No shortage of Kiwi truck drivers over in Australia, most drivers would get at least $ 25 NZ Dollars, you wouldn’t bother for $16 NZ.
That’s not as stupid as it sounds. If you are flying a plane, something has to go pretty catastrophically wrong for you to injure someone else. If you are driving a semi-truck, you can quite easily fuck up someone’s day just by changing lanes.
No, in my case it really is a stupid thing. I have a very mild color deficiency, so mild you need something like the Ishihara vision test to find it and has zero effect in real life, but any color deficiency whatsoever disqualifies you from interstate driving and can severely restrict any commercial driving. The FAA sent me off for an additional test to determine that, although the deficiency is detectable it’s not a problem in regards to safety and identification of color signs and lights. The CDL? F you. Likewise, I’m permanently disqualified from working on railroads, same reason.
Otherwise, my vision is 20/20, I have depth perception, excellent peripheral vision, etc.
Oh, and a perfect driving record (so far - don’t want to jinx anything).
Frankly, if there aren’t enough people with perfect vision who can also stay off the drink and not crash into things maybe they should loosen up rules irrelevant to safety to widen the pool of potential applicants.
Let me put it this way: It’s not physically impossible to find healthy food when you’re on the road, but it’s damn close. The overwhelming majority of food choices are some type of fast food.
There’s a guy at my gym who’s currently entering the last week of his 6-week CDL training. I’d guess he’s in his late 40s, with not too much formal education, and possibly some trouble with the law in his background. He’s a good guy, but one who is working at a minimum-wage job right now, and who wanted a shot at a new career.
When i see him, i ask how the training is going, and he says that one of the hardest things for him to deal with is not so much the driving of the truck, but all the ancillary stuff to remember, including how to perform pre-trip inspections, fill out the appropriate paperwork, keep logs, stuff like that. Now, i don’t know exactly how hard this stuff is. It could be that he’s having trouble because he’s not especially well educated. But still, it shows that the challenges of driving a truck aren’t restricted to staying awake on long hauls or avoiding assholes in cars who dive in front of you in traffic.
I haven’t asked him how much his training is costing him. I’m not sure, either, what sort of organization is doing the training. But he seems pretty sure that there will be guaranteed work for him when he’s done. I hope, for his sake, that it’s true.
Like you say, even being the owner of the equipment, and driving it yourself presents a whole new set of issues. You don’t have any staff to find loads for your next trip, because you are driving. Typically you will phone a truck brokerage firm, this a business with some people sitting around computers and phones hooking up businesses with freight to move, with trucks to move it. They have developed connections with business that need to move freight, you do not have time or staff to develop these relationships on your own. They can be successful if they turn over enough loads, have enough connections. But you can’t do that. I used to do logistics, among other things, for a small company that shipped a million pounds of freight out, and another million in bound per month and I had to rely upon a great relationship with my truck broker. His staff could spend their time looking for trucks heading in the right direction, I didn’t have that time.
You are in Portland, Oregon and have just delivered your load, you call your pimp, I mean broker, and they have a load that pays $2800 to Kansas City to be delivered in 4 days. The broker keeps $200 for being the middle man, because even small companies do not have the staff to do this on their own. You have now a $2600 load. No problem and off you go.
Every cost you will encounter between here and there is your responsibility. Insurance for the truck, insurance for the load too, some loads are quite valuable, tires, diesel fuel usually is about as expensive as premium gas. Maybe you have a good trip and are $1000 in the black, or you blow the tranny and you are -2800 in the red. You need a good relationship and a large line of credit with a bank, or the slightest little thing will put you out of business.
In Kansas City you call the broker again and pick up a load to New Orleans.
Sure, you can take time off and just go home and chill out. But the clock is ticking for every day that the truck sits idle. So you keep moving.
♫ Eighteen wheels and a dozen roses. ♫