Can A Rookie Make 80,000 His First Year Out?
Topic 7977 | Page 1
I'm OTR and live full time on the truck. I don't take home time at all, except one day every 2-3 months to go through my stack of mail. I made $55k gross last year.
OTR:
Over The Road
OTR driving normally means you'll be hauling freight to various customers throughout your company's hauling region. It often entails being gone from home for two to three weeks at a time.
*whips out his trusty calculator*
If you figure starting cpm at .3x (it is becoming the average) he would need to drive nearly 250,000 miles in that first year to gross $80,000. That averages out to 680 miles, each and every day. No breaks. No sick days. Nothing. In my Swift truck I can run upwards of 620-640 miles on a good day. My truck is limited to 62mph, so with a faster truck I could theoretically drive more. However, those days are free of customer interaction. The second you toss in a shipper or receiver you can forget about maximizing your driven miles for that day. So I'm goIng to say forget about 80k in your first year.
Shipper:
The customer who is shipping the freight. This is where the driver will pick up a load and then deliver it to the receiver or consignee.
CPM:
Cents Per Mile
Drivers are often paid by the mile and it's given in cents per mile, or cpm.
HOS:
Hours Of Service
HOS refers to the logbook hours of service regulations.
He won't come within a million miles of $80,000/year probably in his lifetime in trucking but if you two ran team together you could make $100,000/year total combined. Might not quite make that your first year but very soon after.
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My husband has been looking at CDL school and now is thinking if he has to go OTR to take me with him. He thinks that if I'm with him and he's not hurrying home to get back to me and runs hard he can make 80,000 his rookie year. I've never heard of an OTR rookie making that...closest is 6 string but he's LTL. Is he being realistic?
CDL:
Commercial Driver's License (CDL)
A CDL is required to drive any of the following vehicles:
LTL:
Less Than Truckload
Refers to carriers that make a lot of smaller pickups and deliveries for multiple customers as opposed to hauling one big load of freight for one customer. This type of hauling is normally done by companies with terminals scattered throughout the country where freight is sorted before being moved on to its destination.
LTL carriers include:
OTR:
Over The Road
OTR driving normally means you'll be hauling freight to various customers throughout your company's hauling region. It often entails being gone from home for two to three weeks at a time.