I get paid an excellent wage, and spend a lot more time at home than I did when I was working construction. Yes, you have to pay your dues when you start out, but there is the potential to make excellent money, and have plenty of time at home, vacation, etc. You will get out of this what you put into it, as in many things in life.
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Originally Posted by Musicman: I guess another way of looking at it is how dangerous is trucking compared to those that crossed this country in wagon trains trying to build a better life for themselves? Or the when the original people that left England on wooden ships and landed in this land with no Quik Trip convenience store to go get a snack. How about those that took on long cattle drives from Texas to the railheads in Kansas for a whopping $30 a month? All while risking life and limb with no Trauma Center to go to if they got shot or bit by a snake. We have definitely become a pampered people. |
Copperhead said:
Originally Posted by : Originally Posted by : Originally Posted by : Originally Posted by : Originally Posted by : Is trucking really WORTH it? That's a personal decision, and not one we can "inform" prospective drivers about. But, I think the majority of my fellow drivers on here would say that... for them... it was or IS. For ME... it is. I have always wanted my job to be a challenge. I would probably do this job for half the pay. ... And I would STILL be making more that I did as a "civilian." But, if the thought of a Class 8 truck pulling 80k pounds or MORE is a "scary thought" for any of our readers... you might want to re-think joining the club. The myth that ANY man/woman can drive a truck and make a career out of it is nonsense. |
it a easy job sit down all day get out of truck un load then go get another one ,ha what about the breaker outs in the bush ,flat out all day up and down the hills stropping up and block changes,mate we got it easy ive done both jobs
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Originally Posted by Copperhead: Originally Posted by Copperhead: |
Originally Posted by GMAN: I can offer the perspective of someone who pretty much got burnt out on trucking, hung it up, and tried everything at my disposal to find another way to earn a living. The unpaid time was definitely part of my thinking at that point in my life. I was driving for an O/O who had a truck leased on with Nationwide Express out of Shelbyville, TN. They were a fantastic bunch of folks to work for, but they got an F in the maintenance department. Because I actually gave some kind of a crap about what kind of equipment I would pull, I was donating 20+ hours a week sitting in this shop in the middle of nowhere, waiting on some fat, slow moron to hurry up and fix the laundry list of problems. I tried not giving a crap once, and I got cited for three bad wheel seals, four bad sets of brake shoes, a bad brake valve, a leaking airline, and a broken spring; all on the same trailer that had just gotten a federal sticker a week previously. Thank God that was before CSA 2010! That kind of thing put me of a mind that going back to Wally World to make $10 an hour would put me better off than sitting around all that time for free, earning nothing. So I went back, and worked in the tire shop for three years. Now I have a fresh perspective on why trucking is about the best job you can get unless you have a degree in astrophysics or engineering or something. Believe me, I looked at going to grad school for a second/better/improved degree, because my first university degree just isn't marketable, and I could find nothing to gamble my time and money on. I think our universities would be going out of business a lot sooner if we had a larger number of experienced people crunching the numbers before signing the dotted line on all those loans. I'm no genius with business stuff, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to plug some titles and certifications into job search engines, and find out that nobody is hiring anybody with those letters appended to their name, so it's pointless to pay for them. You want to know what people are hiring? A lot of useless scam offers where you can make $500,000 a day in your underwear selling Chia pets by mail, retail/food service drones, and truck drivers. That's what. At the end of the day, even if trucking only pays $8 an hour, you're never going to get 70 hours working anywhere else. Wally World will write you up and eventually fire you if you accidentally work 0.01 hour of overtime, and you have to be in a pretty important position there to get remotely close to 40 hours in the first place. 40 * $10 is $400. 