Time and a half VS mileage

My intro to CDL truck driving was from Steuart Petroleum (Steuart was bought by Griffth Oil back in 1993, I got hired to drive an oil truck in the early 1980's. Home heating oil delivery is a young mans game, the oil hose can be up to 150 feet long, often you have to lug it uphill and let me tell you, it can get heavy!

Especially if you're delivering oil in the steep hills of Bethesda Maryland, near the Potomac River along MacArthur Blvd.

Heating oil is mainly a seasonal (winter only) job, we got laid off every spring, they paid us more than enough to keep us coming back. In the summer, coming from a family owned small business background, I went to the highest bidder!

I went to F.O.Day in Rockville Maryland, first dump truck I drove was a 1973 Autocar, I was so green, the ink was still warm on my drivers licence! They put is greenhorns in the Quarry at Rockville Crushed Stone Inc 13900 Piney Meetinghose Rd.
Rockville, MD , 20850
They're now known as Aggregate Industries
(F.O.Day has one of it's asphalt plants on the property)

We got LOTS of overtime, often more than 70 hours a week... later when the CDL hours of service rules came into effect, we had to keep it down to 60 hours or less.

OVERTIME

I made so much overtime delivering oil that I really didn't care what I did/ who I worked for in the summer. I made more money in 6 months of winter that I quit jobs just because the ashtrays were full!

The construction boom of the 1980's helped... Demand Exceeded Supply (still does, although the status quo is no longer in effect)

You could literally: "If you could make it around the parking lot and not hit anything, you were hired"

Then I got my Class A (tractor trailer licence)... no more time and half?

Most of the time we got paid by the mile... which is ok if you don't have to unload the truck!

Waiting to get unloaded is more often than not... done for free.

What a buzz kill!

When I drove for Superior Carriers we got paid $.38 mile.
Ok, my run was to Pittsburg, (well close to Pittsburg), I made $265 a day just for the miles...

Unloading took up to 3 hours and paid a measly $20?

It all worked out in the end.

However... In Frederick, I worked for Blue Mountain Express Inc. most of the time I made the US post office mail run.
When the mail run was over, sometimes BME had me take loaded trailers to local warehouses to unload:
3 hours paid $30

????

You gotta be kidding me. It seems that the mileage drivers all wanted the gravy and us new guys got stuck with emptying the trailers?

Wouldn't have been so bad if I had a truck with a sleeper.


This site is not responsible for libel, any driver who ever worked for a truck company is welcome to rate any company they worked for, of course if they got fired, they might not give an accurate description of what it was like to work there.