Paying Your Dues..... Not Even Close.

Paying your dues..... What does this mean exactly? There is not a certain amount of time this takes place in. Everyone seems to attribute this to your first full year in trucking and you have kept your nose clean and you have a good solid year of experience. I suppose you could calling it "paying your dues" only in the sense you worked hard to gain that experience. No one can take that away from you. But let's step back and look at it a bit differently. You have your year of experience. You were never late. Pickup on time and made all your delivery appointments. Ok you now think would like to move on to a different company paying more. Cool. Make that move. When you get to your new company you new DM will look at your application and the only thing that year of experience tells him is you know how not to hit sh*T. Now your job is a bit tougher now. Since you have been doing this a year your DM has every right to expect you to do your job and not screw up. Your work record proves it. Things go well for a month or two. And every driver, if you drive long enough, can tell you that sometimes everything seems to go wrong. Now you have a bad week. Truck in the shop. Blown tire on the side of the road. Stuck in rush hour traffic one to many times. Whatever the reason this week is not coming right. You end up being late for a load or two. And you start to notice your miles have slacked off a bit or you are getting the miles but going into areas that are not the best. It's because you were late. Does not matter why. You were late. All those other loads you delivered on time or early? Those cease to exist the second you turned in an empty call on the qualcomm. Those were in the past. What matters is you were late on THIS load. Now you have to work on proving yourself all over a again as if it was your first day.

What I am trying to say is just because you got through your first year does not mean you have earn anything more than what you got. A year of experience. You don't build up good will for the future. What matters is the load your delivering right now. Not the one last week. Congratulations on your first full year of experience. Now you get to spend the next 40 or so years, if you drive that long, proving yourself over and over again from load to load. Screw up and you might as well be a rookie fresh out of school because you again have to prove yourself all over again on the next run.

Screw up and you might as well be a rookie fresh out of school because you again have to prove yourself all over again on the next run.

Boy. Aint that the truth.

While trucking offers you the chance to gain an incredible amount of life experiences, making a lot of unique friends and see a lot of sites you would never have the chance to see otherwise it can also be the most frustrating, lonely, unforgiving, thankless job in the world.

So why have I chosen to do it for 16 years? Because......

While trucking offers you the chance to gain an incredible amount of life experiences, making a lot of unique friends and see a lot of sites you would never have the chance to see otherwise it can also be the most frustrating, lonely, unforgiving, thankless job in the world.

While trucking offers you the chance to gain an incredible amount of life experiences, making a lot of unique friends and see a lot of sites you would never have the chance to see otherwise it can also be the most frustrating, lonely, unforgiving, thankless job in the world.

So why have I chosen to do it for 16 years? Because......

While trucking offers you the chance to gain an incredible amount of life experiences, making a lot of unique friends and see a lot of sites you would never have the chance to see otherwise it can also be the most frustrating, lonely, unforgiving, thankless job in the world.

Amen!

That's an excellent point Guyjax made about always having to prove yourself. The trucking industry is super competitive. Very small profit margins. In order for the companies to keep afloat they have to keep those wheels turning.

One of the reasons companies don't often try to hire nothing but experienced drivers is because some people slack off after a while. They feel they've done all the real hard running they care to do. They've proven themselves over a number of years and now they feel entitled to that higher paycheck with a bit of a smaller workload and more gravy work.

That can be a big problem for trucking companies. Just because you've done a great job in the past doesn't mean the company should now sacrifice its profits and the service its customers are getting. Imagine trying to use that excuse on your company's lenders for not paying your bills...."Well, we have a lot of experienced drivers so we let them do what they want. They deserve it. Unfortunately we don't have the money to pay what we owe you, but you understand, right? I mean, these are veteran drivers we have. It's important we take care of them."

Highly doubtful that's gonna work. So regardless of what you've done in the past, you're working in a highly competitive environment and you're making more per mile than the inexperienced drivers. So the company counts on you to find ways to be more efficient and more reliable than the newbies. The expectations are understandably higher, as is your pay.

So don't think getting some experience entitles you to a ticker tape parade. What every company wants to see is a profit from your truck. They'll pay you more, but you have to produce.

Sounds like every job I've done so far.I'm drawn to jobs with no real thanks or appreciation and if there is any it's short lived and any mistake is remembered forever. The constant what have you done for me lately mentality. And I wouldn't have it any other way :) I don't want to be stuck in a cube farm.

I like this thread, thanks for pointing out how it will be in the long run. Sucks that you get your nose rubbed in it when you're late do to no fault of your own even. Might just be me but, seems like the "punishment" of a light load time wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.