Profile For Old School

I honestly believe our backgrounds as contractors gave us a big advantage in understanding how to succeed at trucking. I've said for years that trucking is very much like being self-employed. It takes the same kind of drive and motivation to really enjoy success. It's a mindset that's missing in a lot of people who attempt it. That's why there are so many crybabies online telling us how cruel and unfair the trucking industry is.

Success at trucking requires a lot of drive and initiative. Those are things missing from most average employees. This is an extraordinary career that requires extraordinary people. You cannot come into this expecting great results when you only put in average effort. It really is a field that rewards it's top performers. That's just the reality of a commodities business. Movers and shakers are needed desperately, and rewarded accordingly.

Davy, I had a discussion this past week with one of our lease operators at Knight. He and I talk regularly. A while back he was very surprised I was able to tell him what I thought his accountant would tell him he made. He had been boasting to some of our other company drivers on the dedicated account we serve. He was very proud that he had "made" $180,000. When I said I would guess he made $60,000, his eyes popped out of his head in amazement. Apparently he paid good money to an accountant to give him the same number I popped out of my head in about three seconds.

In our latest conversation, he was sounding rather excited that his last payment was due in July of this year. He kept exclaiming, "That truck will be paid off!" I asked him about the balloon payment that I understood was part of his lease. He said, "Well, yeah I will have to pay them $12,000 in addition to that final payment." My curiosity burst into another question. "How do you plan on coming up with that part of the deal?" He responded, "I'll have to borrow it from somewhere." Questions are flooding my mind and flowing out of my mouth. "Do you have any sort of collateral?" He says, "I have the truck."

Actually he doesn't have the truck. He has no clear title. Some people's ideas about something being "paid off" are very different from mine. I have always tried to help this poor fellow, but I cannot seem to educate him on financial stuff. He knows just enough to keep himself in the poor house, and he does that very well.

I know times are tough - it's difficult for drivers to find work. There's just something missing here in the details. We know it, the OP knows it. I wish people were willing to let us know how they came to be in their current situations.

The more details we have, the more concrete ideas we can share. Nobody really wants to team with some total stranger. Nobody should be forced into that situation. This driver has no leverage. There's a reason for that. The reason is forcing them to make desperate choices.

They've never shared why they aren't still working for their first company. Those details would be helpful for us to give proper guidance. This same driver posted another thread asking for suggestions of companies to apply to. In that thread they list their demands or criteria. In this thread, posted the same day, they seem desperate. Something is missing.

Hello Robert, welcome to our forum!

You have to be honest. Just because you don't see those accidents on your MVR doesn't mean they won't find out about them. You never want them to discover you purposely withholding information.

They will be thorough. They look into other sources than just your MVR. If there was ever any sort of an insurance claim made on an accident by you or the other party, they will find it.

Self incriminating honesty can be a good thing in this business.

Kelly, this problem you're experiencing has nothing to do with gender. To be a trucker takes a tremendous amount of resolve and commitment. It also requires a great deal of personal responsibility. It's real easy to blame our failures on the company, or their lack of understanding of our situation.

We cannot come into trucking as newbies and expect them to bow to our conceptions of our needs. That never works. Trucking is tough. It's really tough on newbies who have other priorities going on.

When we start this career we give up everything else for a time. That's how it works. You need to commit to one year of doing things the way they want you to. After you've proven yourself, you get a little more respect in this business, but it's always a performance based endeavor.

I still have to be at the top of my game daily. There's no place for excuses, and no one to blame if I'm not doing well in my career. I'm in charge.

You are in charge of your trucking career. That's where you messed up. You can't blame it on the two companies you worked for. You made some mistakes that are becoming clear through hindsight. That's a hard pill to swallow, but the sooner you get it down, the sooner it will help you.

Steve, I think you're just the kind of guy who could handle it. You're in decent shape, you've got a great attitude, and you probably know your limits.

I had a P&D driver who picked up freight from my sign business almost weekly. He worked until he was 67. We would hear him groan on occasion, but only because his body was starting to let him know it was wearing down.

To be honest, most of the time we loaded the freight, and I think that's common at most stops. It's not "no touch freight," but you won't touch it as much as you think.

Excellent work Kearsey - Congratulations!

If you are really paying attention here, you will notice both of those issues were resolved with effective communications. That is key for success in trucking. I learned how my DM needed me to communicate, and how important it was for them to be able to trust my ETAs and PTAs. I had to be on top of my game for all of this to work. As long as I did things in a manner that was effective, I was kept moving and making money. Do you see where this is going? I was responsible for my results. It didn't make much difference who had their name on my truck doors. I made good money at Western, but it was because I figured out how to make it work. My poor income at first never was because the company sucked. I had to figure out how trucking worked. Once I did that, it was all gravy.

