For anyone thinking or saying - "isn't this something someone could do as an extra job at weekends" - from my personal experience driving some medium-size trucks in the UK while I was at university (helping a friend who had a delivery company), driving anything that's larger than a van is a totally different experience than driving any sort of car, and is both much harder work and a magnitude more stressful. Not to mention how f**ing difficult it is to reverse.
And I wasn't driving anything near the size of the rigs being talked about here.
I 2nd this. I've driven a truck with a long horse trailer just pushing the edge of the requirement of a Class A license since I was 16 and I can say it is HARD. That's without having to worry about a tractor gear box and clutch brakes on an 18 wheeler. Everything you do has to be planned well in advance.
You need to constantly look out for human squirrels driving econoboxes and trying to pass you on the right while you make a wide turn. Crowded gas stations truly suck. Bollards hide and try to eat your trailer. If you get into a corner and can't turn sharp enough you can get trapped by your trailer.
Then there are the additional laws, weight limits, fines and fees, logging requirements, hour limits, hazmat, double trailers and a hundred other things that a trucker needs to know.
I spent 4 years driving a 35ft RV with our family. The trips were fun, the driving is scary.
Wind affects you so much. You can feel big vehicles passing you. Every slight angle on a road makes you feel like you’re going to tip over. You need special navigation systems that know your vehicle size so you don’t get routed down a road where you can’t turn around or a bridge can’t support you.
Definitely learned to appreciate truck stops and rest areas though. Parking overnight fills up so many times you’ll end up in a Walmart parking lot because of all the cameras.
It’s an adventure. It could be fun and a lot of people love it. Some people especially get into long distance trucking.
But IMO it’s definitely a full time job with a lot of responsibilities. I’m shocked there aren’t more accidents which is really a credit to all of these drivers and their training.
I have spent a little over a year traveling every few days/weeks with a 35ft fifth wheel RV.
I hope to high heavens that you didn't have a normal bumper pull with a length of 35 ft. That would be utterly crazy!
It is completely uneventful if you have a proper truck and hitch, even with a 30 mph crosswind, though I have never gone over 75 mph with this setup. If you EVER feel like you are not in control or the vehicle is unstable, your setup is fatally flawed, and you need to reconsider your hitch and truck setup.
Open source OSMAND has truck navigation with weight, width, and height restriction considerations.
Truck stops and rest areas should be your last resort. You need to make phone calls and strike deals with potential places to stay at discounted rates. Being nice over the phone goes a long way.
My brother is a Romanian truck driver (he’s on his way to France right now, if I’m not mistaken). He got into this career at 32 years of age because he couldn’t make it anymore running a small cow farm, his farm couldn’t compete against the subsidized milk coming from the likes of France or Poland (a temporary, politically-induced ban on selling beef to Russia also didn’t help, his cows’ value was halved over-night). What I’m saying is that every action has a reaction, those Romanians and Bulgarians are not into it to steal someone else’s job, most of them were forced to do it because of economical and political decisions taken over their heads.
Well, one of the differences between the US and UK is the US is much larger, and the long-haul 18-wheeler routes are going to take longer than a weekend to drive and back. Going between, say, Chicago and NYC takes ~12 hours... not counting stops. And that's one way!
It only takes one choke point or low bridge or prohibited route to ruin your whole trip. While 99% of US roads may be bigger and wider, 1% of a 400 mile daily trip can cause major problems.
Aren’t American trucks bigger though? Seems like the economics would encourage companies to make the biggest truck that can physically fit on the roads, to maximize cargo per driver hour.
Slightly bigger, because in the US the regulation is on trailer length, whereas European regs are on total length. So Euro trucks are all cab-over designs, while American trucks are generally engine-in-front (easier to access for maintenance). But unless you're talking about a double trailer, not much difference.
The problem is a lot of American roads have poor clearance. You can find a lot of images online of trucks that have been opened like a sardine can along the top due to hitting a low bridge. You can't make the truck too long either or else it will be unable to turn on right angle intersections. When they deliver big things like wind turbines on American roads, its can be an extremely slow process with engineers spotting each and every single turn along the route.
That's an interesting point. It would seem that the idea truck would have the highest possible cargo to truck weight ratio for profitability purposes. The square cube law would seem to indicate that larger trucks are heavier, but add much more cargo space to compensate.
However, larger engines could be less efficient per pound than their smaller counterparts. My intuition is that the opposite is true, but I could definitely be wrong on that.
true, but then in the UK you're working with roads that aren't even really designed to host trucks in the first place. American roads are pretty grid-ish, British roads are all over the shop and much more organic in structure.
In fairness, UK streets are often tiny compared to those in the US (at least in my experience motoring around southern England for a week). I suspect that plays a nontrivial role.
No doubt, but in my short experience in southern England, if you're not on a major highway, you're often on a lane just big enough for one compact car and sidewalks are used in case of oncoming traffic. Chicago alleys are positively spacious by comparison. I imagine truck drivers just learn routes with wider roads.
Just this past weekend I drove a 25ft truck for a 400 mile move. It was the first time I've driven something bigger than a car and I gained a lot of respect for truck drivers. Surprisingly difficult to do basic things like lane centering.
I think it depends. I've driven stuff like larger box trucks or pulling a larger trailer (even a tiny house!) without any issue. I wouldn't want to drive them in a city though. That would be stressful.
Just don't get in a hurry. That way you can look far enough ahead to predict any issues before they become pressing. When you're starting out, this also gives you time to remember how the transmission works (although all new rigs are automatics now, which might explain the high schoolers). All the idiots on the street with you can either pass or wait behind.
I agree with this, but it doesn't solve all the issues of driving in the cities (maybe you're area is different). I would be concerned with the narrow streets with people not parked well, double parked, etc. Philly seems to be terrible to drive in compared to many other cities. If you do get into an accident, the police won't even come to make a report. The roads are generally in terrible condition too.
Never drive them into a city. That's one of my rules for operating a larger vehicle; if I can avoid urban/city zones I will. Sometimes you can't avoid them, but the rest of the time I plan to go around. Especially if I'm hauling something heavy.
There was one experience where the local Uhaul gave me a 20' truck instead of the 10' van I requested. It was the most stressful, surreal experience I ever had trying to maneuver that big dumb truck around city streets. And this was just to move a broke college graduate's stuff; basically a cheap futon, book case, and desk. Nothing in the truck was worth the damage of hitting or scraping a car.
Here's the problem with driving on the weekends. Unless you get hooked up with a company and they're ok with paying your insurance the answer is no. The TLDR here is that if you're and employee or contractor for a trucking company, you'll be paying insurance rates based on driving the legal DOT(in the states) limit.
If you want to see what this looks like, google around for "hot shot trucking". It doesn't require a CDL under, I believe, 24k lbs. BUT it does require a special insurance since you're no longer a person, but a company.
Each individual state may have more stringent CDL licensing requirements. However, every state must follow federal requirements as a baseline. One element in federal CDL operator requirements is a vehicle’s GVWR. The federal requirement specifies that, when a vehicle has a GVWR of 26,000 pounds or less, the operator does not need a CDL. However, this does not mean the truck GVW can be loaded above the GVWR of 26,000 pounds and operated by a non-CDL driver. Federal requirements state the GVW must, in addition, be 26,000 pounds or less. CDL requirements become more confusing when the vehicle is towing a trailer.
And I wasn't driving anything near the size of the rigs being talked about here.