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<p>Dont get me started on pay.</p><p>They cann never get the shippers to pay the rates at which professionals can be properly paid. They want a warm body and the freight there Asap at the cheapest rate. As long there is a starving owner operator willing to run the freight for little more than the actual cost of fuel it will drive the wages down for all. </p><p>I personally discovered the best pay is in the Trainer and Team Lead positions from a driver's point of view. To be allowed to become a trainer means to demonstrate the best and have many Company officials sign off together before you start pulling that nice salary that disregards the actual activity of that rig for the week. You could spend 8 days in the lot teaching someone to back properly because the trucking school that taught the person did not do it right and still get paid well.</p><p>Team lead is best with a spouse so the two of you can pull all of the revenue to the household. The tax return for that year put both of us into very high income for our area. However the toll on the health pretty much made it irrevelant. We spent our time rescuing loads in trouble from single drivers who were late. High dollar loads, perishables like flowers and other loads that made powerful people very angry and willing to fire the trucking company and find another because singles cannot endure the required trip to get it delivered on time.</p><p>I am one of the loonies that lived in Boston, NYC and other points with a friggin 53 foot. The high point of my life was taking those trailers with conventional tractors INTO restraunts designed for straight trucks "Just so" working around paying customers cars on the lot. No problem except getting out and making sure the mirriors I folded on a few cars were unfolded and undamaged.</p><p>It costs an astounding number of thousands of dollars to put a new hire INTO a truck. I think it was between 5K to about 12 K Max depending on the situation. To get the fired driver OUT and make the rig ready usually means a minimum of a cab-detail/clean up and a set of 10 new tires plus required shop work. That is if you actually had fired the driver without having to go and recover the truck.</p><p>I look at the General Aviation Schools and recall that people who spend X thousands of dollars to get training needed 6 months maybe a few more and were around people with several pairs of eyeballs evaluating that person all the time. In the CDL Mill you have a bunch of hot, thirsty, hungry and debt ridden people on a dusty lot driving a wore out truck making a half hearted effort to back a trailer into a 16 foot slot not knowing that they will be challenged in the future by extreme situation on the road.</p><p>These people trying to learn how to drive a truck do so under a personal risk of failure to pay the bills, not supporting the wife and new baby or otherwise making any income at all during that time. They arrive into Orientation living on scraps and a bit of fast food or what is offered by the company if any. The pay that they get at orientation is delayed a week and usually vanishes from the pile of Comchecks that these new hires on the brink of economic bankrupcy start drawing in order to eat on thier first day out.</p><p>The atmosphere of motivation is also very poor. They are told during all of thier time in training that they will make money and are they ready to drive? On the actual first day with a revenue load from a actual dispatcher they find themselves with 300 miles to drive, 250 pay miles and 4 days over a long weekend to deliver it.</p><p>Pilots who go on to Commerical and ATP are Never treated this way and they go on to successful paths.</p>
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