Comments By Davy A.

You'll get more responses by posting this in the general section.

In general thought, not a lot of freight leaves Florida and the trucking industry as a whole right now is in the most severe crash it's ever experienced. We're over capacity on trucks and drivers. It's going to be difficult at best for a while to land a job with no experience when even seasoned drivers are having trouble

My previous DM had a long pleading session with me to train. Given how hard miles are to come by right now, I actually considered it. This makes me glad I didn't lol.

I've ended up doing a few brokered loads, which are spot. Whatever gives me miles. My miles are down by 2400 miles this month from what I normally run at. OS, have you seen any impact on your end as you're dedicated?

Knight is critically over staffed in dry van and refer. Certain markets are worse than others. CA is extremely difficult right now.

We had hundreds of trucks and empties sitting in our Fontana yard, waiting on loads. I sat for 1 day, I managed to get a 250 mile load out. I recieved a ton of glares on the way out. Spoke with another driver, high performing guy, he said it's been bad and getting worse. He had waited 4 days for a load.

Along with the damage being done to their drivers morale, there is starting to be some hints of DEI policies being implemented. There is an attempt to give loads based on first in, first out of an area. It rears its ugly head periodically. Instead of picking the high performing drivers that are best likely to serve the customer, in an effort to be "equal", and eliminate favoritism, which not all drivers are equal. Inferior drivers are being forced on a customer. Obviously, this practice is causing long term drivers to flee and resulting in increaed service failures, as it reduces the quality of your fleet, which in turn adds to loosing freight.

Today's load is 185 miles, it puts me right back down into Fontana, again lucky to be moving, but it's a horrible load in its own right. Coupled with a new DM, who doesn't know how to get loads out of the planners, and is young, it's not a good forecast.

I'm having to bill a ton of detention and layover, which helps with my immediate revenue but doesn't cover our loss of "bonuses" which requires 11k miles for the month. It comprises 8 cpm or roughly 880 to 1000.00 dollars per month. Again a very significant issue.

If I can find a company that offers the same flexibility, the same resources and equipment, the same or better pay, and more access to consistent miles, I may migrate. I'm reticent to do so because overall, my pay is much higher than it looks on paper. The company bends over backwards to accommodate my needs and wants and generally keeps me moving when others are not. I have a great relationship with my terminal manager and staff. Starting over at the bottom somewhere isn't appealing.

We have 4 different truck manufacturers in our fleet, in additionwe have day cabs. The seat to mirrors relationship is different in all of them. Each time you get in a new or different truck, you need to adjust the seat and mirrors to you. You may well need to adjust the mirrors to your back as well, even after you have adjusted them statically.

Also, I find I have to reposition my body to the mirrors on some backs as I'm backing. But in general, ypu should be able to find the range where you can see tandems and lines, markers, etc in the mirrors

As with most issues that goes to DC,

The FMCSA is a reflection of the woke administration (regime) that siezed power. In general, their agenda is praise the criminal and punish the victim.

The financial side of it is than in order, large retailers and shippers, then carriers benefit from having a large pool of drivers available. It reduces the labor burden for the carriers which in turn keeps drivers wages artificially low and the shippers and retailers continue to pay as little as possible for shipping.

Retailers and manufacturers hate having to pay for shipping. It's their single largest cost. They continue to post record profits while drivers continue to loose wage capacity.

I could forsee shoulder tapping police and sheriff's lobbying groups to combat it, perhaps organizations like Madd and faith based lobbying groups. But until the current regime is removed, little hope exists.

This conversation covers some of those gray areas in trucking I've talked about all these years, and it shows why bold, competitive drivers who are willing to push the envelope will turn the most miles and make the most money.

I loved being paid by the mile. In fact, I want everyone to be paid by the amount of work they accomplish. Not only is that fair, but I know almost no one will accomplish more than I will. I'm bold, I'm ambitious, and I will come up with creative solutions that get the job done when most won't. That's how I've always been, and quite honestly, I can't make sense of being any other way. That's how I was as a driver.

One decision I made when I started this website 17 years ago was to help people thrive in trucking exactly as it is today. I didn't want to be an activist. I didn't want to make changes in trucking. I felt most people focused on what was wrong with the industry. I wanted to teach people they could be incredibly happy and successful in this industry, exactly as it is today. Almost no one else does that, even to this day.

On that note, the reality is no different today than it was 30 years ago - bold, ambitious, competitive drivers will find ways to turn more miles, make more money, and get the best treatment. Those who want to complain, blame, criticize, or refuse to do work based on some perceived slight (real or imagined) will simply make less money and get a lower level of consideration for future work.

Did I do some of my work off-duty? Of course I did! And don't forget, I'm from the paper logbook era, so I was able to get away with way more than you guys can today. I didn't turn more miles overall than the top drivers are today, but I was able to rearrange my logbook so that I had more flexibility.

