Most people hate paperwork and OTR commercial truck drivers and no different, Most truckers get paid by the miles they drive and not by the amount of paperwork they do but often times they have to spend lots of time doing paperwork for things like truck permits, fuel permits, insurance, freight paperwork, and licensing paperwork.
You will have to complete paperwork for fuel permits, overweight permits, hazmat permits, licensing for commercial trucking, along with insurance. As a trucker that gets paid for driving and not doing paperwork I have come up with some simple tips that any commercial trucker can use to save time and reduce the amount of time spent doing paperwork for things like truck permits so you can driving instead of pushing paperwork.
The first step is just to keep all the paperwork organized, I suggest you get a small file box and sort everything into individual folders. You should have folders for each of the following: sates you haul, insurance, fuel, bingo stamps, misc permits, and licenses. Sort all your paperwork into each of the folders and keep it all together along with a box of pencils, pens, eraser, stapler, extra staples. One last thing I keep in the box in case of emergencies is a prepaid phone card along with $50 in cash, you never know when you may need.
The next step is use the internet as you can now get most commercial truck permits online so if you have internet access (many truck stops have internet stations) you can often complete all the paperwork online and this will save you a ton of time.
At this point you should have everything sorted and whenever possible you should be completing the truck permits online so the final step is to plan ahead, as your driving down the road try to think of any truck permits or other paperwork you will need to finish in the next week, when you are waiting for the truck to fill up use this time to get a jump on the future paperwork needed for truck permits and do it then so you will start to get ahead of the game and before you know it you will have saved yourself lots of lost time and have all your truck permit paperwork done so you can spend your time driving instead of doing paperwork.
In closing I would like to ask that if you are like me and sick of the increasing burden of regulations and paperwork being placed on commercial truck drivers that you take a few minutes of your time and call or write your Senator and Congressman and let them know that it needs to stop. As one person you are not going to stop it but if we all get involved maybe we can actually make a difference.
