ESTES Express (5 Year Review)

In my case it's percentage based. I have the Costco Citi visa rewards, and I get 4% back on fuel purchases (up to $7,000), 3% on restaurants, 2% at costco, and 1% on everything else. It's been worth it to me, I've gotten between 500-750$ cash at the end of the year. I spend about 30k a year on it.

 

I’ve used a Discover card for 10+ years. Their cash back rewards is pretty simple. Unlimited 1% back on everything, and 5% back on bonus categories that rotate quarterly. I usually use mine on Amazon purchases (it applies at checkout like a gift card), but you can also use it for statement credits or other redemption methods.

So far this year I’m at $153 from $7400 of regular spending. It’s not much, but it’s free money.

 

I know. Seems like every month there's something coming up for the house, pets, drs. At least at this point in my life I'm able to return to 0 every month. Sticking to 2500 a month budget for a family of 2 has been increasingly challenging over the last year, inflation at the grocery store is killing me.

 

So I lasted 5 months with Estes out of 041, I quit because I moved to Alabama. Terminal was too far for a transfer so I had to quit. I will say this, Estes is the best paying company I have worked for but their trucks are terrible. You know you are in trouble when you have to "wind" the window up and down. Sometimes you have to grab the window and pull it up while winding. Dispatch is not bad but they seem to think they know more than you as a driver even though they have never set foot in a truck. The dock workers.....wellllll....... Gold Medals in the nose on a 12 stopper. Skids of freight leaning if not busted so much that the customer refuses it, dispatch looking at you wondering why no pre was done, well I cant see all the way if the first 4 skids are top height. Why not have the dock workers load the trailers like they are supposed to? Lastly, my biggest peeve was having to switch trucks everytime a linehauler came in for "his" truck. Mind you, in orientation, I was told there are no assigned trucks. Needless to say Estes was the best paying but the worst company I have worked for. I know some of you guys on here are Estes loyal, and thats fine. Whats good for the goose is not always good for the gander. Happy trucking fellas. Keep it between the lines.

 

That was my experience too for the P&D side. Equipment that was downright shameful to be driving for the P&D trucks (had a few with 1.3 million miles on them), dirty trucks, slip seating, having to switch trucks at least once a day so the linehaul drivers could get their assigned trucks, sending us to places that trucks had no places being, doing household moves where you would pick up the empty trailer at the house in residential neighborhoods, dispatch that consisted of mainly 20 somethings who had (I'm assuming) generic college degrees and absolutely no managing experience who treated drivers like cattle instead of human beings. Working 60 - 63 hours in a 5 day working period on top of a 30 minute commute there and a 30 minute commute back. That's to say nothing of the stress of dealing with heavy traffic day in and day out, and in a manual no less.

It just got old. Fast. And for those wondering why switching out trucks would be a pain, not only is it a pain but half the time I'de get back to the terminal around 6:00pm - 6:30pm and the early bird guys still weren't finished driving for the day. Meaning that there were still only linehaul trucks available. So dispatch would dispatch me a load knowing that there would be no way that I could make it back to the terminal for the 8:00pm - 9:00pm scheduled start times that a lot of these guys had for the particular truck that I happened to be driving that day. So when I'de get back many times the linehaul drivers would actually start yelling at me when it wasn't even my fault that I got back to the terminal past their start times as I had informed dispatch of the problem before dispatch dispatched me out a few hours earlier anyways.

I can't tell you the amount of times I would have to tell these grown men that it was not ok to yell at me and I'm getting my stuff out of their truck or dropping the trailer or whatever as quickly as possible so they can get their truck. It was a whole dance that I had to do about half the week. And of course on top of dealing with linehaul drivers who don't know how to interact with other human beings in a polite way, I'de have dispatch blowing my phone up wondering what was taking so long.

I remember one week it got to Wednesday and I was at around 39 something hours for the week after 3 days of work. That crap gets old and it gets old fast. I guess it's because I don't need a lot in life but I don't have it in me to work every waking minute of my day, day in and day out. At a certain point, a job is not worth your health. I have no wife and no kids. It's not hard to support myself. If working conditions are bad, I don't have to put up with it. I'll walk.

As per Moose2517's post about the dock workers, look, at least at my terminal they were worked to death. Working stupid amounts of hours. They had a set start time but never a set finish time. Many of them had families. How do you have a family life if you are living like that, never knowing when you are going home? I remember one day I went into the dock office area to turn in my paperwork for a run I had just finished. I overheard a dockworker and the dock manager talking.

Long story short the dockworker had come in on HIS DAY OFF and got there at 10:00am. At around 6:00pm whenever I was in the area turning in my paperwork, the dockworker asked the manager if he could get off at 8:00pm. The manager smiled, laughed and said no because that would only be a 10 hour shift. Only. Yeah, only. The dockworker looked upset and asked when the manager thought he would be able to get off. The manager said probably around 10:30pm but even that would depend if an acceptable amount of freight had been loaded and unloaded by that time.

Imagine that. Imagine coming in on your DAY OFF and your boss laughing at you, telling you that a 10 hour shift is too small of a shift and actually having the balls to tell you that you were going to work a minimum of 12 - 12.5 hour shift on your day off. Would that make YOU want to give your best to that company?

As a result of stuff like that and from me talking to the dockworkers, they were overworked, tired, stressed, fatigued and treated like crap as I just explained in that story above. I can't really blame them for messing up the trailers and putting stuff in the wrong order. Very few people that I talked to wanted to work those long ### hours, especially when it was overtime after 52 hours (how in the hell it's legal for dock workers, WHO DO NOT HAVE A CDL, to not get overtime after 40 hours is beyond me but I digress). As a result the dock workers, as well as the P&D drivers, seemed to be an ever revolving door at my terminal in large part because of the ridiculous amount of hours. A great way to grind for a few months and save up money, but man that is no way too live.

I felt really bad for the guys that had families and that was regardless of whether they were P&D or dock workers or whoever. We weren't "local drivers", we were never home. We lived at Estes. Estes was our home. It was no different than being OTR.

Anyways I guess I went off on a tangent. To anyone reading this post don't get discouraged by what I wrote. LTL is still a great sector of the trucking industry. Whether it's doing P&D or linehaul or even combo (although combo seems like it would suck), you are going to get paid and you are going to make money. The money is there. It's just up to you to decide whether the BS you are going to put up with is worth the money.

 

I liked Estes for the most part but most of his complaints are legit. Hell Memphis stole my truck once for 3 days and I was driving a 1.8 million my truck that barely moved. I had to call my terminal manager to get my truck back from Memphis. I couldn’t do the east coast or the prick on the east coast who would always fck you over going home or trying to get back out of the east. Then after my terminal screwed me over I was staying on the board going east for the next 8 years until one of them old ######## retired from my barn. It was time to move on.

I did have a decent truck through as long as @KaoMinerva hub wouldn’t steal it