Truckerfag General - /tfg/

I don't know why but I always pictured you as a bald manlet with a superiority complex. I was right.

Ehh, that sucks. My best friend up north has been goin bald since like 18. As soon as mine starts to go, I'm shaving that shit off.

t. jealous busrider with a big fat gut

Sorry bruh. I didn't want to leave the youtoob shills an opening.

Word. You did the right thing.

They still beat both of you.

...

Yet we still shunned it.

That's pretty accurate desu. But how did you know I was a manlet those proportions are god tier.
I'm actually 29 in that pic so its not actually too bad. I'm not fat or divorced yet so I'm doing pretty good overall.

youtube.com/watch?v=nRB8Jor8tPs

How convenient.

>1488

Anyone mind answering a few trucking questions? Thinking of going to trucking school, wanna just know how the job functions and shit before I decide to hit the road for the rest of my life.

What would you like to know?

What's the daily schedule like? Start driving at 8 every morning, drive till 8 or 9, sleep till you start driving again at 8? Or do you wake up and start driving at different times every day?

How do you get internet on the road? Mobile hotspot your only option?

How often is hometime? Also used to work at a gas station. Had some truckers say you'd get times where a load would have to be delivered on say Wednesday, but you got there Monday, so you could fuck around till Wednesday (unpaid I assume). Is that often?

How big of a paycheck do you get every week / every other week first starting out? I know they pay cpm but not sure how many miles you'd get in a week or so.

>rest of my life
Kek. Fuck that. Go get some computer tech certs or some shit like that.

>tfw it just isn't the same from Dunkin

Plan is to drive and make my own vidya games on the road (already nearly finished with one game, can't draw for shit so need a good job to commission an artist.)

Plus why not have two jobs to get tons of money to retire early?

>two jobs
Ok

Anyway you couldn't really do it. Trucking companies are gonna make you hit that 70hrs every week and if you get caught working another job in between that, you can get in trouble with the gubbermint.

If you already know computers and vidya, seriously try and find a way to make money with that. All of us in here are people who fucked up our other options or don't have any real skills so we got a CDL.

My only problem with that is I have no formal training, I'm fully self taught. No company is going to hire me as like a basic IT guy unless I go to college for a full 4 year degree, and I'm 24 and seriously need to start making money on my own. Can't really find another job doing anything (I've been trying for years, all I could do is hold a retail job for a year or so until I switched jobs due to moving or lost my job due to corporate doing a store wipe).

>What's the daily schedule like?

Really, it depends. For the most part, you'll be following the flow of the freight. Wake up after a 10 hour break, drive till you get to your destination, get your freight sorted then drive until your clock runs out. Rince and repeat.

>Start driving at 8 every morning, drive till 8 or 9

This is one technique some drivers use, but imo it only really makes sense to use when you spend more than 3 weeks out at a time and have fairly consistent freight (lots of drop and hooks). It's never worked for me as a flatbedder.

>Or do you wake up and start driving at different times every day?

Usually, no. If you use up your 14 hour clock and take a 10 hour break, you will be able to get up at the same time every day. This changes every now and then when you get strung out with nothing to load/stuck at a shipper...etc. again, it depends.

>How do you get internet on the road?

I have ATT unlimited on my phone only.

>Mobile hotspot your only option?

I've never used one. Can't justify the cost.

>How often is hometime?

It depends on your company. Industry standard home time is 14 days on the road and 3 days at home. Some are worse and some are better. Now, I work 5 days a week and get home on weekends. It gets better with experience.

>Getting stuck out...Is that often?

This only ever happened to me on weekends and seldom. I hated it, but some people like it. Different strokes.

>How big of a paycheck do you get every week / every other week first starting out?

Your first year you can expect anywhere between $35k to $50k depending on your company, how good freight is that year, and most importantly, how well you adjust. When looking at companies and comparing pay ALWAYS ask what the trucks are governed at. From there you can get a ballpark figure of what you can expect to earn. Figure (cpm) * governed speed * 8 hours of driving * 6 days
That will give you a fairly conservative figure, but should end up being about average

>24 and need to start making money on my own
I know that feel.

Can you at least afford the CDL school on your own?

Also you can always go local. You are gonna have to bust your ass for a couple years but at least you don't have to live in a cuckshed.

>daily schedule
Depends entirely on what the load needs you to do in order to make on-time delivery. You may have to do one load at night and then the very next load start in the morning. Being on-time is THE number one job of a driver and remember, on-time is late and early is on-time. Less than one hour early and you fucked it up.

