyone consider this job without knowing that many spending weeks away from home.

I bet the washout rate in the first year exceeds 70% for new drivers. Most because they can't hack the time away from home, some because the don't like driving everyday all day, some because they just don't have the skills it takes. And of course there will be some that just can't follow the requirements the industry requires. They are the ones that spend all day in the casinos and blame management for poor performance.

Just my two cents worth.

 

We were at a local community collage that offers truck driver training and to hear these students talking is humorus. They heard from a friend of a friend that you can make really good money right out of school pulling doubles for the big ltl carriers or driving for Walmart, Not these companies that pull out of Walmart DCs, But Walmart themselves. Somepeople are in for a really big surprise on graduation day.

 

I dunno man.

I just got home form a journey to oregun. Coming back south, I dropped through Salt Lake City, then up over Soldiers Summit into the Price area. ALL the coal hauling companies have nice new banners hanging, as well as new billboards placed, declaring their need for CDL Drivers!

Deseret Transportation, Savage Industries, TriMac, Ashworth....all the big coal haulers in the valley there, are looking for drivers, and they must be expecting some of those "new" drivers to relocate to Price and vicinity!!

 

Well, if we keep getting more people like this, driver-supply will go down and people like myself will have a better chance at getting back into the game.
I always tell some of the kids at school about the reality of driving and after hearing about how often you're by yourself and away from what they call civilization, they stay on their course towards that corner office I could care less for.

 

Trucking companies are in a constant and on-going mission to cull out their "bad" and "non-productive" drivers and replace them with "better" drivers (don't bitch and gripe as much, and move loads without incident, and don't piss off customers). Furthermore, with the over-supplied truck availability, it is driving a massive number of drivers (new and old) to give up and quit and a 1,000 paid miles a week are far better than 0 paid miles due to a truck sitting unoccupied in a yard somewhere. Then add-in the tax breaks carriers get for every new-hire turned out and you get what we have here today ... a constant hiring to keep the truck availability near 3 trucks (drivers) for every available load ... and consequently you also get an even more frustrating situation at the full truckstops.

All a driver can do is be the most productive driver on the board, make him/her self available, put him/her self in the best possible position to reload as quickly as possible and be willing to "get the job done" but balance that attitude with "don't let them run you into the ground with ***** loads". It's give and take and the successful drivers learn how/when to give that yields the best take in the long run.