Profile For Michael J.

People hate to hear it but SWIFT. Btw Swift is a large stock share holder of Schneider and in the midst of a freight share with knight. Of course Kevin knight started with swift and his wife is a swift Daughter

So I have my permit and am looking to pick a company and/or school. But I've been very disappointed that the first two companies I've talked to (Schneider and Prime) have both said that I'd only be east of the Rockies in my first year. That's nearly a deal breaker for me ... a big part of why I want to do this is to see the country, and ruling out the prettiest parts kind of misses the point. Can anyone recommend a big companies that lets drivers do all 48 states in their first year?

I desire constructive make this informative for new drivers trying to learn., After reading all over the net there is a lot of confusion: i have no argument with any response, but I am amazed by a complete lack of omission regarding team driving advantages. I’m not promoting team driving just adding what most posts leave out.

Good team drivers whether a couple or independent persons make more money... usually 50% more and often 75% more and occasionally a 100% more. Here is why:

As a team driver, you are a team, business partners. Not buddies or lovers or whatever you can be, but you are business partners first. To this end:

1. You have two clocks to manage that’s twice the time to work with. ultimately you avoid stops for 10 and 34 hours sleeps and resets if you get your clocks opposite. No stopping, keep rolling. 2. The idea that solos get nearly as much pay cpm as does team after team splits truck cpm is just wrong...at least with larger better companies.

3. With most companies teams are the priority especially on longer hauls and JIT just in time loads. They are also the priority on already late loads. And if you are somewhere where freight is low teams go to the front. example: we were in Reno. Freight low. 16 trucks in front of us, most sitting 15 hours or more waiting. We T-called transfered our load To a local as we were 24 hours early to receiver. Had we been solo we would have been told sit wait. Instead we t call and were sent to move empties around, all at loaded rate. 5 hours later and two empties moved we were on a 1000 mile run. Solos in front of us still sitting. Example: recently arrived Miller coors Golden CO. Back up more than 2 hours to check out. Several solos had to simply sit it out as their clock did not have enough time. We used 8/2 split and rolled. our next load set before we delivered the beer, a 2k run.

4.As solo you arrive at a shipper or receiver. Common for live unloads and the load you are delayed by the shipper or receiver. If doing it legally you are on duty and your 14 hour burning. by the time they are done you are out of time and have to sit 10 before leaving or at least you can’t get far. Team rolls. 5.With team one driver runs out of time the other driver takes over and your rolling, not sitting. 6. Teams can make great use of the 8/2 split on sleep time. Ask if you don’t know what that is. 7. Truck stops full is common. Solo often SOL on side of road or not properly parked. Team roll. 8. common thought a solid solo driver can 3k a week and 3500 good weeks. they can if they can get the loads and not wait at shippers But without recapture they must 34 and end up under 3k next week, or simply had to wait for load. Teams keep moving. team can do the same 3k to 3500 a week consistently each 6 to 7 k and don’t have that pesky sleep and reset problem.

9. Getting home. Often solos can’t get home. Clock runs out. Teams well managed avoid that. With clocks opposite teams never sit on 34. If you are on 34 your partner is still rolling and your making money and vice versa.

even if team makes same as solo cpm the team get way more miles. A bad week for us is under 6k. We are usually north of 7k if nothing else we drop and hook and strap faster together regardless of who is on. We get a lot more drop and hooks by percentage than most solos. Often we JIT a load 1k miles or more and drop for a local to make the final delivery and we are moving another jit The company wants to keep us moving.

Other considerations:

10. home time most carriers will give teams more home time leeway especially if you stay out a month. Most solos get 1 day per week worked and home time includes that 34. In my experience teams also include the 34 but we’ve never had trouble getting 4 to 6 days.

11. Good teams can alternate solo team. We team but often want different home times so I solo a week he goes home then we swap and he solos a week then we are back to team. I went to Europe for 16 days for Christmas holiday and my partner kept rolling solo. When I got back he took 10 days while I solo. Carrier had no issue because we that truck kept making money.

11. New trucks. If you are company driver especially with bigger fleet teams get the newest trucks because we log the miles fast. So we get the new truck and a new solo gets our still year wise new truck that we already put 250k on. I’ve gotten a new truck every year three years in a row.

All this said, true enough team is hard. Takes a special breed. The breed it takes is the breed that understands whether a OO or company driver it is a business partnership. It is not a friendship or buddyship or dumb and dumber best buds national lampoon's trucker vacation film.

You have one goal and one goal only... make money.

As a final note, hard numbers. Most solos I know are getting 900-1100 weekly checks. We have never had less than a 1400 and typical is 1500 to 1650 depending on how the weeks start and end. For example a 1400 check usually results in a 1600 check the next week simply because the load we just dropped kicked over to the next week. A several times we have landed 1800 checks because we just did 2k and dropped after midnight on the previous week so we are only a few hours into the next week check and already have 2k miles.

In sum on average, true average, when I compare to solos I am friends with my check is 50% higher. But then admittedly there are sacrifices as were discussed in other posts, such as sleep and privacy.