>internets
Mobile hot spot with somebody like Verizon is the only reliable way. Not that you'll be using teh internets that much because you'll be exhausted and you've gotta start up again in less than 10 hours.

>hometime
Lol. If the wheels ain't turning you ain't making money so that means hometime is for free. Worse, it takes time to route you home so those loads suck and then when you come back out it takes at least a week to get you back in the right lanes at the right time so a week of hometime literally shoots a whole month of income to shit.

And yeah any time you're sitting in the truck you're doing it for free unless you have a cool driver manager that hands out layover pay for loads that have excessive wait times. Most treat your pay like it's coming out of their pocket so it's rare to get layover, detention, breakdown etc without a hell of a fight.

>pay
First year running reefer (which means lots of sitting) was roughly $500/wk take home. Started off kinda rocky at 300 or so and then went up after a couple of months as I learned how things were done. End of the second year I was up to around a $1000/wk take home. Still not really worth it if you have any kind of social life imo.

> Being on-time is THE number one job of a driver and remember, on-time is late and early is on-time. Less than one hour early and you fucked it up.
Depends on the carrier. About 75% of my dispatches are "just in time" which means being early is just as bad as being late.

Oh so you managed to find a carrier that hands out service failures either way. Sucks to be you.

Why the fuck would you put up with such garbage policies?

Because I can trip plan accurately because I'm not an idiot and it's an easy ~3200mi/wk. Service failures are for retards who can't schedule shit.

Getting paid cents per mile is for actual retards.

Rigmaster Warranty Advisor, Here to say that Prime is absolute trash. Somebody feel my pain.

O/O with actual business sense here to say Rigmaster a shit.

Haul hazmat tanker with liquid hydrogen 120,000 a year off weekends.Health ins. And 401k.

Do you use swap bodies and container platforms a lot in the US? Or does everything happen on dedicated trailers?

>o
Not disagreeing with, The new Kohler setup is absolutely awful.

That being said, Prime drivers also find a way to send rods through blocks on even the Cat/Perkins units.

They're pretty much only used for furniture. Otherwise, containers are used for everything else since there's a glut of them as a net importer. Literally thousands of them sitting empty at every port waiting for something other than being shredded and sent to China to be melted down.

>implying they can afford an oil change
At least they're dumb enough to fall for your sales pitch, which is probably why they're lease cucking at prime.

Damn idk if I would want to be racing a forklift in and out of that thing.

>week or two ago, end of the day, pull the ol' bay truck around the back of the yard so warehouse dudes can strip the empty pallets and remaining product off
>make a left turn and park behind truck getting stripped before me
>like 15sec after I parked, they move truck in front of me and pull up
>thought I saw forklift go by the bays on the passenger side but can't see since tractor still turned to the left
>other warehouse guy tells me to pull up
>air horn not working, so give a couple beeps on electric horn
>release air brakes and wait a couple seconds before I pull off just in case dude is back there with forklift
>of course he was back there and freaks out like I was going to drive off with his forks in the side of the truck

Anyway I've never seen shit like that, just the containers that go on boats and trains and trucks. And then sometimes you see the containers dropped by businesses and stuff for extra storage and I always wondered how they get them on and off the trailer without a big ass crane.

Thinkin about that now, those container ships must take a big loss everytime they go back to China from the West.

>>Truckerfag's weekend plans: 20 rolls of tape, a hammer drill, an oxy-acetylene torch, and two goths
please post pics

If memory serves me right swap bodies are rated for 16 tonnes or ~35k lbs here in Europe, which means you'll max out the weight capacity of a truck (two bodies) before you come anywhere near maxing out a body.

They're by far the most popular with postal services where the weight isn't an issue anyway and where they can be preloaded without a truck present and then mounted on a truck within minutes.

Also they use the same mounts as containers (you can see them where the folded up legs begin) so trailers can be used for both, except they can't be stacked like containers. The ceiling corner points are only for lifting by crane.

>going 55mph
>Traffic is flowing smoothly, almost none
>some older asian lady in her Mercedes goes past 4 lanes to try to get to the exit ramp
>ends up hitting my bumper with her tail end and t-bone her
>she gets mad at me for not stopping

I should've kept going

What did the cops say? You shoulda ran her ass into the wall.

I've seen them used by quite a few companies here in Britain. Next and Argos seen to love them. Bugger trying to reverse under a box with a wagon and drag.

Pic related.

ai.fmcsa.dot.gov/SMS/Event/Inspection/57544512.aspx

How does EF even make money when he gets fined like this every few months?

