Comments By Cantankerous Amicus

Statistics have shown that two of the safest groups of drivers are females and the slightly older ones.

This is good news. According to The Missus I am a slightly older one, and according to me she is female. Gonna put that on our trucking resumé.

Terminal rats are everywhere. I only go to a terminal if I need my truck serviced or I have no other convenient choice for parking.

Lol...what are "Terminal rats"?

The Road Home Podcast - Episode 10: Terminal Rats Are Derailing Trucking Careers

OP you took your 30 in the McDonald's ball pit and snapped a picture of your McTruck on the way in, didn't you?

When there is truck parking in a place like this, are the property owners usually amenable to taking a 10 hour break? I assume this would be after asking the manager if it's ok.

Anyway, let's move this to a different thread.

Sorry for tracking up your thread, Rainy.

The missus and I hope this brightens your day.

And saying $2k after ALL expenses is too vague. No one serious about running a successful business will go on such a vague statement.

No man, we have been asking for the math. Is 2+2=4 an opinion? The claim was $2k average per week. $2k what per week? That is what needs to be clarified. Without clarification this is just smoke and mirrors and can be dissmissed as such.

Everyone who enters trucking must make their own risk/cost/benefit decision. Are the benefits of trucking worth the risks of being on the road. Are those benefits also worth the cost of not seeing your loved ones.

What you mentioned above is just another risk/benefit evaluation taken to the factor of worst case scenario.

You will come to your conclusion. I will come to my conclusion. Everyone else must make their own.

Just because your conclusion is different than someone else's, does not make either of you wrong.

Of course. The question is do you think people looking into this industry want to calculate the risk/cost/benefit equation with accurate numbers or glitter farts and rainbow barf?

Cantankerous you asked who said that. My post was a cumulative response to many many discussions I've read on here about leaseing vs company and such. The comment I was referencing was in as past discussion on this topic.

Please share it then. You made a claim. Please back it up.

Absolutely it's a risk. But if you drive safely and take care of your truck as you should, that risk will drastically decrease.

Risks, not risk. Your example is only one risk of a multitude that L/Os expose themselves to, many of them unrelated to safe driving and maintenance. Company drivers don't have to worry about that, and they can take home almost as much.

Slip and break your leg. Who is going to be home staring down a lease payment, insurance payments, potential repo, etc while the truck is parked and algae is growing in the fuel tank? Who is going to be collecting workman's comp with no truckly worries?

Are the risks worth the marginal increase in pay?

Plan B, you mentioned nothing about the risks that a L/O assumes that company driver does not. That is a very real factor to consider.

Their mega carrier is screwing them over by dumping costs and risk on the driver.

Who said this? How does a company dump said costs and risks on a driver? Doesn't the driver have to sign a lease contract first?

Claiming to be making a paycheck of $2000/wk AFTER ALL EXPENSES may be convincing to the uninitiated entrepreneur, but it's not that convincing to anyone with some business experience who wants to make the most informed decision he can. Is it really ALL expenses or all IMMEDIATE expenses? Those expenses need to be spelled out to make a fair evaluation between L/O and being a company driver, otherwise it's an apples to oranges comparison. Not having any trucking experience yet myself, that is where I would guess the caution and warning would be coming from from the experienced drivers here.

Revenue is a juicy number to look at. It's hardly surprising that so many LO and OO drivers would rattle off that number or leave off or forget other numbers to make their profit look better than it is. But at the end of the line, those non-immediate expenses you don't count today (eg wear and tear on the truck) will come back as hard expenses later. At that point the $2000 per week will become less and this conversation will have been long concluded.

I have no gain or loss if anyone agrees or disagrees with me. All I did was stated my opinion... just like all of you.

Netting $2000/wk is your opinion?

Austin O. I hope you will answer some of the questions posed to you in this thread, Old School's in particular, since you have been making these claims regarding the profitability of going L/O.

Including putting away enough to eventually replace your truck?

Not hardly! Look guys, how many of you, when too tired to drive, will purposely set up your video equipment and get the sound all working just the way you want it so that you can record a phone call with your driver manager, and then use carefully chosen words, like "Micro-sleep" in your discussion so that you can completely set up a fake situation to make your company look bad?

Thanks for the link, Old School. I have been meaning to look that one up after seeing his name dropped in passing here a few times while reading through various threads. A number of people here on TT also saw the same holes in his story. I didn't see any of them when the came out years ago because I hadn't yet done as much research into the trucking lifestyle.

Re: Setting up video equipment - It's crazy how many people do just that sort of thing, once one gives it a bit of thought. Big time emotional manipulation, and easy to spot once you start looking for it.

Unfortunately, my FM told.me."hes doing great! go find me another student like him!" uh, yeah right. thats a tall order.

<----Potential husband & wife go-gettin' team in the pipeline for you. Just gotta hold out until the end of the school year before we can close down/sell shop and move back to the US and get reestablished. Depending on the details of that process, maybe a little longer before we can officially start any CDL process. We've been considering it for a few years now and we want to make it happen.

Wow, Abe shows up everywhere.

Was he a member here at some point?

Have you taken a gander over at this thread?

An In-depth Look Inside My LW Truck (a Must See!)

The photos aren't showing up, but there are descriptions. Perhaps Daniel B. has the authority to fix the links in his post. There are some other threads here talking about them too if you use the search bar above. Otherwise, there are videos on YouTube that can give you a visual as to what you might be looking for.

Stop you're making me jealous!

All this transmission talk has reminded me of way back when I was working in landscaping and I was driving the boss's new, weeks old farm tractor. I had it in first gear and I stepped on the clutch to coast down a hill to pick up a load of soil. Well, I got coasting downhill pretty good and when I let off the clutch I was way over speed for the gear and I absolutely roasted the transmission. Time moved like molasses while I was waiting for the boss to return so I could tell him the news. I was sweating bullets I can tell you!

Was wondering what equivalent to CDL instruction that military personnel receive that would justify this sort of waiver. I don't have military experience myself, so hopefully someone here with military experience could clarify.

They DO get appropriate training somewhere along the line, don't they? How do they keep it from going stale?

And no student for me anytime soon. i killed the tranny today....i need to learn how to drive this thing before i attempt.to.teach others.

i feel so incompetent. i just want to cry. backing sucks. i feel like a newbie

whoever said autos are easier than manuals can kiss my jersey back.side.

Explanation:::

i killed the transmission, not a transgender. im all for equal rights.

Glad you clarified. I thought I was going to have to change my entire impression of you!

All kidding aside, if my wife and I eventually end up signing up with Prime, she says would be honored to train with you.

My previous post should have come through more like this:

Now what do you do?

Now what do you do?