70 * $8 is $560. Trucking wins, my friend. If either of these incomes seems to suck, you need to take a look around at what wages are doing in this country. We're a lot worse off than we were 10 years ago in terms of how much the average earner is bringing home when compared with the cost of living. Wages are plummeting for everyone everywhere, and expenses are skyrocketing. What's that, you say? You'll just get a second job, and work 40 hours at one job, and 30 at the other, and make $700 a week? Lots of luck with that, my friend. Everybody wants you to have open availability, and they'll damn well schedule you whenever their business needs dictate, or you won't get the hours. Try juggling two jobs that flip your schedule around constantly, and never work you the same hours two days in a row, or give you the same days off two weeks in a row. Try getting two employers to coordinate with you on your schedule here and there, and they'll both decide you just aren't worth the bother of keeping on. It's an employer's market right now, and if you want to stay employed, you have to take even the most crappy joke of a job very seriously, or they will can you so fast your head will spin. Call in too many times, can't work these hours because of a conflict with another job? Buh-bye. At the end of it all, I'm pretty glad to be back trucking. Working (or commuting 110 miles a day; ouch) 500,000,000 hours a week and having utterly no life whatsoever really sucks, and the only advantage to being home every day is that I never have to sit around in some truckstop or factory somewhere waiting on dispatch to find me a load. Even so, I'm good at this, and it's the most money I can get in a week doing anything legal, even though I have a four-year degree with a 3.43 GPA. I get where this guy is coming from in terms of the job not seeming to pay that much for the level of danger involved. I get that much more than the average truck driver, since I pull a gasoline tanker now. This is pretty much on the upper end of being as dangerous as trucking gets, but it really isn't in the very top tier in terms of the pay scale. The pay is good, but not great, and it definitely feels a bit light when LTL pays a good bit more for work that's dramatically less dangerous. I like my job though. LTL rhymes with hell. This gas haulin' thing is alright, and I've pretty much found a new home after wandering in the woods since 2007. The pay isn't great, but you either love this stuff or you hate it, and I'm pretty amused so far. Especially when somebody reminds me to turn in a pay sheet for some trivial thing I wouldn't have remembered to charge them for, like waiting on my day driver to get back. I didn't have much of a life when I was working at Walmart anyway. You can take the trucker out of the truck, but you can't take the truck out of the trucker. I'm a solitary person who hates punching a damn time clock, and I like to go do my thing and go home. Most days are kind of screwed up for one reason or another, but on those rare days when everything clicks perfectly, I can earn my money in 7 hours and kick back, instead of trying to find some way to try to look busy for another 5 hours so I don't lose pay. Punching a clock sucks. YMMV, but making $X an hour really just isn't everything. |
Good insight Silvan, gives younger potential drivers something else to ponder before making a decision of whether to be or not to be a trucker.
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I am going to jump right in here and give my two cents!
Ponder this: The trucker who "trained" my hubby had a masters degree in some kind of stock broker/finance thing I think. When my hubby asked him why he was driving a truck, he said "Well, when I graduated with the masters, I had all this student loan debt hanging over my head. I really got to thinking about how I was going to pay off that debt and have a steady income to eat on. Think about this, what JOB will always be there in the good times and the bad times? What jobs do you always find posted in the want ads in newspapers?" Work Steady!!! Forget the "hourly wage" calculation. |
Originally Posted by Roxie: Lot more college edumacated folk out here driving truck than most will admit to.... And we have paid dearly to learn that lesson. |
College educated is a broad statement. It's kind of like down here in South Florida I meet a lot of immigrants that judge the whole country on the people down here. I tell them this is a huge country with many many different cultures. Well so it is with college educated. I mean college educated in what? Law? Business? Medical? or My wife is "college educated" and makes three times what someone in a truck would make but she's specialized and has certain licenses besides the degree. She also has more stress.
I couldn't agree more with what Gman wrote about driving. That wasn't work to me (well most of the time). I would just drive and drive and listen to my radio and be in peace. I don't think there is one answer. The job is what it is. It pays what it does. Some will find it worth it and others won't. It doesn't mean one is wrong or the other is right. Some people would complain no matter how much they make. It's not always about the money. And sometimes it is. I mean if you need money a clean license and you are good to go. As they say, boys do what they want to do and men do what they have to do. |
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