Arent you just trading office problems for truck driver/dispatch problems? I mean they say awhole list of things about ow you wont be overworked and wont this or that, but then you wind up driving more than you are told you will, longer days and fib in your travel logbook, theyve got trackers in the cabs, some have governors, reimbursment problems, etc.
Everything I have heard from rruck driver people I talk with is that they all really enjoyed local truck driving gigs far more than long haul. Driving that you could go home to every night.
There is a lot of pressure to work 14 hour days or more and a professional driver cannot afford to make more than a few mistakes, no matter how tired they might be or new.
I’m working towards getting my professional chauffer’s license. However, I’m apprenticing for working for a funeral home. They will take older people who can still work. If you’re healthy and not put off by dead bodies, that could be a viable career and you could make about what you are making now in a couple of years.
Sounds like you have some good sources to talk with right now.
25ish years ago, when I was still an LT in the Army I remember two Bird Colonels, husband and wife, retired and hit the road as long haul truckers. Never heard from them again but I often wonder how long they stayed on the road.
Best wishes as you sort this out.
I also considered a truck driving career change and looked into C.E. England too.
I read the reviews about them from graduate drivers and the majority were negative.
It is free training and licensure, but they try to make you lease trucks from them for outrageous fees and other slight-of-hand scams.
So, bottom line: Let the buyer beware.
It does cost between $5-$6K to get trained and get a CDL; that might be a safer choice.
Oh, I did end up retiring :-)
This family was involved in the office end of major trucking company, and our recommendation to a FRiend is IF you want to be on the road, meet people, have a life DON’T INVOLVE YOURSELF WITH THE BIG guys. IF you like being abused, run ragged, screwed, and made to feel less than a human, then go for it.
IF you can afford the school yourself, then perhaps you could look at becoming an owner operator, and tie in with a company running specific lanes. You then could control your own destiny without being at the mercy of a bunch of l-I-a-r-s, which is how one spells dispatcher these days.
It’s an ugly life running a company rig at the mercy of a bunch of clowns looking out for themselves.
FWIW This family was involved in BIG Trucking for 35 years.
One bit of advice I would offer is that there's a huge difference between a "local" driver (who returns to the same location every day) and an "over-the-road" (OTR) driver (who spends many days away from home at a time. The local driver is typically paid on an hourly basis, while the OTR driver is paid on a per-mile basis. The OTR pay system is fraught with headaches and inefficiencies, since you can only drive limited hours per day and per week, and you have no control over things like weather delays, congestion, delays at loading docks (you're considered on-duty when the truck is being unloaded but you aren't getting paid for the time), etc.
The turnover rate in the long-haul trucking business is very high, for the reasons I've described.
Let me know via Freep-mail if you have any specific opportunities that you want to run past me, and I'll see what other advice I can give you.
The reason businesses can’t schedule trucks is because the big trucking outfits ran the independents into the ground and working for the bigs sucks. Pay for the most part is crap, long hours, lots of time away, or if you are short haul lots of cargo to handle, government regs that compromise your license, pressure to make time, and 1 infraction or accident and you are out the door. Not all driving jobs are like this but the cream jobs go to the best most experienced drivers. The industry is short something like 200,000 drivers, think about why in this economy. I sense a shift in the industry lately, so who knows.
I used to work with some truckers. I remember one guy whose name, believe it or not was Diesel. He had gotten himself deeply in debt and was paying it off at a thousand dollars a week. He was managing OK but keeping his fingers crossed that his truck did not require any major repairs.
What that told me was that he was dealing in a lot of money and this was back in the 80s. A lot of risk but a lot of money to be made.
I did get the impression that they worked pretty hard.
I can’t give you any advice on a career change but there is a trucker on YouTube that my kids like watching. He has a few videos on what it’s like as a career. Just search for Trucker Josh.
It’s not truck driving but a retired friend got a job re-positioning rental cars. Part time and he was home most nights.
Some Jr colleges have driver training courses for CDLs.
My Dad was both a city driver and an OTR trucker hauling new trucks and cars as well as working on the railroad with a piggy packer, loading truck trailers onto flatbed train cars.
He never owned his own truck. His favorite job was working as an air freight driver using a fairly small truck for short citywide jaunts where he was home every night and the hours were regular.
After most of his kids were grown he took the OTR job because of layoff and he actually enjoyed it, but that was because the company he worked for had no problem with the wife and kids staying in the hotel they paid for [they encouraged it to prevent marital troubles I suppose, which could lead to good drivers quitting.] That company did not have him staying in dumpy hotels, either. He couldn’t have done it with young kids but it was fine with teens and in some ways he got more family time as an OTR trucker than as a city driver. We would drive to meet him on some weekends and we would visit things like the Air Force museum in Ohio, the beaches on the Gulf, or just some attraction he thought we all could enjoy. And there was a lot less rivalry and sabotage from jealous coworkers than he’d seen at the city job- no one was together in one place long enough to develop much dislike for others.
