Your Thoughs on working for ABF

Never met an unhappy one. Its all slip seat day cabs and Union., but pays like us - congratulations on the offer!

Do they have a thread in here under "motor carriers inside scoop"??

 

I have talked to many ABF drivers down in Fontana at the hotel they get put up in on their runs and every single one of them was happy and had nothing but good to say about ABF

 

I'm not a fan of the company. I work for Arnold transport currently. I got on a dedicated account pulling doubles for them in dec that was suposed to last untill xmas. I made 3 runs round trip. Truth was we were doing round trip in a day (as asked) and the abf drivers were doing one way. On the 4th day they made up some bs about equipment failure. Told my disbatcher some other story. On the 5th day They canceled my run do to weather. There was bad weather coming in, but I would have been there AND BACK before it got there. (not to mention i can drive in a little snow) After 2 days of not working quit the dedicated run and they asked me back the next monday. I said no becuase who knows how long it would last.

Every time i picked up a load, they had 20 ABF drivers waiting for loads. Either way, they didnt treat me right and i lost 2 days pay becuase of it.

 

I don't get it. Your post has absolutely nothing to do with the question that was asked. He wanted to know about being a company driver, not a third party carrier driver. While i can understand your feelings about how you were handled, it's irrelevant to the question that was asked.
I've met many ABF drivers over the years, and they pretty much all like working there. It seems to my that your beef is with Arnold, not ABF

 

I worked for them as a "casual driver", part time for all the non union guys! Lol! At the top of the industry for pay and benefits...it's an excellent company! It really is until....they go on strike which is a real possibility. If you start there straight out of school you will have a hard time going to a different company if you ever have to.....why you ask? Because the majority of companies can't come close to the wages and benefits ABF has.

 

One of there "wild" drivers reported he was making $110000/year living in motels but getting home to check the mail every couple weeks. I think their linehaul guys have to stay out every other night and get motel, but get home the other nights running bid runs between hubs. They make $80K to $100K a year, but all night driving for most of the bids.Not bad money but the permanent night runs get really old. So, you could get on days and do city P&D running a regular route and only make $50K working 7am to 5pm on the clock.

Why I decided to give up LTL world and go be an O/O is befuddling, but money ain't everything. We like to try new things.

 

With the ABF union job you will be vested for a pension in 5 years.

 

Line haul is the way to go. From what I've read on their board they start at .52 cents per mile. .52x 3000miles=? You can average 3k miles in ltl per week easily. That's just their base miles rate, you get other pay breaking sets, wait time, fueling etc. If you can hack driving nights this is the way to go. You'll get on and likely retire there.

 

So is ABF top of the line pay? I currently work for pepsi and see alot of different LTL trucks at the Loves I service. The ABF guys usually seem happy but I had been told when I was in CDL school that they were on the lower pay scale of LTL. Was I mis-informed?