Trucking Limerick #3 (safe For Work)

Thank you Paul. I'm barely at 3 months Solo. I will begin looking into Dedicated over the next couple of months. I will definately employ some of your strategies. Is it necessary for the account you are on to have a DC near home? I live in Tucson Az. A good sized City with backwards leadership. There are only 2 DC's that I am aware of. Target and Home Goods. Thanks again for your advice.

Hey Tractor Man, Swift also does a lot if intermodal work. I'm not real familiar with what's available in your area, but I know some of the Knight drivers who do that type of work in Arizona make good solid money and are home almost every night.

Thanks Old School! I really need to research my options. It took me a year to make the leap into Trucking. I like to avoid rash decisions. Paul may be right about an inexperienced DM. I spoke to her again yesterday about my concerns on inconsistant miles. I was very polite and non accusatory. She assured me she would work on it. The last time I came back from HT I had pre plans before every current delivery. Managed my clock to a tee, and picked up and delivered 100% on time. Got great miles those 2 weeks! Then it went flat. I have tried to follow all of your advice on how to be successful in this Industry. You are my TT Mentor of sorts and I value your input. I'm still new, maybe just a little impatient at this point. I feel my performance record with Swift speaks for itself. I'll just keep doing what I've been doing and see if it works itself out. Thanks again for everybody's advice!

Hey Tractor Man, Swift also does a lot if intermodal work. I'm not real familiar with what's available in your area, but I know some of the Knight drivers who do that type of work in Arizona make good solid money and are home almost every night.

Thanks for pointing that out Old School. I completely forgot about that.

She assured me she would work on it

That's good. You did the right thing in talking with her. Personally, I really enjoy the OTR lifestyle. If I was doing intermodal , or maybe even linehaul work, I'd probably want to scratch my eyeballs out! I enjoy the traveling lifestyle, and even though I'm doing dedicated work these days I'm still covering something like 40 of the lower 48 states. That's enough to scratch my itch for the traveling lifestyle.

I'm glad your enjoying what you do. Hang in there, and keep up the great job you're doing - your DM will get it figured out and you'll start making some scratch before long.

Thank you Paul. I'm barely at 3 months Solo. I will begin looking into Dedicated over the next couple of months. I will definately employ some of your strategies. Is it necessary for the account you are on to have a DC near home? I live in Tucson Az. A good sized City with backwards leadership. There are only 2 DC's that I am aware of. Target and Home Goods. Thanks again for your advice.

Short answer, no. But it really depends on what type of gig you want and how often you want to get home. This is what I love about Swift and why I chose them in the first place--so many damn options. Oh, and many of the dedicated driver leaders and fleet managers are not gonna care that you only have 3 months experience.

They look primarily at mileage (check your mileage under the "utilization" tab on the Swift driver portal--try really hard to keep it at or above 2300), preventables and RA score, and on time percentage. The least important of these is utilization since they will understand your situation. On time percentage is HUGE. That's a big part of how they keep these dedicated accounts and they do NOT look fondly on late deliveries. They like people like you.

Back to the DC question. I run Miller Coors right now. It works great because they have a brewery in Golden, CO, so it's easy for me to get home. Like Old School's gig, it's a national account so it has that same otr feel, just without all the sitting around pulling your hair out. LOL. I've checked out Walmart dedicated out of Corinne, UT, as well. That's over 500 miles from where I live, but they've told me before that they could take me on, but I'd only get home about once a month. That's gonna have a more regional feel.

The other thing here is just try to hang in there while you're figuring this stuff out. I, too, had 1500 mile weeks. Reefer seems possibly a tad more consistent from what I'm gathering, but I still had pretty low mileage my first couple of months.

Another thing. Sorry, I get going and can't shut up!! As far as I'm aware, you don't always have to run where your home address is. If you live in the truck and don't care about getting "home," there's no good reason you can't work on a dedicated account in PA, for example, if that's where you want to run. It depends on the account though--obviously, this wouldn't work for a shuttle run running daycabs and/or slip-seating.

Who do you work for Farmer Bob? It sounds suspiciously like Swift. The sitting and low paychecks are killing me right now. I started 3 months ago with $4500.00 in my savings account. Under 1k right now. I started in this business to build up my savings account, not DRAIN IT! BTW my driver ranking is 100% with no tickets, bumps bangs, or bruises. No toppled light poles or customers fences. And a NEGATIVE RA score to boot.

Stevens transport. Two hours after that bad poetry was sent, I got a Laredo, TX -> Denver, CO run.