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The "choice" hours that you want from 3:00am to 5:00pm may only be available for the drivers with more seniority. When I told my dispatch manager I'd take anything but 8:00 am, that's exactly what he gave me many, many times. You have to earn your way to getting what you want and keep your personal life to yourself.

-mountain girl

The "choice" hours that you want from 3:00am to 5:00pm may only be available for the drivers with more seniority. When I told my dispatch manager I'd take anything but 8:00 am, that's exactly what he gave me many, many times. You have to earn your way to getting what you want and keep your personal life to yourself.

-mountain girl

Good to know :)

Werner in Fontana, CA. , whose school is associated with "Road Masters" pays $500 a week while in school. Pays a little more per mile than "S####". Their contract is for 3 years, but if I could do a do over I would have done it at Werner instead. It's going to be 2 to 3 years before you can move on, so you may as well get paid for the school, and make a little more per month, as opposed to being stuck on the bottom as far as income goes. Currently at S#### the pay is sporadic, which is probably the case at other companies depending on how much time is spent waiting for a load, but a few cents more per mile covers all the work you do for the pay. In my opinion .36 a mile doesn't cover the hours you actually spend working. There's scaling, fueling, data entry, trailer locating (disorganized).

Mike, your comments are typical disgruntled rookie comments. Your problems are not company specific. Most rookies struggle with "sporadic" pay. The reason their pay is sporadic is because the amount of work they get done is sporadic - it's as simple as that.

You mentioned all the "hot buttons" that rookies complain about:

• actual hours spent working
• being stuck at a low pay scale
• all the extra things a driver does
• disorganization

I promise you there are a lot of drivers at your company that don't have those problems you mentioned, it is this way at all trucking companies. That is strong evidence that your issues are not company specific, but rather driver specific.

Most rookies think they can resolve all their trucking problems by getting a few more cents per mile, which is the driving force behind the great migration of truck drivers from one company to another.

I'm sitting at a terminal today waiting to have my truck serviced tomorrow morning. Almost all the conversations I've heard while sitting here in the lounge with the "terminal rats" have been among drivers who have never been at a trucking company for longer than six months at one time. They are discussing all the topics you bring up, and each of them claims they will give this company a six month chance to prove themselves and if they can't do any better than the last companies they've worked for then they are going to move on.

What a vicious cycle of idiocy. The cure for their problems is facing them right in the mirror. I did really well as a rookie making 27 cpm. Success doesn't come from your rate of pay, but you'll find that your rate of pay will increase when you discover how to succeed at this much misunderstood career.

Old School is right on all counts.

It takes times to prove yourself to any company. It doesn't matter how long you've been driving there will be some time spent at the bottom of the totem pole begging for miles. And if you show up late for any appointment times or start trying to refuse loads or you're not getting along with dispatch then you're going to spend a lot longer begging for the miles the top drivers are getting.

Some simple math will tell you that 3,000 miles x 36 cents per mile = $1080 which is one heck of a good paycheck for a rookie in any career, wouldn't you say? I mean, if you can make $40,000 your first year in the industry you're doing well. At 36 cpm you have the potential for doing a whole lot better than that and a few cents per mile somewhere else isn't going to mean squat. You'll lose a ton of money from lost wages during the process of switching companies and trying to work your way up from the bottom again. Then you're just going to find out eventually that most companies are run very much the same and you can do well (or not do well) pretty much anywhere you go.

What makes all the difference in the world is learning your trade, learning how your company operates on the inside, and proving yourself to be a safe, hard working, reliable driver. Once you've done that you should get to the point where you're able to handle 2,800+ miles per week and you should expect to see those kind of numbers pretty consistently.

Their contract is for 3 years

Whose contract is three years? I don't recall hearing about anyone with a contract that long.

In my opinion .36 a mile doesn't cover the hours you actually spend working

Ah yes, one of the big rookie traps that drives some people to miserable insanity and many of those right out of the industry. That ol' line of thinking, "Hey, I'm not getting paid for all of the work I do!" It's one of the curses of having too much time to think going down the road.

Mileage pay always accounts for the other work that has to be done out there. It all averages out. Don't drive yourself insane thinking you're doing certain things for free. You're not. They're just not breaking down each and every paycheck to reflect each and every minute you've spent doing all of the different duties that come with OTR driving. They lump it all into the mileage pay. If you can keep those wheels turning like the big dogs then you'll get paid like the big dogs. It doesn't matter how they break it all down.

The only people "stuck on the bottom as far as income goes," as you worded it, are the people who are performing on the bottom as far as productivity and reliability goes. 36 cents per mile is quite respectable and as I've pointed out you can make really good money in that pay range assuming you know how to get the job done at a high level so you're getting top miles each week.

I'm not going to say what's already been said, but I'll give you some numbers to indicate what happens when you bust your butt, and the planners know it. I ended a 34 hour reset four days ago. In the next 3 days I drove 579, 658, 648 miles. Today I start my day with 35 hours on my 70 and will be driving 380 miles to final, and then likely another 100 or so towards my next load. I do not have a preplan yet, but I will almost certainly have one before I get to final.

I am in a 62 MPH governed truck, and at 9800 miles for this month with a week left to drive. When I call the planners, I do not give or get any run around. If they have a load or a repower that makes sense, I get it.

at 9800 miles for this month with a week left to drive

Nice!!! Those are some serious miles!

Brett is correct on the mileage pay accounting for all the other stuff.

Say you drive 600 miles in a day. You spend 1/2 hour pre and post trip. You then spend 1/2 hour fueling. I am in and out fueling in 15 minutes though. If you do all this in a 13 hour period you just made 16.61 per hour for the day. That is at your .36 per mile.

If it takes you longer than that then the problem is the driver not the company.