Driving for a company, local, pays about $0.30 a mile. $45-55,000. You get to be home a lot, work 40 hours, it works for some.
Long haul, for a company, their rig, is a round trip, maybe triangle, 10 days on the road making time.
5500 miles, $1 a mile. A day is 10 10, 20 hour, so more. What else you got to do in Kansas? 120 hours in ten days.
The ICC says 10 hours on the road, 10 hours rest, and makes you keep logs. Living any one place you might be home several days a month.
Companies buy cheap triucks, and run them to death, drivers too. Having your own tractor, with a $5,500 seat, soundproffing, a sleeper, Internet, tunes, is tax deductable to the driver, and companies do not have to keep up the rig. It pays to own.
Trailers are cargo boxes, drop and pickup, 200 miles down the road with a load before they start unloading, few reasons to own one.
Getting there counts, but 550 in ten, and between the Highway Patrol, the ICC, 550 to 650 in 24 is as much as could be expected, do not stop in Vegas for two days with a load of lettuce bound for New York.
Drivers have nothing to do with loads, drop it at a dock, hitch another, gone. Check the tires, low eats fuel, replacing eats time, you have seen the tread along the Interstate, when it comes off, next rest, it gets replaced, sometimes sooner, watch the trailer tires.
Keneworth, Mack, White, Freightliner, all have a deal for working drivers, buy new, with a service plan, trucks run 200,000 miles a year. They will show you how you can make more, in comfort, buying from them. The truck earns $1,000,000+ in five years, and with the tax laws, the truck is a business expense. It eats fuel, and that too. It is all worked out at cents per mile, at changing rates and fuel prices, you can own it, if you will drive it for five years.
Only a million miles, with a rebuilt engine, trans, is like new, fresh from factory service, so sell and get a new one.
For most, the life is too lonely, long haul, light house attendant, fire watch, are hard jobs for social people. It is something like being dead, your social network falls apart. If you had a wife, she would see you a few days a month, or ride with you. a fair number of couple teams on the road, the truck is good to go with two drivers it is, always moving, always making money. Doubles the income.
Lots of guys ride solo, some bring relief drivers, good way to get some road time.
With good seats, power everything, more women are driving.
Drivers are professionals, for the miles they have a very low accident rate, but there are other people out there. What bothers most is, I will live, I was in the right, when that Pinto with five teens went under my wheels. You have seen the skid marks along the road, most drives would go over a cliff before taking out a family of idiots.
Modern trucks, both company and private, come with trip recorders, in good conditions 55 means 63, never ten over. 10 hours or 550 miles you rest, so 63 means more rest. Now it is hour by hour by internet, the company pays for fuel, mileage and time is recorded, for they are following hundreds of loads.
Like seamen, it is a life lived. Truck stops are ports, fuel, and to get you, good food, showers, drivers rooms, sleeping rooms, communication rooms, see the kids on the internet now. Truck stop girls had to leave the town they grew up in, they say they are looking for a ride, or being ridden, and would just as soon leave where they are, for it is a very portable business. They summed it up as, we do not pay rent.
It is a good life between 21 and 45. Cargo is worth, so no Felons, no drunks and druggies. Fair health, regular checkups, good corrected vision. The main thing is, you will be alone, maybe with one other, most of the time.
At $50 an hour, parking for a day is $600 income passed on. Solo drivers log hundreds of days without a break. Vacations come when the truck is being refit at the factory.
I have seen some rather small people driving long haul.
21, fair health, clean record, good vision, is about it.
Schools run six weeks, cost about $1000, it will get you the paper, past the driving test, but you are not a driver till you have some road time, have crossed the Rockies in winter. Can drive on snow, ice, in high winds, but since truckers are a lonely lot, and a bunch of know it alls, they will take on a relief, for they pay their own way in extra miles per day.
Companies will hire new drivers for short runs that do not pay, low road time, waiting for one load to be removed, another loaded. It is a high demand field, as most do retire at 45. By that time they are making more from their investments.
I knew several with cattle ranches. working the herd takes weeks per year, their vacation from the road to the saddle.
If you have no social life, would work all the time, it is a great life. Every day is a new world, something different to see, and it is no longer a map, you know it by views, curves, the surface of the Earth.
Some haul on contract, some as independant, taking it load at a time, and some become a trucking company, doing all the shipping for one or two companies.
How much you work, how much it pays, is open. It is a free life. Some drivers have five trucks and ten of their family working. Some haul cattle, calves raised in Florida, put on the range in Colorado for the summer, hauled to the slaughter house in the fall. Some own the truck and the ranch, buy the calves.
Pick a good truckstop, look at the rigs, do some homework, so you do not sound like an idiot, but an idiot with promise. Trucking is lonely, they will talk, admire the truck, it is their world. Do not touch it. It is a personal relationship, like a motorcycle. Looking is OK, touching is not, like girls.
Treat drivers like they see themselves, King of the Road. They even have their own music, many songwriters drive. They have time to work it out, and singing keeps them aleart.
"My rigs a little old,
but that don't mean she's slow,
got her all wound up,
and she's running like never before,
don't see a cop in sight,
I'm gonna make it home tonight,
six days on this road,
I'm gonna see my lttle baby tonight!"
10 Nov 2007, 3:44 pm
