Trucker Blogs

A lorry driver was pulled up by police in China – after driving for hundreds of miles with a sheet of cardboard covering his broken windscreen.

Click on the link to see the picture. Quite amusing!

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_3591935.html?menu=news,quirkies.quirkygaffes

Henan province has some of the most isolated stretches of road and can be extremely cold. It is not surprising he could drive for so long before being spotted. But you got to give the man marks for resourcefulness and stoicism. He was purple with cold and yet persevered! At least the police did not slap 6 points on his licence.

I am looking into trucking companies to work for. My list are the following: 1 Werner Enterprise 2. JB hunt 3. Falcon. I plan to work for the chosen company for ay least 6 months then resign. (To gain experience) However, I am skeptical about these companies or others after visiting this website
www.thetruckersreport.com

This site contains a lot of stories (Trucker being ripped off by the company they worked for)

Is trucking industry corrupted? Do you have any advise for me on what to look for in a company and what company do you prefer? ( I am a recent graduate)

Help if you can..

Thanks

I am an owner operator, 6 years experience, currently earning 85% of each load (avg $1.33 per mile).

I started by going to a driving school and getting pre-hired by Swift. I worked for Swift for 9 months, and they paid my student loan payments as long as I worked for them. My experience with them (and probably the same at all large companies) is that you are just a number. You can never count on being home when you want, the money is crap (even after the initial training period) and you will be treated like a human being only when they need a favor from you.

I then worked for JB Hunt as an over the road driver, but since they send much of their freight by rail, most of the loads I received were short runs (500 miles avg). One week I almost quit when I was only given 1100 miles for the entire week. Fortunately, I was able to get on a local dedicated Wal-mart account, which paid really well. Unfortunately, I burned out on the hours.

I think that as a beginning professional driver, it is almost a prerequisite that you work at one of these companies, because they will hire a newbie, and you can get your 6-12 months experience. Once you have that initial experience (and a clean record), you can get hired almost anywhere.

Ultimately, the way to go is to get your own authority and work completely independent. Although I still broker my loads through a large company (Interstate) and there are benefits to that, you will never reach consistent $1.60-$2.00 freight until you have your own authority, own trailer and a thorough knowledge of how rates work and how the big companies do it. Check www.smarttrucker.com for some good information on how to do it right.

BTW, never, ever sign up for a lease-purchase program. These programs are set up to benefit the company, not you! A company can run owner operators much more cheaply than a company driver because they don’t have to pay for the truck, insurance, workers comp, etc. If you’re going to be an owner operator, find a cheap used truck and go that way. Any questions, write driving_fool1@yahoo.com.