Regional Truck Driving Jobs - What To Expect
Ok, now regional truck driving jobs are a good option for most people. With regional jobs you are usually out five days a week and home on weekends. Now understand something: the freight you will be hauling is usually not predictable. Yes, you will see some customers that your company could have that will provide steady freight from a single place to another on a rather predictable schedule.
Truck Driving Jobs
But the majority of it will not be. They will likely do their very best to maintain you moving through the week and acquire you home promptly for your weekend but this is simply not always going to happen. Generally you can expect to get home sometime between Friday Saturday and afternoon morning. You may then be home around 36-two days. In many cases you are going to bring a lot home together with you that will deliver on Monday morning, hopefully somewhere fairly close to your property.
Here's an example:
Crete Carrier Corporation
Say your home is in Indianapolis, IN. After driving and making several deliveries all week, you will probably find yourself delivering a load on Friday morning in Nashville, TN. You then pick-up a lot Friday afternoon in Nashville that will deliver Monday morning in Chicago, IL. You select in the load and head for home. You get home 7 a.m. Saturday morning. Your home is about 3 hours from Chicago, and also the load is scheduled for 8 a.m. Monday.
You KNOW morning rush hour in Chicago is a nightmare so you should arrive before 5 a.m. The best option is always to leave late on Sunday evening, maybe 10 p.m., drive a couple of hours, sleep with a truck stop away from Chicago, and obtain up at 4 a.m. to arrive at the client by 5 a.m. Before they begin unloading you, you can get a nap in for a couple of hours at the customer. Job well done. That you were home from 7 a.m. Saturday until 10 p.m. Sunday. Which is very, very typical of your house time schedule on a regional fleet.
There isn't too much difference between over the road trucking and regional anymore, as far as pay goes. Over the past 10 years or so a lot of warehousing and production companies have divided up the country into regions in order to supply their customers with product faster and to save money on shipping charges. So, instead of hauling auto parts say from Texas to Michigan, the factory may relocate part of its production to Indiana. Now the haul is significantly shorter.
This has opened up many more opportunities for regional driving jobs. The need for regional jobs has risen significantly, and trucking companies are finding a means to attract more drivers using the promise of great pay and much better home time.
The machine for most regional jobs is approximately the same as most on the road jobs. You could expect fairly new vehicles which can be adequately maintained. The amount of equipment will vary a bit more in this particular category though. Some companies will try to push older, less reliable equipment on drivers with all the excuse that you is likely to make great money and become home more regularly.
This really is something you must decide on your own as a truck driver. Test the marketplace. You will have a number of companies in the area offering the opportunity to be home each weekend. Sometimes you will need to create a trade-off between higher pay having an older truck or rather less pay with first class equipment. You should not must compromise on safety or reliability though.
Ask thoroughly about their maintenance program. Look at the trucks they have parked inside the yard. If you see things such as loose mirrors, cracked windshields, missing mud flaps, etc then obviously they aren't spending the money and time on maintenance that they should. I'll talk much more about this later.
There are a few more options when it comes to regional, as far as job duties goes. In some cases you'll be asked to drive the nothing and truck else. You will simply get compensated by the mile like on the road drivers do. Remember that sometimes the miles you receive every week can differ tremendously from week to week or from a single company to a different. Ask about their average weekly mileage per driver. Other jobs will involve lots of unloading. Actually you might make the majority of your cash unloading as opposed to just driving. If you are asked to unload trucks you should be able to make quite a bit more money per week than if you were just driving. With some companies it certainly is not the case, although this seems obvious. Research your options.
I drove regional for several years. I actually made as much money when i used to as being an over the road driver, and when I took a regional job that involved lots of unloading I made $15,000 annually a lot more than with any within the road job I needed ever had.
Regional is also a fascinating combination of traveling and home time. You get the fun of living on the road and seeing the sites all week long, but then you get to enjoy your home time each weekend. You will be able to keep a relationship, a property, an automobile, and a self confidence while still making excellent money. You will not be traveling as far away from home as you would be while driving on the road.
Generally you'll cover a location within a radius of around 1000 miles out of your home. Over the road you might have the chance to drive coast to coast. But even an area that large provides an interesting selection of places to attend which will keep it fun. I personally loved over the road when I was younger, but once I decided I wanted a home life regional was the perfect solution. Again, it simply depends on what suits you the best.
