Why are Trucking Companies Constantly Hiring?

In My Humble Opinion
1

If the signs on the back of trucks are to be believed, truck driving now pays somewhere in excess of $50,000 (USD), with Owner-Operators paid in excess of $150K*. With the pay in this range, why do they have so much trouble filling the driver’s seat? Is the job really that horrible, or are there just plenty of other ways to make $50K? It seems that half the help-wanted ads in our local paper are for truck drivers, and almost every rig on the highway is advertising for drivers**. I have driven trucks locally (for UPS) but never long-distance, so I don’t know much about the lifestyle. My BIL drives big-rigs part time (when he’s not working on offshore rigs), but I think he does it almost as a pastime (he really likes being alone for long stretches and his household/accounts/etc are already set up for long absences). If anyone here has first- or second-hand experience with long-distance driving, I’d really like to hear about it. What’s it like? Why is there such turnover? (I’m assuming this from the ads). Do a lot of people “wash out” of trucking school?

*I would assume operating expenses come out of this total, but I don’t have any idea what the numbers would be.

**Not considering a career change, just observed this while helping my son look for summer jobs.

2

My husband was a long haul truck driver for about 15 years. I didn’t know him then, but he’s talked about the frustrations.

He was both an owner-operator and an employee.

He said the money was good, but not good enough to make up for the frustrations. Plus, he was getting older, and the physical stuff got harder to do. Drivers don’t always just back up to a warehouse and wait for someone else to load or unload. It’s not just driving.

He bitched the most about scheduling. Maybe he’d get stuck in traffic, or maybe a dispatcher screwed up. He’d get to his destination before they opened or as they were closing. He’d end up spending the night in Podunk, waiting until the next day to pick up or drop off the load.

He also complained about poorly maintained equipment, traffic, drivers who think an 18-wheeler can stop on a dime, hilly roads that don’t have turn-outs, winter driving – all that stuff.

It’s fun to take road trips with him though. He never needs a map and he knows the best places to eat. :slight_smile:

3

I think it’s one of those situations where you can make good money, but the job is so shitty no-one wants to do it. You can make a pretty wage (here in the UK, anyhow) as a plumber, garbage collecter or whatever. However, they are tough, dirty jobs. Most people are happy earning less tapping on a keyboard instead of being elbow-deep in shit all the time.
Spending pretty much every waking hour driving, scheduling, or sitting in your cab watching a portable TV while waiting for the tachometer to clock a sufficient period of rest hours doesn’t sound that much fun. To say nothing of having to sleep in your ‘office’ in a layby on a regular basis, and only seeing your family every now and then.

4

My sort-of grandfather* was a long-distance trucker for years. Seriously, when he died, we found a tall stack of patches, signifying the driver had driven x100,000 miles for the company. A stack. I think he drove to the moon and back a couple times. My uncle is currently a driver as well.

Anyway, it is a tough job. You’re away from your family for weeks at a time. It can be boring. It can be dangerous. It’s not real great for your health (lots of time stationary, essentially forced to eat from diners/fast food every day you are on the road). It can be stressful. He hated a lot of the new regulations that arose before his death.

I can’t really comment about having your own trucking business. My sort-of grandfather did have his own rig at one time, but he sold it when I was a child and by the time I was old enough to ask, I had mostly forgotten about it. I would guess it has the same problems with any small business - upkeep, insurance, scheduling, yadda yadda.

*long story, not relevant

5

Scheduling can be a right bitch.

I say this from the perspective of someone in the shipping office. :stuck_out_tongue: There’s been plenty of times where I get drivers who come in hours ahead of schedule and want to be offloaded then because they have another load to pick up elsewhere and be on their way or be loaded so they can get down there and back faster etc. Of course since I’m the one right there I get to see their wrath when they don’t get dealt with right away by the shippers/receivers (most are okay, the older guys are a lot more casual about it… it’s the younger guys who start stomping around and slam my door etc).

There’s a lot of waiting around to get loaded and offloaded, and depending where it is it can be a wait and put you behind, which blows your connections all to hell so you might end up missing that load heading back home and have to either run empty somewhere else or back home (lost money) or go on another route and it’ll be longer before you get back home.

Lots of guys talk about the expense of their truck (owner operator and employee seems the most common, though city drivers either have their own truck or drive a company truck) and of course if something happens you have to pay for that and be out the time on the road.

