Mathematically, Can I come out ahead trucking...with what company?

[k_squared]

So, let's say that I have a $12 an hour job (that I would do for fun occasionally).

Based on pay alone, how long will it take me to make up the difference between working that job and driving a truck, as the not-really-proud holder of a shiny new CDL? If it costs me a few thousand dollars to get it, it's looking like a wash for quite a while - particularly if I'm used to overtime.

What I really want to do is drive for a year (or however long it takes :/) to save up tuition for engineering school.

As such, let's say I'm willing to go over the road. I care about income. I don't care if it's a nice truck, I don't care if my driving my partner likes my pecs or something weird, I'm willing to give up my other streams of income (ie, graphic art, but its not much) in order to do this as quickly as possible.

What companies should I be interested in starting with? I know it's a very broad question, but the array of options is bewildering and has nonlinear effects (simple example: even if I have a financial wash, I now have long-haul trucking experience?) and I can't seem to decide that one program is definitively better than the other.

What is the fail rate of all those training schools trucking companies themselves offer?

 

[IR0ND0G]

Short answer, I quit my $17 an hour job because within 6 months time, I can be making substantially more.
Long answer, Notice I said "can be making", that will be determined by what I put into it. If you request home time every 2 weeks, turn down loads, whine about loads or where they are going, yeah, you could make a lot less. As to the failure/success rates of company sponsored training, most of the large carriers that offer it obviously do well enough if they are that big of a carrier. You will always find people to bash companies, there's no shortage of that. But if you listen to some of their stories about all these bad companies they've worked for, you'll see only 1 common theme, the person doing the bashing, and that will always be their theme wherever they go. Look at Roehl, Prime, WilTrans, Jim Palmer, TMC, Swift, Celadon, Knight, and etc... You obviously can read, so go read what they offer, what is the commitment, pay or no pay, and whatever.

 

[mndriver]

I make more driving a truck than I did working as an engineer tech at $20+/ hour.

 

[Ranger_375]

38 cents a mile for a rookie.
65mph limited truck.

What is the hourly pay, times a 10 hour drive shift?

 

[Electric Chicken]

Well, maybe I'm an oddball lucky one but I went from $15/hr to trucking and basically doubled my salary with the first job. Second job almost tripled it a year and a half later.

Not sure how that factors into your overanalyzing but clearing up my credit and rebuilding it to the point where I can buy a new truck on the lowest interest rates available in a year and a half seems like a win to me.

This was also going from one commonly bashed mega carrier to another possibly even more commonly bashed mega carrier.

 

[Electric Chicken]

38 cents a mile for a rookie.
65mph limited truck.

What is the hourly pay, times a 10 hour drive shift?

Average 50-55mph over the course of the day, maybe 60 depending where you're at. We're load planned on 45 I believe, being northeast and using rural roads quite often. One route takes me 3.5-4 hours to go 115 miles.

 

[Ranger_375]

Not sure how that factors into your overanalyzing but clearing up my credit and rebuilding it to the point where I can buy a new truck on the lowest interest rates available in a year and a half seems like a win to me.

You should use the word "pickup" instead of truck, methinks, if you want to be truthful.

My general rule/plan is hitting 500+ in under 8.5 hours of driving, a day, if I am not working states with pacific beaches.

 

[Electric Chicken]

You should use the word "pickup" instead of truck, methinks, if you want to be truthful.

My general rule/plan is hitting 500+ in under 8.5 hours of driving, a day, if I am not working states with pacific beaches.

Pickup truck. In context I think most know what I'm talking about. Calling it a truck is not being untruthful. An 18 wheeler truck is a tractor.

 

[Electric Chicken]

You should use the word "pickup" instead of truck, methinks, if you want to be truthful.

My general rule/plan is hitting 500+ in under 8.5 hours of driving, a day, if I am not working states with pacific beaches.

500+ in 8.5 hours? Maybe across Texas. You must not pee either. I'm not a fan of UTIs so I drive normally and stop when I need to. Anything more than that is short term money and long term unhealthy.

Put another way:

You'd have to do 65mph for 8 hours solid with absolutely no slow downs or bathroom breaks to get 520 miles in. That's not sustainable and I don't know anyone who can hold it in for that long.

 

[Ranger_375]

........

Have you not noticed what the experienced people here do on the regular? Doing 500 in 8.5 is cake. It also allows for steady recap vice resets.

Stay local my friend, the open road is no place for being scared of a headlight bulb.

 

[Electric Chicken]

Math and reality do not lie. Insults do nothing for you.

Your truck is governed at 65mph. It ain't gonna do that climbing a hill loaded down. Hauling ass down the hill doesn't make up for the time lost climbing. It doesn't work that way. There's traffic. There are accidents. Unexpected slow downs.

