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It’s an indisputable fact that 613 people died in commercial motor vehicle crashes in 2019. However, this doesn’t mean that all commercial drivers are bad. In fact, they’re vital to how you live your life.
They bring supplies to manufacturers, food to grocery stores, and can even help you haul large loads from one place to another with little hassle. This makes these careers very valuable to some people because they’re stable and will likely always be necessary.
Leading Career Paths for Commercial Driving
Commercial trucking is the lifeblood of the economy. Below you’ll find just a few of these vital commercial driving careers below to help you understand just how broad and important commercial driving jobs really are.
Flatbed
Flatbed hauling is no easy job. These trailers are used to carry a lot of goods that don’t fit into other trailers. Some may haul specialty cars, others transport equipment, and many deliver materials like steel or concrete.
Almost everything flatbed trailers hold is big and heavy, meaning it has to be secured well. This can be a very labor-intensive process, and that’s before you take both loading and unloading into account. Flatbed drivers need to be pretty strong in order to handle what they haul, but they also have to be flexible. Not every flatbed is the same size, and every load is different.
As a result, these drivers need to be able to make quick judgments on how to load each item, how to secure it, how often they may need to stop during the trip to ensure the load stays secured, etc.
Of course, the major benefits that make these drawbacks worthwhile are the job demand and the high pay. For some, the variety in the loads they’ll haul is another massive benefit; the job can’t get too repetitive if you don’t know what your trailer will look like.
Dry Van
Dry van trucking isn’t as physically demanding as flatbed hauling for one major reason: the driver doesn’t have to load or unload the truck. No, these drivers are a true middleman, taking their mostly unmonitored cargo from one place to another. This may mean hauling household items like furniture and clothing, but non-perishable food items like crackers, pasta and canned foods; some bottled drinks; machinery and even electronics are also things that are delivered by dry van haulers.
Essentially, if you find it at a store and it isn’t in a fridge or freezer, its journey to that shelf involved a dry van. A massive downside for many about driving dry vans is that you typically have to travel long distances. If you can handle that, though, then the fact that dry vans are constantly in demand may make the job incredibly appealing. Assuming, of course, that you’re well organized, since you’ll need to collect proof that the load has been successfully delivered.
Livestock
Hauling livestock is one of the most physically demanding trucking jobs out there. You’ll likely need to help get the sheep, cattle, pigs or whatever else you’re hauling into your trailer, safely get them to their destination, and then help get them out of the trailer, too. This isn’t the end, either.
Once you’ve gotten and filed all of the appropriate paperwork, you’ll have to take your trailer to a washout yourself and either pay for them to wash it for you or do that on your own. You also need to follow a strict schedule that’s dictated not necessarily by people but by the animals. If you can handle all of that, then you’ll also need to be able to handle the small.
See, animals aren’t very hygienic, and that will make your trailer stink. This smell will waft into the truck and then stick to you and your clothes. You’ll be taking a lot more showers and doing more laundry in this line of work, but, just like every other commercial driving job mentioned here, it’s in high demand, so work will be steady.
Refrigerated Truck
Refrigerated trucking, sometimes called “reefer trucking” for short, is when the driver hauls perishable goods in a refrigerated trailer. The temperatures of both the items within and the trailer itself will be heavily monitored because the food will spoil quickly if it gets too hot and freeze if it’s too cold.
Refrigerated truck drivers need to be able to both notice and react to temperature shifts quickly to protect their precious cargo, which consists of almost everything in the grocery store that isn’t handled by dry vans: fresh fruits and vegetables, milk, meat, and even stuff like perfumes and flowers.
Even your medications are hauled by refrigerated trucks. If you’re attentive, quick to respond, and able to be creative during a crisis, then driving a refrigerated truck may be a good trucking career for you.
Tanker
When you fill up your car on a road trip, you’re still not escaping the trucking industry’s influence. That fuel was hauled to that location in a tanker truck. As a result, tankers are just as dangerous as they are important.
The gas, petroleum, diesel or even chemicals that they haul can be dangerous if not handled correctly or during a crash and leaves many unwilling to take up the job. Of course, not all liquids are that dangerous. Molasses, milk, juice, wine and even the alcohol used in hand sanitizers are also delivered via tanker truck.
No matter what you haul, loading and unloading is easy so long as nothing’s broken and the pay is usually quite high, which makes up for the stress this job may cause in the eyes of many drivers.
Hotshot
Not every item needs to be shipped by the massive semi trucks you likely think of when someone mentions commercial driving. These loads can be hauled by many different trucks but are often handled by fairly powerful pickup trucks and the trailers they haul.
While this means they can’t carry massive items, it also means they can get the cargo from point A to point B quickly, which is exactly why someone would hire a hotshot driver in the first place. While it can be difficult to build a hotshot business, the pay and ability to choose which loads you take make it more than worth it.
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