#REKT

Is it risky only to log 15-20 minutes on duty time for loading/unloading? That's what it seems like a lot of guys do.

Fucking kek. EF is my hero for real

That was a story from back when I was still running YBJ. Anons ran off with it knowing full well I was still sitting in a hotel room in ohio waiting for an engine swap.

Usually with mostly empty containers.

I got away with it when I still ran a van. Usually don't log less than 45 minutes now.

I only did 15 minutes even when I did Dollar Tree. Obviously it would be impossible to unload a thousand boxes in 15 minutes. Although I never got inspected during that time so I don't know if it would've been bad or not.

I was doing about 30min or so. It's funny though because I always suddenly go off duty for another hour or so. It looks so bad. So bad I was thinking of just logging 15, bc if DOT ever looks at it I'm not going to have an explanation either way. Might as well get my money's worth so to speak.

Pic related is my newly functioning cb. I guess the fuse was bad.

I had a guy tell me he got fined $2000 for logging only 15...

Fuck off rigmaster, your apus are shit.

Running a van I'd log 15 at the beginning and end and could reasonably say I was asleep or walked off the property for food/shopping/sleep/whatever.

Even now, say I have a 3 hour load time, I'll log 15 minutes at the start, and an hour at the end with line 1 in the middle. If you're fucking off attending to personal business you can argue it's not "on duty", because you aren't attending to employment related issues.

>analog 27Mhz
EWWWW

Why haven't you guys stepped into the 21st century? Digital 477Mhz is miles ahead.

>Be at Flying J earlier
>See sign by fuel island
>You can reserve a shower now
>Reserve
>A
>Shower
Goddammit this is almost comical.

Kek do you just hawk that site constantly, looking for EF to pop up?

Also damn EF, wear a seat belt at least. Seen that twice now.

I like to keep tabs on my favourite supertruckers.

I fell for the college degree meme. Graduate college with finance degree and can't find a job because I need 2 years of experience. Find a job and slowly work my way up. Don't have 2 years under my belt. Currently fly making 40k/year and maybe 60k in a year.

Back track, I was in the USMC and had a Humvee license and 7 ton license. They have a program to get a CDL but I never did it and it is probably too late now. I have no problem pulling trailers in the Marine corps or now with my project vehicles. However I don't really want to be sitting on my ass stuck to a truck 8 hours a day. I had to do drive 12+ hours a day in the Marine corps and have no problem doing long trips.

Would you guys recommend a change in career path to trucking? my uncle has his own company in the east coast and I could get a job from him easily. He also said he would train me.

How do you know that's him?

Can you enlighten me? I have no idea what I'm doing with this cb radio stuff. I just want to hear truckers fight each other. In an 8 mile radius.

That actually would look waaay better. And would probably work if the DOT guy didn't care too much.

not him but I'm guessing VIN if the dude owns his own truck or plate number?

If you've got anything left in your GI bill that'll buy you training. Any driving experience more than 6 years old doesn't really count in this industry.

You might want to go back overseas to drive for a security contractor. You'll make 2-6X what you can make here.

License plates, I'd assume. They're listed in the link, and I'm guessing user pulled them from his pics.

They don't use UHF in the states, so his point is moot. Head to a CB shop and get a handmade coaxial cable and base loaded antenna, on top of having them peak and tune your radio. Even on a cobra 29 that'll buy you a 4 mile range. A 100w radio should get you the range you want and they can be had used for $100 at most CB shops. That's the "barefoot" wattage, and they can back it up on their in house meters for you.

I had 2 inspections on elogs pulling that 15 minute shit. They usually just ask you to pull up the recap. Running paper logs they'll usually not give enough of a shit to check more than your mileage against drive time, and check a few weigh station logs against your own. EF runs outlaw as fuck, so he probably didn't even have anything written on his log for the day, or it looked fishy enough the officer took 45 minutes to go back far enough to grab those form/manner violations and called it a day.

Let me guess.

Initally popped for no seatbelt, IFTA stickers expired, and a couple of missing entries on log pages?

I don't get it. I use the shower reservation app thing.
>fuel
>pull up
>reserve shower
>park
>proceed directly to the shower
What's comical about not having to worry about whether or not there's a line? Also sometimes the kiosk is out of paper and you have to go to the counter for a shower which can really fuck you up if they're busy.

Someone was telling me the Freightliners are fiberglass and need a nongrounded antennae? Is there truth to that?

I know I need to do something because this stock antennae is lousy. Its apparently built into the top of the truck's fiberglass somewhere and doubles, poorly, as the AM/FM receiver.

