Can Any Newbies Tell Me If This Is Your Experience?

Thanks for all the Advice guys.... I'm going to have a nice conversation with my DM and ask him to make an effort to improve my runs ... I'm new but I have been rolling solo for about 3 months now.... Another month of working for $350 take home is nothing short of indentured servitude .... From what I can gather... Even being new.. I should be looking at $700 or more each week... The one bad thing about canning my DM is that I have to go back in to the main terminal and switch out trucks.. At least that is how I understand it... The trucks are assigned to the DM's.... Which is a pain in the arse!

Something is going on here, and part of it is that you are new, and part of it is slow freight, but there may be some other things that I would have no way of knowing about

I agree with that completely. This time of the year is slow overall for everyone but a lot of companies manage to keep their top drivers rolling fairly well anyhow. Unfortunately with only a few months in at that company you're not going to be on anyone's special list of high priority drivers.

Definitely talk around to other drivers at your company and see what kind of miles they're turning. I would always tell dispatch I was looking for better miles and I would immediately see what was going on with everyone else. If several other drivers were rolling pretty good and I wasn't then there was a problem in dispatch somewhere. But the overwhelming majority of the time you'll find the other drivers are complaining about slow miles also.

You certainly have two big forces working against you though with the time of year and little experience with that particular company.

At least that is how I understand it... The trucks are assigned to the DM's....

I don't think they mean the physical truck itself is assigned to a DM. They assign drivers to DM's but in the offices they refer to drivers by their truck numbers so the conversation is always like, "What trucks do you have on your board?" or "That truck isn't one of mine" - that sort of thing.

Now if your company has other divisions and you change divisions you will almost certainly be reassigned to a different DM. But if you were to upgrade to a newer truck you wouldn't switch DM's.

Nobody wants to bring home $350/week. And like Old School said, your company isn't any happier about it than you are. Nobody hires a driver so they can sit around all the time. But you can be sure it's 100% normal to get some slow weeks and even a slow month or two before things start rolling again. I've never known of a company that doesn't see ups and downs in their level of freight throughout the year.

Definitely go in there on your very best behavior and speak with your dispatcher. Every dispatcher on Earth loves to have guys that want to run. You can't believe how difficult it is to find a guy that can turn 3,000 miles a week safely and consistently and make their appointments on time. The percentage is probably about 20%. You sound like the type of guy that any company would love to have around but even that won't always overcome being new at a company and hitting a slow freight season. Put a little more time in at that place, maintain a perfect safety and service record, and keep reminding dispatch politely but firmly that you're looking for more miles.

I learned the hard way early on in my career as a young man that you can't speak with office personnel the way you do with blue collar people. You have to be a lot more gentle and friendly with them. I'm an Italian from Western New York who was raised in a blue collar family full of brickmasons, steel workers, auto workers, and mechanics. We are not soft-spoken, gentle, delicate people to say the least! When I first came into trucking I was 21 and had virtually no experience working with office personnel so it never dawned on me to speak to them any differently than anyone else. Boy was that a mistake! If you word something the wrong way or start getting snippy with them things will go backwards for you in a hurry.

Just keep in mind that trucking companies get paid the same way their drivers do - by turning miles. You're on the same team. If you're not making a nice paycheck, neither is the company. So go in there with the attitude that you're going to try to figure out how to work with them to get the miles you're looking for. It can be done if you handle it right.

How many paid miles have you been averaging a week?