Employment Truck driver

[jasonwilde]

Thinking of changing careers.

Want to hear about the one in the title.

I think it might suit me well.

If there's anyone out there that would like to share thoughts I'd be most grateful.

FWIW- I work hard. I work ridiculously long hours. I work to meet insane deadlines. I spend minimum 2 hours driving to work and home each day.


Oh, & I like driving

 

[Jonts]

Interested to see hear how you went

My advice (better late than never )

Get a forklift and skidsteer ticket with the biggest truck licence you can legally have
That will be enough to get you in the ball park for most jobs in the field

 

[bradrowe#32]

I've worked with a few truck drivers over the years and they all have varying stories.

At my current work, we pay Toll $69 an hour for our two drivers, who are on regular runs. They apparently take home $30 an hour. However, the days vary. They always start at 7am, but they do get paid from when they pick the truck up at the depot at 6am. The problem is that sometimes they finish at 5pm and sometimes they finish at 1pm, which makes their pay packet vary from week to week. Also, they complain that they can't organise stuff for the afternoon, because they just simply don't know when they will finish.

At my previous, it seems like it was the same deal. I remember one of the drivers tell me that over a two week period, they drove from Perth to Albany to somewhere near Kalkoorlie to Meekatharra to Port Hedland to Broome to Canarvon and back to Perth. Reckons he was owed 35k for that run (not sure, truck drivers do exaggerate from my experience).

From what I can gather, it's best to own your own truck (expensive!) and sub-contract it.

 

[Whit3y]

worked for a transport company in regional victoria doing multi stop deliveries driving a MR. pretty tough going if you ask me

id agree with the above comment about owning your own truck and sub contract it, either that or work for a big company like toll or star trak that have a union as you will have a decent eba

must owner operator transport companies are pretty iffy, $19 a hour is tough going for the work you do