[PhuzzyGnu]

Oh yeah-

I get paid by the mile while on line 3 and by the hour on line 4. If I am out of town on a job I get a full 14 paid. I get overtime if my line 4 goes over 40 (a little weird since I work 60-70 hours a week on-duty, but hey).

We get paid off our logs and by the odometer mile. I don't cheat. Integrity is what you do when no one is watching.

Fuel is paid for by the company Wright Express fleet card or Comdata if we have to. "Anywhere you need to fill up" is the company fueling policy.

I go through the 40-hour HAZWOPR refresher course annually, in addition to the various customer facility training requirements. Annual comprehensive physicals- mine's tomorrow, in fact.

There is no idling policy.

Two tickets in a rolling one year period can get you fired. Three in three rolling years will get you fired. We lost a driver last month due to a ticket.

No passengers allowed at all unless it is a company employee riding with you to a job.

Cell phone provided to all drivers, no real usage limit. I know one driver burns through 3500 a month. I don't have a personal cell phone- I use my company one.

Company pays for IdleAire if it's available.

Trucks are Penske Leases- '06-'07 Columbia. Mine had 7,500 miles or so when I picked it up on 6/28/06. 56,147 right now.

We can wash the trucks as Penske whenever we want. Other drivers will take the trucks to the Blue Beacon, but I don't.

Anything and everything needed to do the job can be bought with the ComData card- and I love the new ComData Mastercard. No more check registering. We have accounts with all the usual suppliers- Goodyear, Michelin, Bridgestone, Grainger, Penske- so most transactions are a sign-the-invoice deal. I've never had any problem with any expense. I often will just use my personal debit card for scales and hotels and get reimbursed. The Comdata cards for most drivers are pre-loaded with $500 or so for incidentals, but mine at times has had a couple thousand on it. Right now I have around $250 on it because I had an expense.

We call pull out advances from the ComData up to the per diem ($20 a day x5 days = $100 a week) with no questions asked. More can be had in extenuating circumstances. It balances out on our weekly expense reports.

We get paid biweekly through direct deposit. Our per diem checks are mailed out semi-weekly.

Full medical benefits through UHC. 401k. Dental, vision. Substantial life and AD&D.

If we are on the road more than a few days we can get a hotel room at company expense. The general rule is three nights out. On the rare 4-5 day runs I might get a hotel once. Otherwise it's the Freightliner motel.

Semi-forced dispatch. Some drivers outright say no. I don't. I take what they give me. My attitude has earned me more easy, well paying runs I think.

There is no pressure to run illegal.

No satellite tracking, no fuel mileage tracking. No big brother. Just the cell phone the dispatcher might call on once a day for a status check.

A quick Google search tells me I made about double the average earnings for a company driver last year.

-p.

[got mud?]

Originally Posted by uglymutt

okay here is really what to and the uh ohssss of this crap...

you get dispached to go get a load from a shipper at 11:00 am on a friday, then you notice you have to do 2200 miles in 4 days, not bad so far but you delivery is a 2am on the 4 day so its really 3.5 days, Dispatch counts it as 4 days, time of day has no meanin to them, so you arrive at shipper half hour early to find your load is not ready yet so you wait till they call you on the CB, now its 1:30 and they call you, so you back into the dock and another half hour goes by and you feel the truck start to rock, kewl they started to load but its 10 minutes in between the rockin so it takes awhile to load, they call you on the cb to come get your paperwork.... wow its 3 oclock already... now you buttton up the trailer and get rerady to roll out of their aftetr fumblin with the qualcom to send your macros and its 3;30 pm, so 4 hours of drive time gone but adjust the logbook, so you roll and roll and first day you drove 685 miles.

aftet your 10 hour break you start to roll on day 2 and is late in the day because you drove most of the night you hit rush hour, whew boy they move fast so you lost an hour in time doing 15 mph for several miles and now yer rollin, yeah just wait ohhhhh whats that ... ohh darn traffic is backed up for as far as I can see, but its moving, after 35 minutets you see that both lanes are squeezin down to one and nobody can merge but an accident happened and this held you back, whew thats over and yer rollin, for 250 miles you feel good until the orange barrels appear ohhhh darn sign says flagger aead and traffic just slowly comes to a stop, lost another 45 minutes because of that, and you roll to hit construction again and yer just pissed now and decide to adjust your log, by this you drove 645 miles but it took you past yer time by 3.5 hours so you decide what the hell just take a 6 hour nap and start again because that would show a 10 hour break, yeah cuts into yer time off....

Day 3 and its midday and you roll but got to get there and don,t have enough time, you drove 1330 miles already and its day 3 and tommorow mornin you deliver at 2am, you got 870 miles to go, so you drive drive drive and did 715 miles maximum allowed for 65mph in 11 hours and you got 5 hours to go deliver, so you now got 155 miles left, you decide that you can adjust log book to show you appt time was later so you nap for a hour then you drive to the delivery point... whew you made it alittle early but they tell you your appt is 9:30 am, and said who told you 2am was wrong and you have to leave and come back at 9am to check in, which is okay now you drove illegal and had to adjust your log to fit what really could of happened legally, this is the crap that happens to most drivers, I call everyone and tell them I can't make it till noon that day and change the appt time, company gets mad i do this but I don't have to run illegal.. they always get the times wrong, always.

