Thanks for your informative reply, i think it may deserve to be a sticky,
Thanks. I have lots of posts that deserve to be stickies. None of them are.
i agree with those figures, i have done my own calculations which are pretty close, so, i guess the answer is, to try to get more miles,
Waaaaay easier said than done. As Greg pointed out that Highway pointed out, you are at the mercy of your carrier. You can ask them for more miles but they won't give you any, unless it's your turn. The only way to get more miles is to make it your turn more often. And that's easier said than done, too. You have to learn your carrier's system and make it work, as best you can, to your advantage. And with FECC's dispatch model, that's a tough nut to crack. You have to try and position yourself where freight is likely to be, but where there are few if any other FECC vans, and sometimes even trucks, since they'll flat load a straight truck with van freight to keep that straight truck loaded and happy no matter how long the van has been sitting there. Vans are a dime a dozen and they can replace you with 5 vans with the snap of a finger.
You take loads that will take you to places that have freight, or that pay well enough to deadhead to a place where there is freight. But with the Express Center model, it doesn't matter much, since you can be sitting right next to the freight and someone far off can still get the load. Best you can hope for is to be closest to the freight and the freight picks up in a hurry and you can get there quicker than anyone else. Otherwise, it's wait your turn, sometimes for a day or two. People will tell you they never sit more than X hours without getting a load or without deadheading and them virtually immediately getting a load after deadheading, and most of them are lyin' their аss off. Some are telling the truth, but they're the exception to the rule, they absolutely know what they are doing and where freight comes from, and they aren't necessarily with a FECC-type carrier.
i would run 2500-3000 at 39 cents mile a week in the semi as a company driver,
And that's precisely why most company drivers fail out here within a few months, sometimes in a month or two. They're used to driving every day, 8, 10, 11 hours a day, every day, every day. They can't handle the sitting. They fail to properly outfit their van for things that kill time, like a hobby or the Internet or whatever, and they quickly go nuts.
They get a cargo van and think,
"Hey, no logging, no HoS, I can drive all day long. Whooo hooo!" Well, no ya can't. One, most carriers won't let you, since HoS or not, there's a liability issue they don't want to deal with. Two, carriers can't manufacture loads for you to keep you running, you get them primarily from luck. We do primarily emergency freight, which encompasses everything from really hot freight to exclusive use of the truck to freight that is scheduled to ship on short notice. You never know when that next load is coming, so you sit and wait, or if you're smart you go to sleep and wait.
This weekend for me is a good example of that. I delivered to New Orleans early Friday morning. Actually, it was really far south of New Orleans. So far south that if you looked at it on a map you'd swear you would need a boat to deliver down there. There were roads, but if felt more like deep into the Florida Keys than anything. But I came back up to the south side of New Orleans and went to a Walmart and slept a good chunk of Friday, hoping that I'd get a load, but knowing I probably wouldn't. New Orleans isn't exactly a hotbed of expedited freight.
I piddled around on Saturday, playing on the computer and watching TV, and napping. Went grocery shopping at the Walmart I was parked at on Saturday night. It'll be Monday at the earliest before anything goes out of within 100 miles of here. But that's OK, I'm the only one within 200 miles of here. Sunday (today) was to be laundry day this morning, and then eventually mosey on up to either the TA in Slidell or the Petro over in Hammond, to grab a shower.
Whoops, 0730 Sunday morning I get a call, load picking up in Hammond at 1600 going to Laredo, delivery Monday morning 0900. You never know when loads will find you. This one is the second half of a swap coming out of Blacksburg, VA, 1506 miles total, and the cargo van driver doesn't have enough hours in the run to get there on time and take a required 5 hour break mandated by Safety. No HoS, but liability fears have a mandated 5 hour break every 16 hours. (He actually does have enough time, but I won't get into that here). So of that 1506 miles, I get 717 and the first-leg driver gets 789. He'll be here in Hammond a little before 1400, so we'll swap it then, and I'll end up in Laredo around Midnight for a 9AM delivery. Yeah, you betcha he has time in there for a five hour break, but I digress. It beats doing laundry, I guess.
The thing is, if I had some what many people would have done, and that is deadhead to a place where they are more likely to get freight from, like Houston, Birmingham, even Jackson, MS, I wouldn't have gotten that load. Staying put in NOLA was a gamble, but I'm the only one here. That's using the system to my advantage (even though it was still blind luck that I got the load. Just the same, I positioned myself for that luck.) But the same blind luck got me a load out of San Antonio the other day, also on a swap, out of Laredo of all places. And when I delivered that load to Tulsa, everyone else was sitting there in Oklahoma City, so I stayed put in Tulsa and a few hours after I delivered I got the load down to NOLA.