Mostly I get the impression that it’s stressful, long days on the road eating junk and having to deal with a lot of laws that can vary depending where you are going (for example, if you’re driving into California the trailer weights and axles have different, tighter, restrictions from anywhere else in the States… we have troubles with that at my company lately, the trailer comes back and everything has to be changed when it should be a long way down the highway).

If you’re going across border you have to deal with the paperwork too. If it’s stuck for some reason, you can’t go anywhere and have to wait until it’s dealt with. There’s also new rules coming in for customs currently, some crossings use both, some use one, some you need a special permit to cross at… (I deal with the paperwork, all outgoing and some incoming… so I know what a right bitch THAT can be). Oh, and if your paperwork isn’t in order it’s a $5000 fine all around (or so I’ve been told).

Lots of hassle. The guys I talk to generally seem to like it, others just seem grumpy and pissed off.

6

In addition to all the points mentioned above, the people who do seem to be cut out for long-distance truck-driving (I have two brothers-in-law who’ve been doing it for many years) tend to change companies at the drop of a Cowboy hat. Drivers are in enough demand that the good, experienced ones can move up the ladder every year or two, driving for a different company with more money/a more regular schedule/better benefits/more home time, whatever.

As a rule, the trucks you see that are always advertising for drivers are the low-end companies. They don’t pay all that well, but if you’re looking to break into truck-driving, they will pay for your training, provided you sign an agreement to work solely for them for a period of time. They know full well that after that period of time is up, you’ll either find a more pleasant job, or go on to a better company that pays better.

7

Back when I worked at a Truck Gate, the most common things I heard (assuming that I didn’t hear a lot of the other stuff) were;

1-800-FUCK-ME-RAW numbers on the back of the truck. I remember one guy saying that his company assumed that anything someone bothered to call in and report/claim happened must therefore be true. They could get in a lot of trouble if someone on the road got pissed at them.

Scheduling. One guy had been given five days to get from Illinois to Minnesota to drop off a load. Then roughly 24 hours to get from Minneapolis to Seattle. Yeah, that works swell.

I considered it, but didn’t want to be wandering all over the Earth on a variable schedule while trying to maintain an apartment on my own. Heck, if I was still married to the psycho ex, I definitely would have considered it, just to stay away.

8

Trucking jobs differ widely so you have to understand the larger picture. The best jobs are scheduled runs that get you back home for dinner and/or the weekend. After that it’s a trade-off of time and money. The lowest end of the scale are spot-quote runs that have no guarantee of timely onload and offload. A driver could get stuck on a short run between 2 different businesses whose docks are chaos. A 5-hr trip isn’t going to make the driver rich and may result in 3 hrs of down time on either end. Imagine getting paid for five while you waste 11 hrs of your wage-earning day. It’s not unheard of to see border delays of between 5 and 8 hrs.

Companies who specialize in spot-quote work will have a higher turnover rate than companies that have scheduled runs.

9

I was an O/O for 24 years and gave it up a few years back. The vast majority of long haul drivers get paid by the mile and I think you’ll find that the average company driver today makes somewhere between 35 and 40 cents a mile. Even at 40 cents your looking at 2500 miles a week for 50 weeks a year to make 50K, but remember that the driver only gets paid when the wheels are turning. There is very little, or no, (mostly NO) compensation for time spent loading/unloading, including waiting time, or the dozens of other things that cause the driver to be slowed, or stopped. Add to that the the very strict federal regs. governing the hours a driver may work/drive each day and it’s pretty tough for a driver to make that 125K a year, not to mention that they’ll almost never be home. Then there are the expenses of living on the road.
I was single for most of my time as a trucker, I truly enjoyed driving for many hours a day and I liked the constant traveling, but it got to a point where it just wasn’t worth it anymore.
O/O’s have their own problems, competing w/ the big companies, fuel prices, etc.

10

My husband has been OTR for 20+ years.
He has a dedicated run, so he gets home every weekend.

Most of his frustrations are the traffic problems. That’s about the worst of it, according to him.
He’s ok with the rest of it.
He doesn’t have to touch the freight, either, so that’s a plus.
He says that the worst part is just trying to pay attention to what the other drivers on the road are doing.
He has a spotless driving record, and hopes to keep it that way. No accidents, no tickets and no log book violations.

He loves the pay and the insurance, and he loves the vacation time, which is one paid week (actually 9 days, total) of vacation for every 30,00 miles driven…he gets that once every 3 months. He can work the vacation time if he wants, and save the vacation time for later…he can cash it out and work it, if he wants…or, he can take the paid vacation.
It’s up to him, which is a really good deal.