I fell for the "4 watts is the law" meme and didn't think of getting a more powerful one. I'll probably just stick with this 29 and try to make the best of it. Im not passionate enough about it I don't think to go to much length optimizing. Although I did hear getting tuned up at a cb shop was smart.

What does the "recap" refer to? The 8 day view?

Tell the shop hand what kind of truck you have, and they should know what length and type of antenna you need. You can usually go with a mirror mount, since it's easier than fishing a cable through the sleeper. Bring a picture of your truck to avoid any ambiguity.

The "nongrounded" faggotry probably just means you can omit a nylon washer from the base between the coax and antenna, but it was probably designed such that you'll still need the washer so you don't bottom out the threads.

An 8w radio (re: the law) can usually be tuned to about 30w (re: maxing out the finals). If you've got penis envy ask about a linear amplifier. They'll multiply the system wattage by the amplifier rating
30w radio x 5000w antenna = 150,000w
30w rafio x 5000w antenna x 500w amp = 75,000,000w
Most shops don't sell them, though, because that boost in power is over the line where the FCC still calls fuckery, and they're best tended to by someone that knows enough about radios that they don't need one.

Alright thanks for that. You think they'll try and upsell me at the cb shop? Should I get a second opinion at another cb shop to see if they are trying to mess with me?

I can't imagine youd want 5000w since with that much power you have no clue who you're talking to or hearing? How do I just max out the "finals" on the 29?

Don't even waste your money on a radio. No one uses them anymore. You'll spend a good 99% of your time listening to nothing, and when you do hear something, ours gong to be either
A dinosaur using a tin can on a string as a mic
Some long hauler who lost his mind years ago from lack of human interaction making animal noses or singing or yelling at four wheelers
Or a convoy of daycabbers who use ch19 as a conference call
I spent $30 on a radio and plugged it into the oem antennae on the Peterbilt and I feel like even that was a waste of money. The only good it ever does is for the occasional scale that uses a cb radio instead of the sign with the speakers in it.

>Not changing the display color from the stock green to the other better colors.
Only good feature of that radio is setting the weather alert to automatically tune to wx band when an alert has been issued

A 5000w is pretty mid-range, and will set you back $50-75. With a peaked and tuned babby radio (re:8w truckstop special) that'll only buy you about 4 miles range, and you can watch your needle swing to see if they're coming or going, since oncoming traffic will have a realistic 4 minute range (8 mile diameter at 120mph). At that power rating if they're within 3 truck lengths of you they'll be too distorted to understand.

Take the radio into the shop and ask for a "bench test". They'll hook it up and tell you it's only 6-10w. At that point, act indignant and ask them to peak and tune it, since you lost track of which of your radios are which when you grabbed one at home. Sure, they're only turning a couple screws, but they'll also look for cold solder joints and burnt out components if your radio swings less than 30w after. Well worth paying the $20- $40 just to have a trained eye on the guts of your radio.

Everything I've told you is top of the line shit for a radio, and if you're installing it all yourself it won't set you back more than $150. Installation is where shops rape drivers (re:the shop across from Iowa 80 having a $250 minimum install charge).

But, if you're buying a $25 coax, $40 astatic microphone, and getting a $20-40 peak and tune, 80% of the shops out there will be tickled pink you just came in for easy money since you'll be in and out in under half an hour.

If you can, get a layover in Joplin, MO, and catch Cocheese on the radio. He's an old Vietnam era radio operater working well below his paygrade under the truck in the sky across from the Petro. He doesn't charge for SWR checks, but if he has to open up your radio he'll take it home and fix it up better than new (he works out of a pickup for 80% of his business for driver convenience).

Other decent options are the TA in Gary, IN. His shop looks shady as fuck (a closet across from the taco bell just inside the store), but he won't screw you and offers 1 year warranties.

Dude fuck WX band. Shit would cut in during the middle of my 10 hour break with the IGN off and warn me about hail 50 miles away in a company truck. NOAA bands are handy, but some radios take it too far.

>so his point is moot
He stated that you guys are living in the past and the 1st world has moved onto newer better wireless transmission devices.

Seems like a valid point to me.

>30w radio x 5000w antenna = 150,000w
>30w rafio x 5000w antenna x 500w amp = 75,000,000w

No.

a 5000w antenna means it can handle max 5000w of input power, usually they have two ratings, one for sustained power and another for max burst. so 2000/5000w

If you have 1000w linear amp, it will output 1000w. they also don't like getting fed more than 10w.

