Regional Truck Driving Jobs - What To Expect
Ok, now regional truck driving jobs are a fantastic option for many individuals. With regional jobs you might be 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 have some customers that your particular company will have that will provide steady freight in one location to another on a rather predictable schedule.
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But the majority of it will not be. They are going to do their very best to maintain you moving throughout the week and get you home promptly for your weekend but this may not be 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. Often times you may bring a lot home along with you that will deliver on Monday morning, hopefully somewhere fairly close to your house.
Crete Carrier Corporation
Here's an example:
Say you reside in Indianapolis, IN. After driving and making several deliveries all week, you may find yourself delivering a lot on Friday morning in Nashville, TN. Afterwards you pick-up a load Friday afternoon in Nashville that can deliver Monday morning in Chicago, IL. You choose the load and head for home. You obtain home 7 a.m. Saturday morning. Your home is about 3 hours from Chicago, and the load is scheduled for 8 a.m. Monday.
You Understand morning rush hour in Chicago is a nightmare so you want to arrive before 5 a.m. The best option is always to leave late on Sunday evening, maybe 10 p.m., drive two hours, sleep at a truck stop away from Chicago, and obtain up at 4 a.m. to reach the consumer by 5 a.m. You can get a nap in for a couple of hours at the customer before they begin unloading you. Job well done. That you were home from 7 a.m. Saturday until 10 p.m. Sunday. That is certainly very, very typical of your house time schedule over a regional fleet.
There isn't too much difference between over the road trucking and regional anymore, as far as pay goes. In order to supply their customers with product faster and to save money on shipping charges, over the past 10 years or so a lot of production and warehousing companies have divided up the country into regions. 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 a lot shorter.
It has opened up much more opportunities for regional driving jobs. The need for regional jobs has increased significantly, and trucking companies have discovered a way to get more drivers using the promise of very good pay and better home time.
The equipment for the majority of regional jobs is approximately the same as most over the road jobs. You can expect fairly new vehicles which can be perfectly maintained. The amount of equipment can vary a little more within this category though. Some companies will attempt to push older, less reliable equipment on drivers with all the excuse that you is likely to make great money and be home more regularly.
This is something you need to decide on your own as a truck driver. Test the marketplace. You will have several companies in your area that provide the chance to be home each weekend. Sometimes you will need to produce a trade-off between higher pay with an older truck or rather less pay with top notch equipment. You must not need to compromise on safety or reliability though.
Ask thoroughly regarding their maintenance program. Look at the trucks they have got parked inside the yard. If you notice such things as loose mirrors, cracked windshields, missing mud flaps, etc then obviously they aren't spending the time and money on maintenance that they should. I'll talk more about this later.
As far as job duties goes, there are a few more options when it comes to regional. In some cases you'll have to drive the nothing and truck else. You may simply get paid by the mile like over the road drivers do. Keep in mind that sometimes the miles you obtain each week may differ tremendously from week to week or in one company to a different. Find out about their average weekly mileage per driver. Other jobs will involve a significant amount of unloading. In fact you might make the bulk of your hard earned money unloading instead of just driving. If you were just driving, if you are asked to unload trucks you should be able to make quite a bit more money per week than. With some companies it certainly is not the case, although this seems obvious. Research your options.
I drove regional for several years. I just made as much money as I employed to as being an over the road driver, and once 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 had ever endured.
Regional can also be 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. It is possible to maintain a romantic relationship, a property, a car, as well as a social life while still making excellent money. You wont be traveling as far away from home as you will be while driving over the road.
Generally you'll cover an area within a radius of about 1000 miles out of your home. Within the road you may have the ability to drive coast to coast. But even a location that large provides an interesting number of places to attend which ensures you 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 just is dependent upon what suits the finest.