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Originally Posted by Super 8
How many hours per week on average?
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Hey Super 8, I'm a LTL city driver (P&D="pickup and delivery") and I usually work anywhere from 40-55 hours per week. I'm home everynight and every weekend and I'm paid by the hour for everything I do. So if the truck breaks down or a customer holds me up I don't really care cause the meter's running. You can tell who's OTR and who's local at the dock because the OTR guys are the ones glaring at the forklift drivers with daggers in their eyes. But if someone's dumb enough to wait around for free then they generally deserve what they get if you ask me. Alot of the LTL's pay overtime after the 8th/40th hour, which makes for some really nice paychecks without having to work round the clock like in OTR.
P&D isn't for everyone, tho. You'll easily hit more docks in a day than an OTR driver does in a week. Depending on your route, you can bang out anywhere from 15-30 stops per day. Usually you'll deliver or pickup a pallet or two although we do have some volume loads as well. 8:30 AM to about 12:00-2:00 PM is generally your timeframe for deliveries, and then 12:00-6:00 PM is when you do your pickups (this varies everyday depending on how fast you go, freight volumes, and when certain customers close).
Because you're paid by the hour, your boss will want you to get as much stuff off/on the truck as you can. So you're usually hustling to get done. However, once you know the roads and your customers, it's a fairly easy job. It's also much more challenging then holding a steering wheel for 11-hours straight. What I like the most is constantly solving problems, meeting people, flirting with the girls, and BSing with other drivers on my route. Sure there's some A-holes, but the majority of people are really cool. There's also a comaradeire amongst LTL P&D drivers that probably doesn't exist anywhere else in trucking.