I would love to see the RF burn from a 75000000w 27mhz setup, dead plants for a few 100ft for sure

don't forget all the echo mics, roger beeps and feedback loops

Ya. Antennas are passive devices, not active.
The most they can do is capture/radiate more signal (gain) and shape the radiation pattern (more gain).

This is why the two mirror mount antennas is a popular setup.
They form a phased array with more gain to the fore and aft of the truck.

Another thing to consider is, it's not really practical to make an antenna longer than 1/4λ at 27mhz. 1/4λ is actually about 108" on the 11M CB band, and those 4' long stick antennas perform worse than a 108" whip because of reasons. So about the only way to get some of that performance back is to use the phased array.

Also pls no hotfoot. The FCC gon' get ya.

I've got a 27meg in my strayaworth, I occasionally get skip to various places around the world. Thats about all it is good for as no one really uses 27meg here.

>always wondered how they get them on and off the trailer without a big ass crane.

They deliver them on trucks with a crane on them. Pretty common here in the UK to have a rigid-body truck drop containers off singly, or in pairs with a trailer.

Maybe from America. Britain is actively exporting stuff to China, because they fucking love our culture. So, we get washing machines and fake designer goods, and they load up with real designer goods, butter, scotch whisky, and Downton abbey DVD box sets for the way home.

What is the 911 of trucks?

I'd prolly have to go with the 389.

It's styling has stayed pretty much the same for the past 40 years, like the 911.

They're both marketed as being the "high performance luxury" option

They both have a healthy "enthusiast" following

Neither are really exotic or rare, at least comparatively speaking.

Both make you smile when you see/drive one

Preach.

>What is the 911 of trucks?
Iveco. Every time I see one, I just know it's some insufferable cunt behind the wheel, but is only driving it because they can't afford a Mercedes.

They seem like a perfect fit for pups in the US. Lots of loading and unloading in urban distribution that holds up the driver if it's a hardmounted trailer box. Easy reversing of the semi trailers under the swap bodies one by one and then linking them up with a dolly. That's why I'm suprised to hear they're really uncommon over the pond.

Why don't mega-carrier dispatchers understand how calendars work?
>"18 days out, 3 days off"
>"make this delivery, then you can go home"
>okay, so if I get home Monday afternoon, and get 3 days off, I'll return Friday morning, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday off.
>"no be back Thursday"
>but that's only 2 days off
They specifically say "3 days off", not 72 hours off. If you work, it's not a day off, fucking stupid assholes. I just know I only have to deal with it for another few months before I can start applying for good companies, but I can't believe these shitty big companies wonder why their turnover rate is 95%.

any eurotruckers in here?
Is it still worth it?
what does your month look like?

Thinking about going for my license, im in the netherlands (would love to go international).

It isn't a "day off", it's hometime. The day you leave the truck is the first day of hometime. That's how dispatch has worked the last 60 years.

Swift and Knight to merge.

in.reuters.com/article/us-swift-tran-m-a-knight-trans-idINKBN17C0CU

How's this for a gameplan

>have normie job
>stacking up savings (which is only a couple g's)
>want to get fired from job and get unemployment
>start trucking school
>live out of hotels with nothing but my Xbox and tiny monitor
>become trucker
>haul for a few years while living in hotels
>stack up the money
>buy my own truck
>buy house
>truck at my leisure doing nothing but drop and hooks
>pref long haul from midwest, to anywhere west coast, and back

>Cabover
>Automatic
>Europe

Where do you think you are man?

im not really, but i drive all day and i speak to some of the drivers

the short is, tops you're looking at is £150/day with a class 1 (working full shift ~50hours/week) and i know this doesnt apply to everyone, but every driver i've spoken to seems to hate the company they work for, at least the environment/company warehouse /office staff etc.

i personally passed my Class 2 (full class C) over 2 years ago now, but being young wasnt able to get any work, so started my own courier company (vans)

i sort of work for a single company (i do 99% of my work for 1 company) I have a contract with them, however im not obliged to accept any work if i dont want to.

and i can easily earn ~£150+/day personally i much prefer it, your own hours/getting up when you want/being your own boss etc. but it is a lot more stress you have to keep real good track of everything and be well organized as well as record keeping and such.

it's something to consider imo if you're in europe

Personally i do still want to move onto truck, eventually, but this is decent money and enjoyable work for someone my age (early 20s)

So, you're a white van man?

>midwest to west coast
Great way to go broke fast. Stick to midwest regional.

Red Roof Inn is the most tractor friendly chain.

yep

At least you admit it. My friend's dad works out of his van, but he had to get a red one because he refused to be a white van man.