Is it possible to be a truck driver and be home most of the time? Like, say, get on the road at 7, get somewhere by 11, leave again at 12 and be home by 5ish?
Or do most truck drivers have to stay away from home a lot? (I define “a lot” as being away from home more than 2 or 3 nights a week.)
How much do they make, anyway? How long does it take to become one, etc? How do you go about getting hired once you get your CDL, etc?
The hamsters ate my first reply, so I’ll try again.
Not likely. More likely, if you got on the road at 7, you’d be home somewhere between 8 and 10 pm. In DH’s current job, he leaves at 9 am, and gets home anywhere between 9 pm - midnight. This is on the day slot, which is considered the most desirable for some reason that escapes me. When he worked nights, he left about 8 pm, and got home around 10 am. On his last ‘home-every-night’ job, he left around 2 am and got home around 5 pm.
When he was an over-the-road driver, he would be out anywhere from 1-3 weeks straight. Most OTR drivers I know are usually out at least a week, sometimes two, but rarely longer than that at one time unless they request it. I know one owner-operator who doesn’t go home for months at a time, but then he has no reason to - he’s been on the road for so many years that he’s never had time to meet anyone, marry, and reproduce. Now that he’s over 40, it’s haunting him.
I would guess that a new driver starting out would make between $20-25,000/yr.
Because of the Catch-22 of no experience, no job, companies that are willing to hire inexperienced drivers and train them can pay very little and get lots of takers.
There may be a per diem compensation to help pay for meals, showers, etc on the road; I’ve never heard of a brand new driver who was able to get a job in which he was home every night. Those jobs generally go to the experienced drivers with good records.
Experienced drivers can make anywhere from 35-45 cents per mile, and probably some hourly pay for waiting time (loading and unloading). Most companies require that you sit at a site at least 1/2 hr before they pay you for any waiting time; some require an hour. Hourly pay for waiting can range from $12-15/hr.
In his years of driving, my husband’s pay has ranged from over $60,000 to as low as $22,000. (The high end disappeared with the crash of the economy, and we’ve taken some big hits in income over the last several years.)
In addition, cost of health insurance varies with the company. We’ve seen it as high as $100/wk for a family, down to around $45/wk. Most companies do not pay health insurance for the driver or family.
I’ll ask DH what he knows about this when he gets home. It’s a lot different now than it was when he started 15 years ago.
Trucking is hard on the family, hard on relationships, hard on the body. It can be a good means of making a living, but you won’t get rich. If I could figure out how to link, I’d ask anyone reading this who could offer some advice to post to my thread “Career advice needed - trucking/logistics” to help my husband get OUT of the truck. It’s just that tough of a life.
I can only offer my tiny experience years ago, but when I was 19 I signed up for a Truck Driving School in San Diego, CA. I completed the school which took about 3 months, got my Class “A” license, and tried to get a job. Unfortunately for me there was a law that says you cannot cross state lines in a Truck Driving position unless you are 21, so I never got the job I “thought” I wanted and eventually lost my Class “A” license.
The school did not help in the slightest bit in finding a job. Actually they held the information from me about being 21 to cross state lines.
I have had many driving jobs since and was recently offered a job driving a limousine for $35 an hour.
Just make sure it’s definitely what you want to do before signing up for the school.
It can be a sad, lonely and very dangerous profession. Plus, as noted above, the pay fluctuates with the economy and buying your own cab is pricey, to say the least but according to him, buying one was the only way he could survive as long as he did.
Maybe you should meet a few truckers and talk with them before you go jumping into truck driving school. Some guys (and women) really like it…but I think you might be surprised how many would say if they had it to do over again, they would never have picked that job.
My experience is that even if you are a “local” driver these guys work a long day. I have regularly seen drivers offload at our place after 6:00 PM and they still have 2-3 hours of driving left to get back to base.