The job required a good deal more care than a regular truck though, because they were hauling new I import vehicles from the port to rail terminals along with new cars made at various US plants, to dealerships, sometimes with special order vehicles, and the vehicles were exposed to the elements, vandals, and everything from hail to low tree branches, road debris, to illegals trying to sneak rides, and just general screw-ups like slipped chains cracking windows, etc, and nothing is pickier than a special order new car owner.
And in some small towns the arrival of a truck loaded with cars was as good as the arrival of a world renowned celebrity- people literally set up lawn chairs and coolers to watch truckers unload vehicles, especially if they are waiting for their own.
I lived that very situation. It only gets worse as time passes. At first you try to step it up, then you realize that there is nothing you can do to fix it and toss in the towel while you wait for the inevitable.
There is no reason to get out of your current line of work, take your skills and go somewhere else.
The upside is there is definitely a truck somewhere with your name on it. If you have a CDL, even if you have no experience, if you demonstrate you can drive without hitting anything, and if you can even remotely show up on time, you've got a job. Every carrier I know has 10 trucks sitting against the fence, empty. Drivers are impossible to get, which probably means that pay will at some point go even higher.
Send me a private FReepmail if you want more details. Good luck!
I look at tax returns from truck drivers almost on a daily basis. Right now an average owner/operator who is buying 1 truck and 1 trailer grosses $200,000 to $250,000 per year. By the time he gets done paying for fuel, repairs, insurance, finance costs, etc., that same trucker will take home $40,000 to $45,000. We see some truckers grossing as little as $150,000, and some grossing as much as $300,000. It’s pretty rare to see an owner/operator net $50,000 or more with 1 truck/trailer.
On the other hand, we see company drivers making $60,000 to $70,000 per year (but with lots of years of service) and they want to switch to being an owner/operator since they think they’ll make a ton more money. In reality, they get more freedom, but there’s almost no way to make that much money as a non-company driver. Keeping rigs on the road is expensive. A local-haul (200 mile radius) company driver can probably expect to make right around $50,000.
If you pay for your CDL training up front to be an owner/operator, you’ll probably pay 20-30% interest to get your truck financed since you have no CDL experience. Most finance companies want 2 years time in business and the ones who do new drivers charge a lot for the risk. Your best bet is to work for a trucking company for 2 years, then switch to an owner/operator if you’re interested. At that point, you’d have 2 years of driving experience and could probably find someone to finance up to $75,000 for a truck for around 10% interest (this due to you being a “startup”).
He was most wonderful man.....could be tough as nails and gentle as a kitten. He is missed around these parts. He would have been a fantastic resource for you.
Kathy in alaska made a lovely thread in his memory. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3066948/posts
RIP Blackie Owens 10-1930 to 9-2013
after the electronic repair business was going south I went to a job fair, saw people for truck driving I took a short test at the site was told I would qualify all my schooling was paid for by a grant from the lottery went to school for 3 weeks and upon finishing the classes I was hired on the spot by a trucking company one of the many that were their. I worked with a partner we did well together I enjoyed the traveling we drove 5 hours on 5 hours off mostly east coast to west coast we made good money sometimes a bonus for early delivery of a load. some times the runs were bad we didn’t care for airport runs or hazard material runs but all in all enjoyed the driving. we would work for 3 or 4 weeks at a time then 6 or 7 days off home time. was hard for me as I had wife with young children but unless you have some over the road experience local driving jobs wont hire you at least that was my experience. I left after a year collected my bonus for signing up and secured a local 40 hour a week job which I had for about 12 years before retiring. one good part was the sights you would see in cars from the cab of the truck LOL the stories I could tell you.
You will have to take a DOT physical every couple years. When you do, their newest bogeyman is sleep disorders.
I have a CDL that I use as a volunteer bus driver for a Christian Camp.
Their threshold for diagnosing a sleep disorder is so low, nearly everyone is at risk.
They ask a few stupid questions like “If you lie down in the evening to watch TV, do you fall asleep.” I thought, well, since I don’t watch TV until an hour or so before my normal bedtime, sometimes I nod off, so I answered “Sometimes.”
Or how about this doozy? “If you lie down in the afternoon, do you fall asleep?” Yea, that’s the point, all four times a year I get to take a nap.
The last question asked if I had ever fallen asleep while driving. Never even close.
Suddenly, I’m denied my CDL. I go to a real bonafide sleep specialist and take a sleep study. Turns out that I have what’s called Mild Sleep Apnea. So mild that my specialist said that if the government wasn’t involved, he wouldn’t see the need for any treatment.
Bye the way, he laughed out loud at the DOT diagnoses method.
If I choose to proceed, it’s another sleep study and a CPAP, which I don’t need, or, I can give up my license.
I wrote a letter to my useless rat congressman to advise him that DOT is endangering the trucking industry.
I got a letter back thanking me for sending him a letter. It might as well have read “Eat Your Ovaltine.”
