Comments By Pacific Pearl

Truckload rates ‘tumbling’ in Q2, report says

I wish you all well - I expect to be up to my butt in rice paddy by the end of the year.

If you're 100% not at fault it will not affect your employment opportunities. You are right to report it because it's not just your MVR they look at. Most trucking companies will hire companies to THOROUGHLY go through your criminal, driving and accident history. One of the things they check are insurance databases. Even if no citations are issued and there is no record your MVR there will be a paper trail if anyone involved notified their insurance company. Willful omission of an important fact on your application(your accident) WILL have a negative affect on your prospects even if you were not at fault.

I don't want you to give up and quit before you get your CDL so I won't go into what's involved in Prime's background check.

Welcome to Pima County! I do miss it.

One of the tragedies of truck driving is there's a lot of jobs that fall under the heading of, "truck driver" but it's up to the individual driver to find them and figure what they're worth. Here's what I figured out after coming off OTR:

While it's possible to make money going OTR for a common carrier, it's harder. There's a lot of unpaid work and most of the work goes to the lowest bidder. There's no thought to, "Is this rate enough to fairly compensate the carrier and make sure it's worth the driver's while to stick around?", just lowest bid. That's why the rate for company drivers is so low and that's one of the reasons why many OTR carriers have driver turnover over 100%.

The three best gigs I've found are:

Dedicated

Imagine driving to your yard every Monday at 1 pm. A loaded trailer is waiting for you. After picking up the paperwork and performing your pre-trip inspections you head out for a ~3,000 mile trip. What's the rate? $30/hr. You head to the receiver, but it's the same company all your loads are for and the you keep making the same trip week after week. If there are delays at the warehouse, you get paid the hourly rate. Not after 2 or 3 hours, you get the hourly rate for every hour you are delayed. You usually return home sometime Saturday and prepare for your next load out next Monday at 1.

Dedicated gigs have low turnover and rarely advertise because you have to wait for someone to retire or die for there to be a vacancy. Google, "drive dedicated for" and Ruan, Cardinal, Shaffer to see openings in your area on the company websites.

Linehaul

You show up at night, hitch your set and either head out to the next terminal 2-3 hours down the road or meet another truck for a drop and swap. Your drive time increases as you gain seniority. You get annual raises and make more money every year. Generally sleep in your own bed every day and get weekends off.

Opportunities vary by location. When I applied at Old Dominion in Seattle after 2 years of OTR experience I was told I didn't have enough experience. In other parts of the country OD is hiring drivers straight out of school. They want tanker, hazmat and doubles/triples.

Hazmat Tanker

Harder to get into but once you have some experience it's an all-weather job that pays well. People will cut back on Amazon knick-knacks when times get tough but they still need fuel to get to work.

Pick up you truck at the yard and take it to, "the rack" a fuel distribution point in your area. You load your truck and pick up your BOL's then head out to whoever needs fuel. It can be gas stations, truck stops, airports, marinas or parked trucks - whatever niche your company serves. Pump fuel from the truck until the truck is empty and then head back to the rack for more!

Safety is very important and there are more ways things can go sideways in an accident but it pays well and there's the home daily, weekends off perk.

Good luck!

Garmin. Trucker Path.

Co-sign.

Here's the deal - freight's getting TIGHT. FedEx is furloughing drivers. Amazon is laying off thousands right now.

The trucking companies don't make hiring decisions - the companies that insure the trucks make the hiring decisions. I have more than a million miles without a ticket or an accident - I'm very cheap to insure. A new driver with little or no experience costs >$1,000/mo. more to insure than it does for an employer to insure me. To hire a driver with your accident history it will cost them more to insure you than it will for them to insure that new driver with no experience.

If carriers have plenty of freight to move and good rates they can take chances because there are no other drivers available so it's take a chance or let the freight sit. Right now there are fewer loads and rates are down with plenty of experienced drivers with no tickets or accidents looking for work.

So the bleeding away will include both equipment AND personnel, is that a fair assumption.?

Yes. Fewer trucks as O/O can't make payments with the loads available. Fewer drivers as companies are less willing to salvage drivers with tickets/incidents/accidents or drug and alcohol issues. Fewer new drivers as companies either freeze hiring or get real picky about who they will take.

While I agree that the economy is slowing and there will be a thinning of the herd until capacity meets demand I also see a lot of emerging threats compounding the problem:

Walmart's push to automation The don't give a lot of details about what that means. Eliminating hostlers? Automatic loading and loading of trailers? It's a safe bet that if Walmart is on board and it works for them that Target, Macy's and other retailers won't be far behind.

California's push to outlaw diesel trucks Right now they want HALF of all new trucks to be electric by 2035, but they keep pushing the date up and increasing the percentage. I get the impression that there will be diesels who just drop and hook at drop yards on California's border while California-only electrics do all the driving inside the state.

Actual self-driving trucks Not sure how much freight moves between Dallas and Houston, but I can see if the model of mapping one stretch of road for robot trucks works they will roll it out to other freight routes. The route mapping seems like a better idea than the, "one truck that can go anywhere" model they keep hyping. There's also Waymo, Google's company that has been mapping cities for robot taxis branching out into freight trucks.

It's going to be a bumpy ride and I doubt any of us will recognize the industry in 10 years.

Welcome, Mike and greetings from Issaquah!

Prime is one of the better companies but they are also one of the pickiest. I've seen many tales of woe in this forum over the years from folks who were turned away by Prime for various minor reasons.

Not to worry - there are plenty of other options. Just because Emily Ratajkowski said, "no" doesn't mean you chop off your legacy genitalia and become Dylan Mulvaney or a monk - you keep at it until you have two or three ex wives but you don't give up.

Every company does their CDL training and licensing a bit differently. While Washington will only ISSUE a new CDL to you if you went a driving school on their approved list through the miracle or reciprocity they will happily EXCHANGE any valid CDL, proof of Washington residency and $228 for a Washington CDL.

I took a Greyhound from Washington to a trucking school in Colorado. I got a temporary paper Colorado CDL there and drove a rental car to OKC for my orientation. The Colorado DMV mailed my laminated CDL to the school in Colorado. The school forwarded by CDL to my home in Washington. My company routed my trainer's truck to Issaquah where I picked up my Colorado CDL and then exchanged it at the DMV for a Washington CDL!

As a new driver with no experience there are only about 5% of all companies that will touch you. That's for insurance reasons. Get used to it - hiring decisions in this industry aren't made by the company that owns the trucks - they're made by the company that insures the trucks. When I think of companies that train new drivers and offer team driving I think of CRST and Covenant. I know they both have programs that will let one spouse train the other. Good luck!

I'd avoid yellow.

I beg to differ. She would get PAID training near her home allowing her to go home every night with weekends off. The training comes with no contract or obligation to her.

How did the New York Times put it?

Rescue of Troubled Trucking Company With White House Ties Draws Scrutiny Much like the lost war in Ukraine, YRC can go on FOREVER with friends in the right places and a direct line to the US Treasury. Uncle Sam owns 30% of Yellow already. I would argue that any other company is one nuclear verdict away from disappearing but Yellow will be around as long as people keep paying taxes.

In the worst case, she could earn her CDL while getting paid then get Teamster scale and benefits. Nothing bad is happening to YRC before the next presidential election. After that she would have more than a year of experience.

While freight markets are shrinking and CDL jobs are getting harder to come by many companies are preferring to hire applicants based on their gender, the color of their skin and who they share their bed with. She would have better luck with some companies than I would with my million+ miles of safe, legal CDL driving simply because she is a she.

YRC Driving Academy

Welcome Taylor. Yes, totally doable. What's your closest city?