I am going to an interview today with someone that owns a FedEx class "A" truck route driving doubles from Portland OR to Montana. Does anybody know any thing about these routes. Are they good/bad? Also if there is a way to find other routes that are available.Maybe something that doesn't require team driving, something that is less hours on the road? Like pulling doubles from Portland to Seattle and back. I see them on the road every night that I am working, I just never knew who was the owner of the tractors. I just assumed it was one of the bigger co. or FedEx themselves. I was surprised at the ad when I found out it was an O/O that was hiring for them. Any info would be appreciated. Even if someone could tell me how much snow to expect come winter going from Portland to Montana. The O/O said the driving time from destination to destination is 8 1/2 hours with no layovers. Just unhook the doubles from one tractor and hook up the doubles from the other tractor. It doesn't sound too bad. But the part where I'm teamed up with someone could stink if its with the wrong person. Thank you in advance to everyone who has helped me in the past with stuff and in the future as well.

With team operation, what's important is you & your partner get along well. The fact that you're hesitant to team up tells me you had a bad experience with your last partner, or maybe your trainer was verbally abusive, which is not unusual in OTR trucking. Your profile says you've been driving over 2 years; had you not looked into an hourly-paying local job ?? What I criticize about OTR is the mileage or per-load compensation system, which is really an incentive to falsify logbooks. When you're on the time clock, you're paid time and a half over 8 hours, and some states mandate double time over 12 hours.

Unless you're instructed to leave the interstate, always stay on the federal interstate, which is I-84, US-395, & I-90 going into Montana from Portland, OR. If you'll be teamed up with just one person, try to meet this guy, sit down with him over coffee & donuts at a donut shop (or restaurant) and find out his likes & dislikes, what kind of music he listens to, does he play with the volume up at night, etc...
Does he have a system of splitting the driving ? If he says he drives in the daytime, and you'll mostly drive at night, that's not a good sign, unless you're OK with driving all night.

Myself, when I ran team, I had a portable CD player with headphones to let my partner sleep when I ran at nights. Me & my partner split driving in 4-hour shifts, so we both drove night & day. If you've never done LTL before, its time sensitive. If you go to Fedex website, it gives an estimation of when a package will arrive at its destination. This tells you that as a driver, there's no room for margin of errors to factor-in delays such as tire blowouts, equipment breakdowns, traffic delay due to construction or accidents, etc....

If you haven't figured it out yet, the practice of leasing O/Os is a trick of the trucking trade to increase your fleet size without the added liability cost. An O/O absorbs the added insurance cost, fuel & maintenance, and payroll cost of compensating and providing benefits to the driver. Your trailer will often have small orders of electronics, so its very important you always check to make sure the seal is intact. If someone breaks the seal, and they later unload and find items missing, they immediately suspect either you or your partner had pilfered the missing item. If you ever arrive at a terminal with the seal broken, don't walk to your car with personal belongings. Its best to stay in the terminal & wait for them to finish unloading the trailer, & do inventory to make sure nothing is missing. With today's bar code scanning, they'll know in seconds if anything is missing when the last package is pulled out of the trailer.

FedEx has several divisions and the job your are considering is no doubt with FedEx Ground . You might find this interesting [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link. . With a good co-driver it could be a good opportunity . You may even eventually become a fleet owner yourself .