You've had two jobs already in five months. You are still struggling. It is untenable for you to be sitting idle as long as you have while waiting on a truck part. But it's a rookie thing. Any experienced driver would have simply insisted on moving into another truck so he could keep working. A rookie is going to lay the blame on the company. I understand that, but you have got to figure this stuff out and move forward. You made this statement...

I truthfully am not much of a trucker at heart, never had been, but I'm smart and I work hard.

If that is true, then it shows you need to put some heart into it. Or it might show that you aren't as smart as you thought. That's not me trying to be mean or snarky, or anything like that. Please take my advice and put your brain into this. LEARN how trucking works. LEARN how you can make a huge difference in your pay by just understanding how things work. LEARN how to cooperate and communicate with dispatch in a meaningful effective way. It's all in your power to do. I promise there is a lot of help for you in the recent book I wrote. I'm taking the risk of sounding like I'm just here to promote something, but I honestly want to help people figure out trucking. That's why I spend so much time here in this forum, and why I bothered to write a book that will only appeal to a very small market of people.

There is not a reason in the world you can't figure out how to accomplish your goals by trucking. You just got off to a bad start. You first thought you had a bad company, now you think you got a bad job. Start afresh with a regular OTR job, and take to heart the things you have got to change so that you can succeed at this. I know you can do it, and I hope we get to hear your success story some day soon.

Hello Ray!

You are obviously struggling and wanting help. I hope I can give a little. My Book covers so many things that rookie drivers struggle with. When I read your post, my heart just went out to you. I recognized so many of the things I struggled with at first. Trucking is hard to understand at first. It is a relatively simple career to succeed at, but most of the information available to us as new drivers is worthless and self destructive to our careers.

You really got my attention when you said...

Western sucked hard.

Any driver who is struggling at trucking could say the same thing about whatever trucking company they were working for. I teach new drivers to look at their paychecks and learn something from them. If all we learn from our lousy pay is that the company we work for sucks, then we are missing out on a great opportunity to learn how to make it in the trucking career. When we are getting really low pay in trucking, it should point us in a direction that causes us to learn how to take steps to increase our pay. We are responsible for that dollar amount on our paychecks.

Please, hear me out. I too started my career at Western Express. I too could have agreed with about 95% of the other drivers I came in contact with at Western - this place is really bad. I refused to do that. I knew I had nothing to compare it too, and I knew I was so green that I didn't even know what I didn't know.

Here's what I did... I determined I was going to figure out how to make it work. Every time I ran into a problem, I started trying to come up with my own solution. It was always hard getting hold of my dispatcher while at Western. They each had a lot of drivers they were overseeing, and they didn't have time for needy drivers who were always calling in for help. That was my first decision. I decided I was going to come up with my own solutions and live with the consequences. I started paying close attention to things. When something didn't work right, I tried to come up with more effective ways of doing things.

Here's a couple of examples of problems I overcame.

I noticed any time I called in for my dispatcher, I would get put on hold for extremely long wait times. Once I was at the office and realized how many phone calls they are handling. It was impossible for them to handle the volume of calls. I watched a dispatcher handle about ten or twelve requests sent to him on the qualcomm while he was handling one phone call. He was multi-tasking like crazy, but the phone call was taking up a lot of his time. Bingo! I quit trying to call and talk to my dispatcher. Electronic messaging was way more efficient at getting something resolved in a timely manner.

Another issue was waiting for a load. I noticed when I emptied out in the afternoon, I would always have to wait until the next day to get a load. This was usually anything like eleven o'clock in the morning or later. I would send in my empty call, and I would get no response. I'd have to park and wait until the next day. That is very inefficient, and it kept my pay really low. So, What could I do? I started planning my trips so I could get empty first thing in the morning. That always worked well. It actually accomplished two objectives, although I was only focused on the one.

Being empty early got my driver manager's attention early in the day, before he was neck deep in problems he was struggling to resolve for his drivers. That way he was able to locate a load and assign it to me. Now, the more important thing it did was get him accustomed to the way I did things. He began to realize I was always going to be empty first thing in the morning, and he could trust my PTAs I was sending him. He regularly had loads for me after I began operating in a manner that worked well with their system and way of doing things. You cannot go into trucking as a Maverick and expect the whole system to bow to your way of doing things. That never works. You have to figure out how it works and then fit yourself into the program. That does not mean you are a brown nosing weakling. It means you are smart enough to get it, and you like the way it works when you get it right.

Continued...

It's crazy we need a government task force to figure this out. I looked into this practice myself once. It didn't take long to see this is a game played by the corporation. It's the old stick and carrot lure.

I spent an entire chapter in my book exposing how the drivers who choose this path are getting short changed. There's no extra money for you to get by leasing. Even the ones who think they are doing well usually end up having an unexpected wake up call. Something goes wrong and they find out they are financially responsible for it.

It's a business with very tight margins. The way to make money is to be on the payroll outperforming the other drivers.