5 Months In, Wondering If Trucking Is Still For Me Or Not.

Hi everyone, I am a 27 year old male from Pittsburgh. Three years ago I graduated from college with a BA in business/engineering/management, and after job searching and working, I now have 2 full years combined work history between two different jobs in that time. One job was in an office and did not require a degree at all, the second job was as a server. Overall thus far, that college degree has led me to limited success.

So about a year ago I decided to get my CDL , I game planned and I graduated in May 2024 with my CDL and bought it in cash, tried to find a local job for 3 months, expectedly couldn't get hired locally, and in August 2024, I bit the bullet and went OTR (technically called regional since i was home most weekends) for Western Express. Western sucked hard. I worked for them from August-early December working as hard as they would let me, and I made unfortunately only made about $6,300 net, $8,000 gross, total hauling flatbed loads in the north east region of the united states at .48 cents per mile (yes driving in downtown new york sucks. yes parking in brooklyn sucks). This was less money than I was making at my serving job.

I quit Western Express and decided to double down into trucking and go full OTR with Werner. I started with them late December 2024. I am delivering to Dollar Trees and Dollar Generals. It's a lot of manual labor with box unloading, a lot less driving than I expected based on the recruiter, but they claim one should make between $1,300-$1,500 a week average starting out (.79cpm and $300 per empty trailer. 800-1400 miles per week and 2-3 trailers unloaded per week). Werner has been way better than Western Express, so I at least somewhat trust that the pay expectations could be realistic. Due to training and truck issues, I have yet to work a full week at this company to even confirm if that's a realistic pay for me here or not. However, this industry and the job has been just leaving me uncertain.

For example, like I said, my truck broke down due to a faulty starter on January 16. It is January 28th and my truck is STILL in the shop. That's 12 days with no work. I'm never going to get anywhere if I can just randomly be out of work for 2 freaking weeks at a time. I have super low bills (on purpose) but even still I am "never" going to reach my savings goals.

I truthfully am not much of a trucker at heart, never had been, but I'm smart and I work hard. I wanted to get into the industry, save up $45,000 (to pay off my student loan debt) within 12-24 months, or as quick as possible, and get out of the industry. I figured I could make between $50,000-$80,000 a year gross, and live cheaply and pay off my debt that way. Put 75% of my net pay towards my debts. My monthly bills total $350 plus food, and then throw the rest at my student loans. I have no rent, no dependant family, no kids, no pets. Just a gym membership to shower at, cheaper car insurance for my paid off car when I go home, cheap phone plan, health insurance, laundry. I initially considered staying longer in this industry if i enjoyed the work, or if saving even more money, perhaps up to $100,000, over a few years seemed realistic. I am frugal as heck, so the saving is not the issue with me, it's always been the money making aspect for me.

I just wanted people's thoughts. Thanks. I'm sacrificing my entire life I used to know to chase this dream of getting debt free and eventually filling up my bank account. Trucking was, no pun intended, going to be my vehicle to get me there, live cheap, make a lot of money. I'm now doubting it heavily.

Someone tell me if I'm crazy and should just go back to enjoying life again with my other skills and hobbies still waiting for me.

Welcome, you certainly have gotten into this industry taking the harder road.

Your first year is always overwhelming. It’s just that steep a learning curve. After the first year it starts to get easier as you gain experience. However you will always be in a constant state of learning and perfecting your craft.

Dollar accounts are always difficult. First the physical aspect, but also the places you have to get into. You have to be very very very careful not to hit anything. That would be a career killer.

If you stick with it you will have better doors open for you. The past 3 solid years in this industry has been very difficult. Freight rates have been depressed and over capacity has made getting work difficult. Hopefully we are turning the corner now and things will pickup.

I agree, definitely a hard way to run your rookie year. Foe the goals that you have, you would be much better served with conventional OTR. Without many ties, you could stay out for long peroids.

With very little overhead, you will accumulate money quickly. Often, what costs people is not that they don't make enough per hour, day, week or year, it's that they spend too much.

If you run your truck like a business, are safe, reliable and easy to work with, keep your spending down, you'll easily accumulate money.

The good thing about werner is that you can simply transfer to OTR , regional , or any other division. Although if you're comfortable with the backing, and things on the dollar amount, you can make considerable money on it.

I made between 74k and 84k working at 44 to 52 base cpm at a Maga doing OTR general freight. Everyone knocks OTR, but I personally love the lifestyle of it. In fact, it's the primary reason I got into trucking, but that's coming from someone who did 35 years of hard labor.

Davy's comment below is VERY sound advice. Take advantage of this option at the mega fleet to build a solid record. Reassess in a couple of years, however mega carriers generally reward good drivers and may raise compensation to retain you too.

The good thing about werner is that you can simply transfer to OTR , regional , or any other division. Although if you're comfortable with the backing, and things on the dollar amount, you can make considerable money on it.

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...

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.