These pages are being written to help those who are just beginning in this line of work. To make new drivers aware of the situations they may run into. | ||
FIRST TRIPS - Are
here Those pages are mostly as I wrote them starting in 2003, with only a few dead links removed. They reflect how I drove at that time, not the way I am driving today. |
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BACKGROUND - Before Driveaway I know of no one who didn't have a life prior to starting in driveaway. Here are some of the things I have done in my prior life. I grew up on a dairy/crop farm and drove many kinds of equimpment, our family also owned two right hand driver mail cars so I also learned driving in those. As an adult I had 12 years as a shipping manager, 3 years as a trucking operations manager and 6 years as a computer tech. In addition I had a second, part-time job for about 12 years driving a delivery route. Shorter jobs included truckdriver, fry-cook and factory work. |
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STARTING driveway I was working a temp factory job when I saw the driveaway ad in the local paper. I am almost sure I had seem the same ad with a lower 'expected income' in prior ads. But this time I applied and was contracted on. After about three months, I didn't seem to be making any money. At that point I looked at the details of each trip and realized that some of the runs I was taking weren't making me any money. That is where I learned to say 'No.' Sometimes I had to sit and wait for a better run, but when I was running I was making money. Sometime within my first year of driving, I went back and started doing computer work when I was not driving. This allowed me to be pickier on my runs, knowing I had fill in work when I was in town. When things crashed in 2007-08, I was able to fill in with non-driving work and only drove eigth days that year. Other than that time frame, I have worked full time doing driveway with the biggest push being when my wife was layed off and we also had to pay the medical insurance out of pocket. I also tried dispatching for a few months but the stress didn't agree with me so as soon as I had a replacement trained I was back on the road. I also did 'local only' / no overnights for one year. |