Pros
Its a job, 30days paid vacation a yr. sometimes the hotels are great. If the chief techican is on leave and no other tech is available, you get paid for the day 8 hrs sitting in the hotel room. standard 401k health insurance. average day is from around 6am to around 430.. sometimes 5pm. 50 55 hrs per week. Work can be easy sometimes but when it comes down to it the truck has to be ready to run the next day. you can make btwn 40k and 48k, depends on the route and the chief technician. You can always move up the chain, company will train you to become a technician. you drive about 1.5 to 2 hrs aday. they other time is spent waiting on time for track testing or testing, then about 1.5 hrs of time getting the truck ready for the next day. all total btwn 9 11 hrs daily. you get two off everyweek.
Cons
Drivers pressed to violate dot 60hr work week. Low hourly pay, your pay is made by the chief technician who pads your hours. IE work 9 get paid for 11. Hard to get a hold of corporate to get problems fixed for the driver. you get a different per deim rate than the techicans about 60bucks difference. you have to eat fast food where he can eat at a restruart . Your work is not just driving, you also help the chief do mechanicla work on the systems. When i hired on it was just to be a driver. Low starting wage for the amount of money. Only stayed cause the chief payed me extra hours well. Never saw a pay stub, its all electronic, tried for almost 2 yrs to get it set up. The railroads are union and some of them cant stand you cause you are nonunion. the company will often fly out for a week to another truck to relieve the driver, and they fly you coach, i hate to fly coach,