A 65mph truck tends to average 50-55mph maybe 60. My 60mph truck is more like 45-50.

I'm not a veteran like some of the folks here but I've been doing it slightly longer than you have and I probably run more loads in my 5 day work week than you do in twice that time, if not a month. I know how much time stuff takes.

You know how you do 500+ miles consistently "cake"? You get an ungoverned truck.

 

[Electric Chicken]

If you said 500+ miles a day in your 11, yeah no problem. I do 300-400 miles and about 3-4 loads a day in my 14. In 8 and a half? Nope. Sometimes, when you're on flat open land and it's a pure driving day then sure. But nah it won't be regular. And it won't be cake. You won't do 2500 miles in 40 hours in a 65mph truck all the time.

 

[Ranger_375]

Yep, sure, ok.

I averaged 67 from CA to NC in my 65 limited truck. Just one example of knowing how to make equipment work better.

You have 1.whatever years of local experience. I have about a year's experience pure OTR.
Different world.
It is cake.
It is easy, enjoyable, profitable.

I wake up on time for departure with planned crossing for the urban areas enroute on leg 1, outside of dense traffic.
Hit the bathroom.
Eat breakfast.
Pretrip.
Roll for 4 hours on leg 1 jamming out to tunes, bsing on the cb, bsing with the family, bsing with friends.
Take my 30 or more to space leg 2 with urban areas, execute bodily functions before rolling
Repeat rocking out and bsing for 4ish more hours. Maybe run some video in there.
Park.
3S break if at a truck stop or terminal, 1S if at a rest stop, preplan functions if dry site parking
Dinner/skype/game/publish video with/for the family
Sleep.

It is that easy. The only under 500 days are pick/drop days, and you can make those work to your advantage by having food on the truck, so that time at the dock is working double duty for your break.

You don't do the same miles because you do the multiple drop/hooks you brag about, which each eat time that decreases your daily miles and average speed. It's only good for you since you get cpm plus a static pay per load. That's why I get local pay for short runs, or extra pays for stops, load rescues, driver shuttles, etc etc etc. Offsets time I could be actually moving a load forward, or moving forward to a load.

There is actually a whole lotta space between cities where you can just roll on. Local peeps never see it, though. I know it boggles your mind, but since you DON'T DO OTR, you will just have to take other peoples word about something which you apparently have zero experience WITH.

But then your INexperience rears it's head, when you want to try to apply your confined view of the industry to another complete segment outside your purview, and get confused because you don't know what you don't know.

I know I am a neophyte in the industry. When experience talks, I listen and correlate multiple sources as trucker tips vary in factual amount as well as value... and if it checks out, it gets filed.

Just like how a dolly is in effect a whole trailer by itself. Just like how I didn't get Injun's coin trick.

Take some notes instead of just typing to read your own words on the internet. You might actually find you learn something new that challenges your current understanding of the industry and varied workings within it.

 

[Electric Chicken]

Alright supertrucker. Averaging 67 in a 65 governed truck. Sure thing.

 

[Electric Chicken]

I didn't say you can't ever do 500 miles in an 8 hour clip, but it ain't a daily occurrence. As in every. Single. Day. It's not consistent. That's a stars align and you don't have any hangups along the way kind of day. I've done your mileage locally so yes I know it's possible. But no, you're not doing 2500 miles in a 40 hour driving week every week. I can guarantee that, OTR or not. Physics won't allow it.

Remember you're keeping yourself pigeonholed to this 8 hour thing so you can work every day, which is another thing I think will catch up to you eventually. I completely believe in 500+ using your 11 and I've never argued otherwise. But there is NO WAY you're keeping that truck at 67 average on the regular. I hope you're not planning your household budget around that.

 

[Ranger_375]

10k load.

See, you again make assumptions about things you don't know, or even bother to ask.

I am going to bed, as I have a 539 mile day tomorrow. That will take a near full drive shift because of LA and CA in general. Don't want to violate your physics theories or anything, it might make a wiper blade crack on ya.

 

[Electric Chicken]

You drive 10,000lb loads all the time? Nothing but those nice easy pulling routes the whole way? And that only helps you climb easier. It doesn't push you much to gain speed coming down.

I'm not talking about something you've managed to do once. Who cares. I'm talking about calculating a projected income. What have you done the last month or two that shows some consistency? That's what matters. You don't have a year where you're at so you can't look at what you REALLY should be looking at.

Ideally you need to look at your past four seasons to see the ups and downs and can average it out to figure your annual salary. You can't look at one light load with a tailwind and disregard the hook time, and then figure that's your income.

And I know you don't have a year in. Just last April you started a thread saying you were STARTING with a trainer. It doesn't take much to look.