I also learned a ton of tricks over the years, some legal and ethical, some not. For instance, I learned to make up stories to tell dock workers about how much money I would lose if I couldn't get loaded/unloaded within a reasonable amount of time. I'd tell this big sob story, and the overwhelming majority of the time I got out of there faster than I would have otherwise.

I also learned to call the customer to get appointments moved ahead. I would say, "We have a driver coming in there for a 10:00 appointment, and we desperately need that driver to pick up another load later this morning. Could we get him unloaded at 8:00 instead?"

Now I never mentioned the fact that I was the driver. I just said 'we' have a driver coming in for an appointment. Our company. Well, that was true. But the thing is, the customers are far more likely to accommodate a request from my company's management than little ol' me, the driver. So I just kind of implied that I was a manager at my company, and it worked almost every time.

Davy is right. The system is designed for maximum efficiency. The company and the drivers are paid based on the amount of work they do. The more work they can do at a given cost, the more likely they are to survive in this industry. The companies that survive over the long term are the ones who keep finding ways to make their operations more efficient, so they do everything they can to incentivize their drivers to be as efficient as possible.

I'm not advising anyone to cheat the logbook or do work when you're off-duty. I'm also not telling you not to, unless you're a rookie in your first six months. Rookies should do things by the book. But as your career progresses, you must accept the reality that those who safely and successfully push the limits will make more money and get better treatment than those who won't.

You alone must decide what type of driver you want to be, and I don't fault anyone for their decision. If you feel you shouldn't have to work off duty or break any laws, no one can fault you for that. If you're willing to push into those territories, you're taking a big risk, so you'd better not screw up.

That's trucking.

This is exactly my philosophy. The worst pay structure for me is hourly. It simply doesnt produce as much as I do under piecework. Im highly motivated, bold, and very quick on my feet in terms problem solving and making a buck out of a dime. I understand that hourly works for others and dont discriminate whatsoever, you may have a job position where that makes more sense and serves you better, but for OTR and even regional, its the most direct way for me to have the most control over my earnings potential.

Grey areas of trucking are direct opportunities for me profit off of vague and ambiguous policy. You dont know if you dont ask.

Congrats. That's awesome. We'll earned.

The reality is that we are paid in a piecework world but our HOS were designed for an hourly world.

Carriers get the best of both worlds doing this. It means that we have to play both sides of the coin. We all in reality, preserve our clocks to some extent by doing things work related off duty. But, the carrier's nature is to have the driver do everything and anything they can without getting compensated for it. It's not personal, just business.

Given that, I orchestrate and massage things such as that I get paid for any activities I do to the extent that I reasonably can. There is always a balance to be maintained.

So in that aspect, I'm going to look to log time or arrange it that the truck repairs are done while on a load or getting done with a load. The company on the other hand will attempt to get all repairs done and things that the driver needs to facilitate on the drivers personal time. That way they avoid costs.

It behooves the driver to know ahead of time when your B service is up, your DOT physical is coming etc. Then you can be proactive in scheduling to your benefit, while also being productive. IE:

"Hey, I've got hometime coming up, but I'm going to be in a Tibetan monks shrine for the week of hometime so I won't be available. Let's go ahead and do my DOT physical tomorrow in between this load and the next one."

This way you can possibly position yourself for some extra pay or at least a favor in the future, instead of fighting the company, you're redirecting their will and for all intents and purposes being a great employee.

This is a mirror of the unspoken, unwritten polices that the carriers use to cut costs. Your simply using them in reverse to increase your revenue.

If you come out and boldly announced that there's no way in hades that you're going to do stuff on your own time, you'd just come off as petty and confrontational. Just as the company won't bodly announce their intent is to get you to do everything they can without paying you for it. They wouldn't have very many drivers left if they did. So they manipulate and we redirect and arrange as I like to call it. Individual results may vary.

Great advice so far. For me, having a plan and repeating the steps in the plan no matter what gave me structure and that structure eliminates the rush, as was said, the rush is what gets most people into trouble.

This is the process I use. I still use it today when im unfamiliar with the customer or its a new customer:

1. Check load assignment for p/u, delivery times, weight and make sure I have available hours to get all done.

2. Check weather vs weight along the route. Check route in atlas vs gps. (IE light weight, high winds? Snow ice, etc?). Establish back up route.

3. Plan miles to drive each day, select 3 to 4 suitable shut down spots for each day. Select shutdown spot for reciever, before delivery or after, back up spots too.

4. Final mile into and out of shipper, then repeat for reciever. Find satellite images of docks, drop yards for both, find easiest, safest path, place to park while getting checked in and how to exit. Check Google reviews, check to see if remote drop yard and verify directions from dispatch. Check both satellite view and street view, check in truckerpath and atlas, make sure it's truck friendly.

5. If parking and docking solution can't be found, call dispatch and ask, call shippers and recievers and ask. If you have a social media group of drivers from your work, ask if they have been there and ask directions.

6. Go over steps 4 and 5. Verify and memorize. Include landmarks and street names. Also, use a light version of this for ypur nightly shutdowns.

7. Execute and verify each step as you go. Replan as needed to adjust for changing conditions.