Comments By andhe78

While it's not technically hand unloading, have you looked into fuel hauling/delivery-most outfits here are paying over $30 an hour. We've also got some owner operators in our fleet that seem to be doing very well (petroleum hauling fleet.)

We've got an outfit around here that hauls trailers similar to what you describe-they use them to haul coils.

Heard about this and was wondering what happened to the driver-so sad.

Man, there are some aspects of this job I just don't tell the wife, but incidents like this do stay in the back of my mind. It's a good reminder that no matter how badly I annoy drivers behind me, there's a reason I don't go barreling down off ramps or interchanges.

Of everything you'll haul on a flatbed, coils are the one thing you really need to understand. They are dangerous, and I see a lot of them mishandled by many drivers.

Man, the one I could never wrap my head around was we had a couple places that would load eye to the sky coils in a van trailer right next to us flatbedders. I'd watch the drivers just close the doors and drive off while I'm throwing chains. Couldn't believe I never saw more of them go through the trailer wall. Not even friction mats!

Ok, typical doom and gloom about local work. A few things above I agree with, some maybe a little less. I do like the idea of Maverick regional work. It's where I started my career and at the time, they had some nice dedicated work out of Ohio, and they had regional home every weekend there too. May have changed over the years, but it's a great place to start. Now, I did go to a private school and while Maverick was willing to put me on a bus literally two days after passing the road test, driver hiring is slower now and that may no longer be the case-going through their school (if they still have it) would probably be simpler. Two things to think about though, that I never regretted about going to a private school-if I had gone the company school route, I would have had to get the auto restriction off before even applying for something like my current local job (a lot of local is still manual.) That's not a huge deal, but the invaluable part, is my instructors were local to the region, some had driven or were still driving for local outfits-they knew the lay of the land and the best and worst fleets. My current job is with an outfit I'd never heard of, doing a job I never knew needed doing, but was a recommendation from the head instructor who brought up the company as one he'd look at if he were starting over. That recommendation dropped me into the best job I've ever had.

Now, on to the local doom and gloom. Some of it is accurate, get a couple years of driving under your belt before looking for local. Yeah, there are companies that will hire you off the street with a brand new cdl, but those outfits will almost always be the horror shows you'll hear about. You'll start nights, working your seventy every week, driving stuff held together with duct tape. The bottom of the barrel in local work is not good at all for any kind of long term future. It can be done, I've seen it done, but it's a serious risk to your livelihood. A couple years experience though, and while you still can't write your own ticket, it opens up a ton of doors, and doors most guys not in a local field don't even know about. Take my company for example, they won't even return your call with less than two years experience, they don't advertise, heck, this is the outfit I only knew about from my former instructor. And (BY CHOICE), half my terminal does work fourteen hours days five days a week, it's the turn and burn schedule the above posters were talking about. But they also enjoy that 130k a year paycheck. The other half literally works a forty hour week, still makes a living wage, and spends all the time they want with their families. I personally know dozens of local drivers at other companies who work banker's hours-is the paycheck massive? No, but money isn't always the most important thing to these drivers.

Two bits of advice, your driving skills better be on point before taking a local job if you want a long term future in the field. And secondly, don't live hours away from the job. I know, it's not always possible, but a two hour commute on top of even an eight hour day dealing with local traffic will burn you out. (An example of a not so doom and gloomy local job is again my company-decades ago, they realized that a ton a drivers don't prefer to drive hours into a city to work, so they plunked down a terminal in the middle of the boondock's amish country, and another in the heart of the local city-this way, the country boys have a short commute to work as do the city boys.) You've got to network to find opportunities like this though.

Get your permit, endorsements, and anything else you want (twic) before even starting school. Seriously. Now, your school may be different, but I showed up day one having already gotten everything I could on my own time, so when the instructor sat us down and told us the first week would be studying to take the permit test at the end of the week, I raised my hand and asked what I could do. He was tickled at my initiative and sent me out to start driving with another instructor. I got a full week of one on one time driving before anyone else even touched touched the truck. I struggled with shifting something awful, so since we had three classes a day, I asked if I could ride around with the other two classes. The instructor thought that was great, and while I could just sit and listen so I wouldn't take any instruction away from the other students, I soaked up a ton of additional instruction, plus had the added benefit of when a student called in, I took his place behind the wheel. I literally spent twelve hours a day with the instructors, and by the time the road test came around, I had more than twice the time behind the wheel of any other student. Also, this site at the time had a great section on learning logs, so knowing that could be a potential hang up for me, I studied that daily, did every exercise multiple times, and would actually engage with my instructors about real world logging examples. Every one of those guys loved sharing every nugget of wisdom they had.

Now, that advice mileage may vary, but I've always been successful showing as much initiative as I possibly can, and being stubborn enough that nothing will stop me from reaching a goal.

Just curious, do the inspectors set up inspection operations at night during this blitz, or is it only.during the day?

They are notorious around here for setting up at the border crossing into the states over night. When I ran nights, I'd get pulled in there about once a month at one in the morning.

Speaking of ABS, something many drivers don't know is the ABS lamp needs to actually be labeled. Dot loves that one around here.

Lol, my biggest first world problem that I complain about way too much on my new truck, is the passenger door only opens about half as much as the driver's door (to keep from hitting the mirror.) So since I do my paperwork for every stop on the passenger seat while standing on the step, and my shoulders are wider than the door opening, I have to turn sideways to get my body into the opening. So dumb.

It takes a certain personality to be okay with not going home.

Or, you find a driving job that does get you home. My driving job has me working almost the same hours/shift as the factory guy who lives next door to me. That's what I like about this job, there are thousands of driving opportunities out there, just got to find the one the works best for you.

What should these job openings ads have upfront in there ads in your views without you having to ask ?

Honestly, all I'm looking for is company name and phone number, I can find out the rest of the info. Seems the best trucking jobs don't advertise anyway. Besides, what's important to one driver is no big deal to another-for example, governed speed seems to be a big deal to you whereas I'm governed at 75mph and still choose to drive 64 or less.