 

[mndriver]

Alright supertrucker. Averaging 67 in a 65 governed truck. Sure thing.

You have no concept of a LONG downgrade that can happen over 50+ miles out west do you?

I'm talking a 4000'+ drop.

Mt Sherman in Wyoming peaks at 8700' and it's 50 miles to Cheyenne. You drop almost 3000'. You don't even get that size of pull in the east or ever reach that elevation. Ever.

You leave Cheyenne and by the time you hit grand island, you dropped the other 4000' down to 1000' elevation. Going west, he'll be working that truck and you'd swear everything under the sun is wrong. Come east, you'd be praising everything how great it runs.

You'd roll east of the Mississippi and it would blow your mind.

Just maybe then, you'd realize how messed up in the head most of these jacked up fleets are in the way they train driver's and have them running their equipment and how they are specd. But then again, they are specd on the safe side so nothing would burn up. Give a steering wheel holder my truck, he'd blow an engine first time out and running a grade. It takes skill and knowledge to run big power that you really need to pull mountains.

Running between little America WY and pendelton ore yesterday, I turned 702 miles. That included over 200 miles of long hard pulls. Three sisters in Wyoming, I84 on the ID/UT line. Cabbage pass Oregon.

You've got zero grasp of the ability of trucks to run out here and really make them work.

@Ranger_375 can very easily turn 500 in a 8 1/2 hour day.

Easily.

Just by keeping the left door closed and rolling along. You don't make miles pulling into every truckstop that happens along out here. We left Eden ID yesterday and when we stopped 400 miles later, we were 30 miles past out goal. In 5 3/4 hours.

Please. Tell me we can't do that and how it's not possible. Because for both my trucks, that's the norm. Not the exception. You want to run a rig like that, you will change lightbulbs, fuel filters and what not. Trucker's feel free to apply. Steering wheel holders can go talk to a fleet and drive their castrated road blocks and be micromanaged. Driving that takes skill and knowledge the way it was taught old school. Knowing what a pyro and a boost gauge is and what they are telling you that you can and can't do.

Collecting every door you pass going up grades and the western mountains are flat. Even running 80,000 pounds.

You make bank too. In ways no company driver ever imagined.

 

[Electric Chicken]

You have no concept of a LONG downgrade that can happen over 50+ miles out west do you?

I'm talking a 4000'+ drop.

Mt Sherman in Wyoming peaks at 8700' and it's 50 miles to Cheyenne. You drop almost 3000'. You don't even get that size of pull in the east or ever reach that elevation. Ever.

You leave Cheyenne and by the time you hit grand island, you dropped the other 4000' down to 1000' elevation. Going west, he'll be working that truck and you'd swear everything under the sun is wrong. Come east, you'd be praising everything how great it runs.

You'd roll east of the Mississippi and it would blow your mind.

Just maybe then, you'd realize how messed up in the head most of these jacked up fleets are in the way they train driver's and have them running their equipment and how they are specd. But then again, they are specd on the safe side so nothing would burn up. Give a steering wheel holder my truck, he'd blow an engine first time out and running a grade. It takes skill and knowledge to run big power that you really need to pull mountains.

Running between little America WY and pendelton ore yesterday, I turned 702 miles. That included over 200 miles of long hard pulls. Three sisters in Wyoming, I84 on the ID/UT line. Cabbage pass Oregon.

You've got zero grasp of the ability of trucks to run out here and really make them work.

@Ranger_375 can very easily turn 500 in a 8 1/2 hour day.

Easily.

Just by keeping the left door closed and rolling along. You don't make miles pulling into every truckstop that happens along out here. We left Eden ID yesterday and when we stopped 400 miles later, we were 30 miles past out goal. In 5 3/4 hours.

Please. Tell me we can't do that and how it's not possible. Because for both my trucks, that's the norm. Not the exception. You want to run a rig like that, you will change lightbulbs, fuel filters and what not. Trucker's feel free to apply. Steering wheel holders can go talk to a fleet and drive their castrated road blocks and be micromanaged. Driving that takes skill and knowledge the way it was taught old school. Knowing what a pyro and a boost gauge is and what they are telling you that you can and can't do.

Collecting every door you pass going up grades and the western mountains are flat. Even running 80,000 pounds.

You make bank too. In ways no company driver ever imagined.

Are you governed to 65 also? Do you have elogs watching over you?

 

[mndriver]

I don't need to program my ECM.

We have been driving 63-65 all week just to see if it would be better fuel mileage.

Who is "we"?

@JunkYardDog5958 blew his engine on Tuesday so we've been teaming it since.

Big power isn't about running fast. It's about consistent speed.

Same as leaving the left door closed.