He is a firm believer in ‘following the rules’ concerning the DOT regulations, and he’s one of the few, I believe, that adhere to those rules.
The companies that don’t give the drivers enough time to get from ‘point A’ to ‘point B’, are companies that don’t give a rat’s ass about their employees.
DOT fines are not cheap, and drivers just can’t afford to screw up and get caught. Some companies pay for the driver’s fines, but most do not.

I think the ‘10 Hour Rule’ is one of the best things that have come about for drivers. Sure, there might be a time or two that you’re only an hour or so from home or your delivery destination, and you run out of hours and you have to shut down for 10 hours, but that’s tough shit (If your load is going to be late, that’s usually the driver’s own fault, as they should have figured out the travel time, breaks and whatnot BEFORE heading out). At least I won’t have to worry about that truck driver falling asleep at the wheel, or driving like a rampant bat out of hell, and killing me or a loved one!
Of course, many drivers ignore this rule, screwing around their log book to show they take the 10 hour downtime/breaks, when they don’t.
That’s not good for anyone.

11

Your husband is in a small percentage of drivers w/ a truely good trucking job.
Unless they changed it again in the past couple of years, the 10 hour rule is now an 11 hour rule, but once the clock starts, it doesn’t stop, i.e: a driver can’t take a break/nap w/o losing time from the 11 hours.

12

I believe you’re right, A.R. Cane. My husband’s breaks are included in his alloted ‘rule’ hours.
Yes, he does have a great job, and he’s happy there. He considers himself very lucky, considering all the stories he hears from other drivers out there.

13

Unless he drives through Canada, where the rules are absurdly complex.

14

I am engaged to a driver.

When he went back on the road last year, the point was that with this company, he would have a local run within three months. Never happened, so after a year, he changed companies. I think he’s driven as a company driver for about 10 companies in 10 years, trying to find one that lives up to their promises and doesn’t screw him.

The pay can suck. Most company drivers and some owner/operators are paid by the mile, anywhere from near 30 cents for a green company guy to upwards of a dollar for seasoned O/Os. Your weekly paycheck depends on the loads you run, and the miles aren’t usually all that steady. It’s very possible to bring home $250 one week and $975 the next, depending on the loads you were assigned. Makes it impossible to really budget.

I imagine single drivers have it better than the ones with families, because no one gets enough home time. You don’t make any money if you are home too often. I see my fiance maybe 2-3 days a month. A lot of single drivers don’t bother paying rent anyplace, just grabbing motel rooms for their home time.

I am quite convinced that drivers die sooner. Unless you’ve got the money to deck out your tractor like a mini-RV, you’re pretty much stuck eating fast food and Iron Skillet (shudder). That gets very expensive, and it’s all crap food. Add that to the fact that on the whole, drivers sit down for a living. Driving is more of a mental challenge. Too many truckers are overweight, out of shape, and developing cholesterol and heart issues.

Finding a good fleet manager, dispatcher, or broker is a challenge. Most of the people that schedule and dispatch freight have never even been inside a truck, much less to know what it’s like out there on the road. Unreasonable deadlines are coupled with uncontrollable circumstances such as weather and traffic. Fiance’s current FM is trying to screw with him, I think. Fiance has been begging for some decent loads (mileage) and has still been averaging about 1500 miles a week. He spends more time idle in the truck stops than he does running, and still gets reamed about his idle percentage. It’s insane.

So yeah, very high turnover. The trucking industry doesn’t worry as much about job-hopping as other industries do. A lot of the ads you’ll see in public are from the crappier companies looking for suckers.

15

You’ve got a pretty fair understanding of the biz, better than a lot of drivers I’ve known. Couple of comments: An O/O better be getting well over a buck a mile, a dollar is damn near what it costs for operating expenses, fuel alone will run around 50 cents a mile. There are quite a few former drivers who go into dispatch, but most of them aren’t necessarily friendly to other drivers.

16

I suppose that’s true in most cases, but it doesn’t have to be. My husband has a crockpot, microwave, hotplates, and fridge/freezer in his truck, along with a small grill. He never eats at restaurants while he’s gone. He just cooks his own food.
Of course, since hes only gone for 5 or 6 days in a row, it’s easier for him to do that. These things are not expensive, so I don’t know why more drivers don’t use them! They’d be healthier for it, that’s for sure.
I imagine the ones that don’t, don’t really care to waste their downtime cooking for themselves, and prefer to eat at the assorted truck stops out there.
When I go grocery shopping, I have two lists. One for home, and one for the truck! It’s much cheaper for my husband to cook his own food, than it is to eat at the truck stops.

