Trucking in the 90's

God I miss the 90 's. Trucking was so much better then. Companies only cared about one thing, getting the load there on time. No such thing as elogs, or third eye in the sky Qualcomm keeping tract of how long it takes me to fuel, shower and take a dump.

Only had to talk to your dispatcher once a day at 8.00 am to let him know where you were. Call again when you were empty. You were allowed to drive 10 hours, everybody drove more, our teams ran 22 hours a day.

Backed up our logbooks, real easy to outrun them. Carried light freight out to California most of the time, produce back. The load out paid for everything roundtrip fuel, and both drivers, load back was just gravy. Home every week at least one day sometimes two, if you got in on Tuesday didn't go back out til Friday cause drops were closed on Sat and Sun in Californication.

No such thing as DAK, companies weren't looking to lose drivers they wanted all they could get. Faster trucks, at least 70, we made them run even faster, 85 plus. I got one speeding ticket in New Mexico 84 in a 65 total cost of ticket 46.00 and nothing on my record.

When cdl first came out states thought they were going to reap the benefits of higher fines, but Gov took it instead. So states like New Mexico would not turn your ticket in on cdl, sent me a letter saying pay 46.00 in 10 days and thats it, nothing on my record, try that today you will be fired.
Today I sometimes see DOT on every exit in my state, nothing like that back then. We sent single drivers to Cali from NC with only a 3 hour head start over a team, leave Fri at 2.00 pm and had to be in california Mon 7.00 am, thats the real definition of running hard.

Lastly, had tons of freight, but it wasn't so much BS like we have today, worked really hard but it was at a more relaxed pace, we could always make our appointments on time and no stress. No trainers going out on the road with you either, if you passed your road test you teamed up and got busy.

I really miss those days but they are gone forever. Glad I still have the memories.

 

Right and we have let it go on for so long now, there's no turning back, I mean DAK reports, cars following us reporting on our driving habits, in the 90's they couldn't have kept up ha ha. I wonder if the trucking companies got the idea for dak from life insurance companies because when I worked there I learned that if you apply for insurance and are turned down because of medical reasons, that info on you is stored on a national data base so you can't just go to another company and get insurance there.

 

Are you able to get a job without going back to school, been a long time ?