Six out of the last eight weekends I've gotten loaded out of places where weekend loads are rare, two of them on swaps, but four of them were truly emergency freight that popped up out of nowhere. And every single time I was in a place that no one else was, so I got it. I do that a lot, and not just on weekends. It works more often than not, but sometimes I also get burned. The FECC dispatch model doesn't really allow for that, but you've got to figure out their model and make it work for you instead of it working you.
the other way is to try to double up loads,
As other have pointed out, good luck with that. Most carriers won't allow it, since part of the service is exclusive use of the truck. Remember, you're running under someone else's authority, so they have a huge say in how that authority gets used.
i have done the sightseeing thing when i started driving semi's in the USA, thats not saying i dont like to sight-see, i am doing this to work, to make a living, so for me, i will give it a few months and see how it goes, i know it is possible to make more money..............
The last thing I want to do here is bring you down, dash all your hopes, and pull the rug out from under you just as you're coming out of orientation. But I'd be downright evil if I painted a rosy picture for you instead of reality. I just want you to be prepared, mentally if nothing else, for what you're going to be up against. Be prepared to sit, and like it. I'm tellin' ya straight up, ex-company drivers and even owner/operators who trade in the tractor for a van, or even a straight truck for that matter, have the hardest time adapting to sitting there and doing nothing, sitting there just waiting for a load. Just sitting, not knowing where or where their next load is coming from. Experienced drivers with 20 and 30 years of experience in general trucking come into expediting and instantly they are clueless, wondering why this or that is happening, with the most often wondered about happening is, "Why am I still sitting here without a load? Why can't they get me loaded?" '
General trucking, like you came out of, is like large-scale commercial fishing with a net. You rarely cast out the net without bring something back in with it. Sometimes it's a light load and sometimes it's a heavy load, but there's usually a load of some kind with every net. You're always busy.
Expediting is like cane pole fishing with a baited hook and a bobber. You bait the hook and throw it in and sit and wait, and wait, and wait, and then you get a bite, bobber disappears, all Hеll breaks loose and you go full-tilt boogie (it's an industry term) to land the fish. And then you do it all over again. Sometimes you have to move to another part of the lake where the fish are biting better, and you sit and wait some more. You can scream at the lake all you want to make more fish bite quicker, but it won't do any good. The fish are where the fish are, the lake can't do anything about it.
I can sense that you're even more excited about expediting now than ever.
Like I said, I, nor anyone in here, want to give people a load of rose colored crap, when a dose of dark brown reality will serve them better in the long run. At least you know what you're getting into this way, good and bad.
Personally, a truly enjoy what I do, despite my diatribes on the particulars. I like delivering someone's important freight, safely, legally and on time, and in the same shape that I accepted it. I like the sightseeing, being able to see things most people never get a chance to see. I like seeing things anew that locals dismiss and take for granted, like the Grand Canyon, where there are people who have lived their whole lives in Flagstaff who have never even been to the Grand Canyon. (Then again, I live 2 hours from Mammoth Cave and I've never been there, either.) I like seeing a meteor shower in the night Montana sky. I like seeing bald eagles in Wyoming. I like seeing pheasants along the side of the road in the Dakotas and playing tag with tarantulas in the J parking lot in Laredo.
But mostly, I like sitting here and doing nothing other than sleeping, playing on the computer and watching TV, for days at a time.
And I get to go to Laredo now. About 8 weeks ago, I dunno, the Air Conditioning compressor went bad on the van. It works fine while driving, but not at all when parked and idling. Well, summer's about over and I won't need it much, so I'll wait until the Spring to fix it. Yeah, well, ever since I decided to wait, I've been in Florida, SC, southern AL and GA and MS, NM, AZ, LA, south and west Texas, and Houston twice, and even when I was up in OK City and Tulsa it was near 90 degrees every day. I had one day in Indy and one day in Muncie, both hot days. Only the 6 hours spent in Appleton, WI, that was like cool and perfect heaven, but then got a load to SC. Now I'm in New Orleans where it's not humid at all <snort> and the forecast for Laredo on Tuesday, "Near record highs 99 to 101 degrees, abundant sunshine, 90% humidity, winds light and variable." I love my job.