The turnover rate is quite high because people think they can do the job, but in reality, they don’t last too long. They just can’t handle it.
Some find out that it’s just too lonely out there, some can’t handle the stress, and I’m sure there are a myriad of other reasons why people stop driving. Some just are not cut out for it, I suppose.

Truck drivers are a rare breed. At least the good ones are. People need to give them much more respect than they get!

17

Thanks to everyone for the replies. I really had no idea about this part of the trucking biz, and the answers were eye-opening. As I suspected, the $$ promised by the ads are probably best-case scenarios (with most making less). I’m puzzled why companies don’t try to improve the job to retain their drivers. (Maybe it’s cheaper to train a new one, than keep the experienced ones).

18

My husband used to drive local. He was Owner/Operator and had to work on his own truck, work six days a week, pay for his own insurance, etc. It simply wasn’t worth it to him Hard work, long hours, and not much money. He gave it up for a job that paid $7.00 but it was a huge improvement over trucking. Go figure.

19

There is another dimension to this too (outside of it being incredibly hard work which everyone has pointed out).

After deregulation - until the past couple of years - rates didn’t increase all that much. Shippers enjoyed a very long spell with virtually no increase in what they were being charged to shipped. That started to change around 2001-2002. But flashback to that same span where rates stayed the same - similar skilled jobs, like construction, saw big increases in what they were paying. Currently construction (on average) pays slightly higher than driving OTR does.

So if you had a choice of two jobs, both of them back-breaking work, only one got you home every night while the other kept you away from family for weeks on end, it’d be a pretty clear choice about what sounds more attractive.

One of the big results in stagnant wages is that no new-blood has been attracted to the industry. The demographics of drivers right now is that a vast majoriy are 50-years-old plus.

So trucking companies are extremely competitive in attracting drivers, offering huge sign on bonuses and “aggressive” tactics (i.e. promise the world). Trucking companies - at least OTR companies - all pay pretty much the same wages. So drivers can go from company to company. Driver gets miffed at dispatcher at company A this morning, he can quit and go to work at his/her choice of 12 other companies this afternoon.

Shippers bite back at rate increases because it directly affects their bottom line. Fuel surcharges are a pass-through charge and consumers have seen the effect of that on goods in the past couple of years. Trucking companies profits are already extremely marginal so they can’t expect to stay in busines if they are paying out more for labor than what their expenses are. (Literally thousands of companies went out of business just due to the economy post 9-11 - they were hanging on by that thin of a thread already.)

Probably will take a crisis of some sort - where shippers have major issues moving their freight due to driver shortage - before the industry will see a major rate increase.

20

My dad was a long haul OTR* for almost 30 years. In the end he was making about 80K/year. My dad’s biggest complaints were the scheduling, the conditions (shitty weather, bad roads, crazy traffic, and crazy auto drivers). The hours he didn’t complain too much about because it was 8 on 8 off. He wasn’t an independent driver, so he didn’t have to burn the candle at both ends to make money. He also is so on the line about following the rules, he never would have tampered with his log book to show otherwise.

The scheduling is a major factor in the suckage of the job. My dad wasn’t home much when I was growing up, I think he regrets that a lot. By the time I was in high school he had a regular route and was home 2-3 days a week. When the company he worked for closed down in 2003, he had over a million accident free miles (He never had an accident).

Now he delivers large equipment to construction sites. He is home every night he likes it better. My mom OTOH is still adjusting :stuck_out_tongue:

The low end companies are always hiring because they advertise to people looking for work and promises of big money (Do you still have the number for that truck driving school?). Most just aren’t cut out for the job.

In reality it’s long hours and so-so pay** until you have a lot of seniority at a company. After 9/11 and the stricter homeland security laws and federal background checks it made it harder or people to get jobs. I am also gonna guess that a number of good drivers lost their jobs because they couldn’t pass the stricter background checks for whatever reason.
*singles, doubles, triples, hazmat certified, and has hauled everything from canned food to hazardous waste.

**when I was a kid (back in the 70’s) there were months when my parents had to decide to pay the bills or buy groceries. Not often, but it did happen.