Sometimes I can be there 10 hours early and have lots of time, but thats with no problems on the road in front of you, showers and fuel stops and finding parking is a whole other story and all that fits into what just happened, you think its grand now just wait till dispatch tells you how to drive, yeah you will see everyone knows how to drive but you.... and remember dispatchers have no clue what orange barrerls are and think your truck rolls 65mph on every road and they can't see traffic lights either while sittin at their desk, have fun

lol so true and that's not even a bad day!! :wink:

[uglymutt]

Thats so true here "Got Mud", there are worse days, what I think is so funny, I get this all the time, i am not sure if load planners and dispatchers understand the 10,11, and 14 hour rule, I drive ard and tell them on qualcomm i am on my 10 our break, we do this on ours, tell them everything, got over 30 macros to keep track of... anyway I am on my 10 hour break, why I have no hours to run, so after about 2 hours I get a message from dispatch saying "there is a driver who ran out of hours 85 miles away from you and can you go over there and drop your trailer and take his and go delivery the load, then you can get back to your trailer and finish your break time"

now does that make sense... I argue with them and say have him delivery load ad finish his break, then they say he is out of hours and the delivery is five miles from were he is at..... I say he can,t drive five miles and delivery, they say we need to get this load delivered it real important.. So I say well you call safety and ask them if I can drive during my 10 hour break and if tey say yes I will do it, I never hear back from them after that...

What i find alot is these drivers run out of hours just before delivery time so they don't have to unload the trailer, sissy boys, go work for JB hunt if you just want to drop and hook loads.... FFE drivers unload unless it is over a 1000 pieces or if its prepaid lumper then just sit and wait, not all loads are driver unload but the ones that run out of hours just five miles away are....

[jeremyh]

My day is pretty good. I haul fuel for a living. I just recently got this job. I am up usually around 2AM and there to the yard by 3AM and out to the refinery by 4AM. I am loaded in about 10-25 mins and then out to a gas station to fill them up. Fully loaded I am hauling 42,000 liters. I don't know the conversion to gallons but I know it's a hell of alot of fuel. I usually run in town and get around 5 loads a day done. I'm paid by the load but it works out to be around 23-26 bucks an hour. We all work 4 on and 4 off. We are monitored through gps and we have to fill up our trucks where the fuel is the chepest. It is annoying sometimes but the company does have year end bonuses for drivers who this as well as other things. I can't complain, the average driver makes anywhere from 55,000-70,000 and most of us are in our bed by the end of the day and not in a small confined area aka your truck.

[GoVols07]

I would imagine that a gig like that, much like any other job, comes from either a.) right place at the right time or b.) paying your dues being a newbie otr for a few years first? or c.) a combination of a. and b. lol Right now, my job pays 8..yep..8 dollars an hour. (I used to drive while in the Air Force but I've been back home for 6 years)

I have a wife who works for the hospitol, god bless her, if it wasn't for her income we wouldn't make it with our 6 mo. old. So I mainly come from the standpoint of: Yeah I know that there are plenty of horror stories involved with being a trucker for a career..but can anyone who has been doing it for a year match my miserable $8/hr? my whopping $320 a week BEFORE taxes? I know I'd be away from home a lot, but its a dad's sacrifice I'm willing to make to make sure my kid(s) have a decent home and lord willing go to college lol. That's the cross roads I'm at. It's funny, I used to work multi-billion dollars pieces of weaponry..but back home all I seem to be able to get are 8 dollar warehousing jobs. So..why not trucking? Can't possible bring home any worse than what I'm doing right now, even in training. lol

[jeremyh]

Well you are right, it's a combination of things. It's luck, experience and all sorts of other things. Experience is the best teacher and once you have that your opportunities will open up. The experiences I have had taught me a lot about trucking and operating a truck. Heck I learnt something new the other day. The day you stop learning is the day that you are more likely to make a mistake!

On another note I don't think any company is going to give you a set of keys to their expensive truck if you have just come out of school. There are companies like UPS, Fed-Ex, Gas companies, etc. That want to know you are going to be safe and not run into anything! I don't think you can expect to just get a license and know it all. Like I said earlier experience will get you more in life than anything. It is the great teacher!

[Ian Williams]

I'm a LTL Driver with a afternoon City/Dock Bid in Reno

Roll out of bed at 9:30 or so. Shower, eat, read the paper. Make my lunch for the day. I'm out my front door at 12:00 or so, at work 15-20 min later.

Punch in, grab a radio and find out what I'm going to do that day.

If we are normal I'll pre trip and fuel our 12 towmotors, spread dunnage and load locks , place manifests and seals on front of the load doors.

If we are busy I'll PTI a tractor and go make some pickups or left over deliveries from the morning shift. Most of the time we use Pups in the city.

As I dont have an assigned route I grab whatever tractor is available. Our tractors are primarly Sterlings with 1 drive Axle. We have a handful of old Freightshaker FLDs, they are nice for doing line but the long wheelbase and lack of visbility sucks for City work.

Today I took a van 8 miles over to a customer, signed my bills waited 20 min to get loaded and came back.

Most days around I go to a customer ~35 mi away in Fernley to drop and hook a 53'.

I do this until we are shut down for the day between 20:30-21:15. Every once in a while we wind up with more freight that line drivers and I run to Sacramento and back , getting home around 04:00-06:00 the next day. This is mostly a summer thing.