Keep this in mind as you answer those questions.
If you really want to OTR, get the experience of driving any big rig for a while, to get familiar with the basics (the good, the bad, and the in between). I’m almost 61, and have pulled eleven different types of trailers, pulled both OTR and local, so maybe I can give a few tips.
The only way to really learn is experience. It helps to have good habits and instincts of awareness, not only of what is going on around you, but the ‘extending of your nerves’ into the machine. I’ve seen people that somwhow got through CDL class A training, that just have no ‘feel’, and are rough on equipment, even dangerous behind the wheel.
I witnessed that in the aviation world as well, painfully watching a medical doctor land his Piper at the local airport, as though he was landing on an aircraft carrier (he just never seemed to get the feel of flaring out; just kept slamming it on the runway).
Some people are just not wired for driving big rigs. But, if you feel that you are, then go for it. Here are some facts about OTR:
Dry vans pay the least, because it requires the least skill and physical labor.
Reefers are more versatile than the dry vans; able to do perishable and non-perishable loads. But, the perishable is more time critical, of course, meaning that traffic and weather delays can force you to push harder than you would prefer.
Feed/grain hopper work is good for avoiding the much (not all!) of the inner big city loadings and deliveries. (I’ve hauled nearly 30 different products in a feed hopper. Some products slide out good, some not so good.)
End dump is most commonly a local work trailer, but the ‘frameless’ ones do long haul, and is comparable to the kind of work feed hoppers do. You have to know how to NOT upset one when it is raised all the way in bad conditions (but it happens to the best operators. I’ve pulled end dumps more than anything else, know most of the tricks, and thank God, I haven’t flopped one over...yet).
Tankers are more subject to load shift, and depending on product may require hazmat. But, if you want better pay than dry van, and a lot less physical work than flatbed or stepdeck (there are still hoses to wrestle), then you might like it.
Flatbed and stepdeck is better pay, but more labor intensive (chains, straps, tarps, bungees. all of which is a real pain in bad weather).
RGN (removeable gooseneck) is the most common trailer for oversize loads. The pay is better, and oversize forces you to run daylight hours, thereby guaranteeing a night’s rest.
One thing about long haul: once you are loaded, and have ‘all your ducks in a row’, then the drives can sometimes be scenic, almost a mini vacation. If time for a particular delivery is such that you have no need to push hard, sometimes a different route that is shorter in miles, but longer in time, gets one away from the crowds, and the ‘bumping elbows’ of the ‘big roads’ (just make sure that you are legal to be on the roads you take).
Now for local:
For dry van, it generally pays less and/or requires LOTS of city driving.
For flatbed or stepdeck, the repeated loading and unloading (chains, straps, tarps, etc.) during the day, is best for younger bodies, imo.
Construction hauling; usually end dumps, but also live bottoms, can be tonnage rate pay or hourly. Some construction jobs pay a respectable prevailing wage, by law. But, I’ve been on tonnage jobs that paid better than prevailing wage (but the quarry usually wasn’t busy those days, so loading was fast). Asphalt is usually hourly, and I don’t mind it (especially if the paver breaks down, one is still on the clock. They’ve got a lot of money sitting there cooling down, and they know it).
As far as logs; I’ve never used electronic, so I can’t help you there. If they ever outlaw looseleaf logs, I’m done OTR.
I’ve never owned a big rig in the 14 years I’ve held a class A license, so I can’t give a lot of advice on the subject. (I farmed before that, and had my own straight trucks, and fifth wheel livestock and flatbed trailers.)
You will find many trucking videos on youtube that can give instruction (some are even funny).
Trucks these days are equipped with all kinds of electronics that constantly transmit your location, speed, etc., back to "HQ" so the freedom of the open road appears to be a thing of the past. If you decide on a whim to pull into a rest stop, you will likely get a call from HQ asking you why you did that - unless you already worked it out with them ahead of time. Ditto if you are speeding, slowing down, changing lanes, etc. The company now sees it all and will likely want to know why.
I have another relative that works as an UPS driver and he reports the same thing. Drivers are so micromanaged that the mother ship knows exactly where they are at any given time and if they dally too much on a particular stop, they are getting a phone call. They are also forbidden to take left turns and must always work their way around their route by taking right turns.
Also, no room for error. Just one minor accident or mishap can leave a serious blemish on your record and just one or two more will run you out of the business for good.
Maybe it's different with smaller trucking companies or for local drivers.
On another note, a co-worker of mine who retired from an executive position a few years ago is now a limo driver and he absolutely loves it. This is a guy who was making over $200K a year and now he takes teens to proms, handles weddings, bachelor parties, etc. Says he makes about $50K a year but doesn't even need the money - he just does it for fun.
90% of his job is just sitting in his limo and reading books on his Kindle while waiting for his customers to come out of whatever function they are at.
This might be something to look into as opposed to the high-pressure job of driving the big rigs. Good luck.