Household Movers Guide Or PC Miler Vs Practical Miles

Sorry, I've seen this topic somewhere but don't know how to search the forum. I'll start training with Schneider soon, just learned I won't get practical miles. How much money will I lose on household mover or PC miler?

Escape Artist, welcome to the forum!

I hope somebody will correct me if I'm wrong, but I've never considered this an issue to be concerned with. I've seen people who make a big deal out of this, but I just don't see the point. Either way you know what you are going to get paid when they dispatch you the job. Nobody gets paid for the actual miles they run, or else we'd all be running out of route miles just to hit our favorite restaurant or something silly like that. I get paid on household mover miles, and I always know up front how many miles the run is going to pay. I've had plenty of times where I was able to run less miles than they said it would be, but I still got paid for what I didn't do. So, it all comes out in the wash in my opinion.

Now, I'm still just giving my opinion, but I'm concerned that you are starting out with an attitude of wondering "how much money will I lose?". You are already setting yourself up to begin thinking like the current trend among new drivers who all think that the big trucking companies are out to suck the life out of them so they can "churn" them out and get another fresh batch of drivers who will work for little or no wages. It is a self fulfilling prophetic nightmare when people enter this industry thinking like that. You will far better serve yourself and your employer if you will try thinking along the lines of "how can I prove myself as an efficient professional driver who faces the difficulties of the job as a challenge to be overcome and conquered on a daily basis, so that the planners and dispatchers who are looking for someone they can count on to give good miles to will come to depend on me?"

I'm going to get up at 2:30 in the morning to start my day tomorrow. It's the best way for me to manage my time to get my current load delivered a little early and get onto the pre-planned load that's waiting for me after that one. Nobody told me that I should do it that way, but my dispatcher has come to trust me that I will do whatever it takes to make things happen out there. I want to be efficient and productive - I'm not concerning myself with how much I'm going to lose because of the way they pay me, I'm concentrating on what I can do to make the most of my time so that I make the most out of the miles I'm getting.

I hope you understand the point I'm trying to get across, but seriously I wouldn't concern myself overly about that practical miles thing, to me it's become more of a recruiters selling point that sounds good but doesn't really amount to much at all.

Old School, your response was insightful. I've been reading various message boards and I do believe it's making me a bit paranoid.

Also the CDL school instructor kept trying to steer us toward certain companies, which happened to pay practical miles and he made a big deal out of it.

I was feeling foolish for not asking Schneider how they pay, but I would have gone with them regardless because of their reputation as a good starter company. My biggest goal right now is to learn as much as I can and nail down the basics, so I'll try to keep that goal front and center.

Yeah, Old School nailed it - it's not worth worrying about. In the end, all companies are competing on the same level. They have the same equipment, same laws, same fuel, same roadways. So in the end, for the most part, you're going to make very similar wages at the various companies evem though they all have different payscales and such.

Schneider is an awesome company to get started with. If you prove yourself to be hard working, safe, reliable, and easy to get along with you can make just as much money there as you can anywhere else. That's what it really comes down to - is the company going to keep those wheels turnin for you? If you're a great driver, they most certainly will and you'll make solid money.

By the way, the difference in mileage between practical miles and Household Mover's Guide miles is about 10% or so on average. The Mover's Guide miles average out about 10% shorter.

Was hoping to open up this topic again, especially for those who are new to the industry, as I am. Right now I'm deciding between two companies to begin my career with. Once I go solo, company A pays .35 CPM to start, .36 CPM after six months, and .39 CPM after a year, with a one cent per year raise thereafter. Company B pays .31 CPM the first three months, .32 CPM for the next three months, .33 CPM for six months, then goes up to .37 CPM at one year. I know first year pay is not as important as gaining experience, and the amount of money I make will be dependent on the loads I get and how hard I run. However, after the first year, company A raises pay by one cent every year, whereas company B only raises it by a half a cent yearly. I'm not looking to jump from company to company, I'd like to find one that's a good fit right out of the gate. It seems that after a few years go by, that half a cent would start to factory pretty heavily into how much I'm making yearly. (In addition, company B won't reimburse the entirety of my student loan, which is another $1,000 dollars I'd miss out on in the first six months of my third year of employment.)

When I got in touch with my recruiter at company B to mention these concerns, the recruiter told me that they do practical pay which can add up to (as Brett already mentioned) a ten percent difference. Money is not my primary concern getting into this line of work, but I am using it as one of the factors to help guide my decision. Wondering if any experienced drivers can shed some light here. I tried doing my own rough math, and it seemed like with running optimal miles at a rate of ten percent more, company B's pay would actually be better up until about five years, at which point the balance would shift to company A.

Anyone have any good advice or wisdom to share?

I want to share my experience with PC Miler in hopes others do not make the same mistake we have. We purchased this software almost a year ago and it is still not working. When we purchased the software it was reporting that all the user account licenses were used even though they were not. When we called for help they sold us additional licenses which worked for some time. Later we started getting the same message so we had to hire a MSP to troubleshoot the software we had a support contract for. They found there is a file on the server that increments each time a user logs in so if you zero that file out you have more logins available. One of the computers was not de-incrementing that file. After we got this resolved things worked fine for a month or so. Around the 10 month mark, the software stopped working again and our MSP called PC Miler for help and they told us we needed to renew the licenses when we tried they told us that the licenses never renew so that isn't the problem (with zero initiative to help resolve the actual problem). We have been playing phone tag with them now long enough to go past the one year mark of support. They are now no longer willing to help us unless we purchase support and their reason for not freely helping us fix a product that was broken while still under support is “we are publicly trade-able”. This is a classic example of sell the product then split. In the one year, we have had this software it has only worked for a total of about 3 months and they are unwilling and incapable of making their product work. They told us that they do not have competitors which I have found several here are three. If you google “truck routing software” there are tons and pc miler is not even the highest-rated.

https://www.promiles.com/ https://www.paragontruckrouting.com/ http://www.randmcnally.com/category/mileage-and-routing

They will tell you that McNally has not done updates in several years but after doing some of my own research I found that rand updated THIS MONTH! They will also tell you that 99 out of 100 of the top trucking companies are using their software which also is not true because researching the companies their competitors boast as clients I learned a lot of the largest companies are not using them.