Starting Schneider National Dedicated Flex Fleet

Not really. You have to be able to do whatever NDF needs you to do. Hence flex fleet. That being said you can join a dedicated account as an actual dedicated driver specifically for that account and if you don't like it you can transfer to another account. But that's not how NDF operates.

I've heard that if you aren't able to do the strength tests at orientation for flatbed then they disqualify you for NDF. SNI will ask you then and there if you want to transfer over to regular OTR or dedicated instead of sending you home, since there are less physical requirements.

Jet set dedicated may be more up your alley

 

Still out here running and running and running. Went home for 2 weeks at the end of April into May. One of my best friends died and I had to go to a funeral which is never a good reason to go home and it was super rough. Grief while over the road is a totally different experience than I thought it would be. I was already planning to go home before he died, but he passed literally a week before my hometime was supposed to start. I was hoping that the funeral would be after my hometime started but I found out it would be 2 days before hometime officially started. I called my DTL and asked them if they could rush me home before the funeral. They pulled me off the Home Depot account in Kentucky and had me a preassignment heading towards home by the end of the day.

Huge huge shoutout to them for doing that for me on such short notice. Any other company I've ever worked for would've told me sorry for your loss but tough luck, we need you at work. I honestly didn't expect Schneider to say yes but I figured I should at least try, and even if they said no then I could at least tell the family that I did make the effort. Again huge thanks to Schneider for being so understanding. I don't care what anyone says, Schneider is a good company and really has been good to me. They pulled me off the Home Depot account and I started heading for home in Louisiana, doing a couple relays in Alabama and Mississippi before finally getting back to Shreveport.

It was the first time I've actually been home to Louisiana since I first started at Schneider and it was honestly a complete disaster. Almost all the pipes in my house were busted from leaving them there unattended for over a year (despite the water being turned off), and it took the plumbers 4 days to get them all replaced. When I got home and turned on the water at the street, I went into my house to find water spraying out of my water heater like crazy and my whole laundry room and hallway was ankle deep in water and it was horrible. I couldn't live in my own house for the first few days of being home. Thankfully I had some leftover pilot showers and ended up using the Flying J in Shreveport to take a shower the first night home. I also went back to my truck the first night and slept in my truck, because I didn't want to sleep in my bed at home without washing the sheets and bedding first. I had to book a hotel a couple blocks from my house for a few nights so I could have a place with a flushing toilet and shower while the plumbers fixed everything. On top of losing my friend, and the water debacle, the whole first week at home was just a complete disaster. I just didn't have the mental energy for any of it, and didn't want to be there at all. Going home made me realize how much I don't miss being at home. I actually do think that I prefer it out here on the road lmao. Took a secondary vacation from Shreveport and rented a car to drive to Houston and stayed there for 3 days. Saw a concert, went to the beach in Galveston, visited NASA Johnson Space Center, got some In-N-Out and Whataburger, did some shopping, and then went back home. The best part of being home was not being at home.

Anyway, I came back from hometime and went up to St Louis to run the Home Depot account there. It was nice being able to work out of the Edwardsville OC because it meant I could have a shower every single night. After 3 weeks they transferred me over to Home Depot in Kansas City though, and I am currently in the parking lot of a Home Depot in Kansas City as we speak. I have been here for a little over a week. It's a little better here in KCMO than it was in St Louis in terms of locations I have to deliver to, but the tradeoff is that I now have to shower every other day again when I get fuel. I've come to realize how much I've learned over the past year through trial and error, and I'm at the point now where I know that I am pretty good at what I do. Or at least a lot better than I used to be. I have a few tricks up my sleeve now to get out of predicaments, but more importantly, I've learned how to prevent predicaments from happening in the first place. That's probably why they keep sending me to Home Depot accounts lol. It turns out that there is some stuff that just can't be taught and you have to learn it yourself.

That being said, I am getting a little bit burnt out on Home Depot. I'm always stressed to the max and running at full tilt on most days, and having only Sunday off just doesn't feel like enough. I'm constantly tired and sore, never quite feeling 100%. But I'm just hanging in here, I know Home Depot won't last forever. Many days, usually the rainy ones where I'm completely soaking wet and my shoes are bubbling; I've thought about calling my DTL and being like "yo, please get me off of the home depot account, i'll do literally anything else", but I take a couple deep breaths and then I tell myself it could be worse, that I could be running a Dollar General account , so I count my blessings instead and try to take it one day at a time and that seems to help.

But anyway, keep the rubber on the road and stay safe y'all, I know that's what I'm gonna do.

 

Before I left the house this time I shut the water off at the street and opened the lowest faucet of the house to hopefully drain out anything that was left, it had a few drips still when I left. I also left a couple others in the house open just in case, hoping that works because I don't plan on going home again any time soon.

Also: account change!

A couple weeks ago I transferred over to the Metrie account from Home Depot. Metrie is a curtainside flatbed account very similar to the VTI account that I ran when I first started driving, if you go back far enough in this thread you can get my experience with that. This account is still out of Kansas city but now I'm mostly delivering to Lowe's within about a 600 mile radius of KCMO. It has been an incredibly welcome change of pace and exactly what I needed.

My first load went to Wichita, Hutchinson, Salina, and Topeka Kansas. Since my account change happened late in the week they only had that one load for me for the week, then handed me off to assist Schwan's the rest of the week. I had to rescue a load that had been sitting in Salina for awhile. I dropped off my flatbed in KCMO and hauled butt to Salina Kansas before I ran out of my 14. Picked up my reefer trailer and ran up to Minnesota to deliver the load, then spent a night in Sioux Falls, SD before picking up a backhaul to bring back to Salina. Was interesting running a flatbed load and reefer load in the same week lol. But it was fun I enjoyed it. I also got to stop at KWIK TRIP!!!! I love Kwik Trip too much and I get excited any time I get to go by one.

This week I had one local load, delivering to Lowes in the Kansas City area before I was tasked with going to pick up a brand new trailer in Ohio. I bobtailed from KCMO to Perrysburg, OH to pick up a Conestoga that had never seen the road before. I literally had to put the SNI license plate it on it myself. Was my first time ever pulling a conestoga. It had a split axle and it took me a little bit to figure out how to slide them. I was running back to KCMO empty so I figured it didn't make sense to keep the axles apart. I found out that split axle trailers slide tandems way differently than regular tandems. You actually have to keep the red brake pushed in the whole time, then there is a valve on the trailer itself that you have to turn. It stops only the sliding axle but lets the front one roll freely, then you get back in and slide all while the red brake pushed in. Then you get back out, turn the valve, and then activate the locking pins, and you're good to go. It took me WAY too long to figure that out, but if you ever come across a split axle just know that you probably have to leave the red brake pushed in.



But anyway I got back with the Conestoga way ahead of schedule. I ran really hard on Tuesday so that I could get from the Edwardsville OC, over to Ohio, and the to the Indy OC all within my 11 hours of drive time. I finally got parked at the Indy OC with like 20 minutes left on my 11. Ran a good 650 miles on Tuesday. Not too hard to do when you're bobtail and empty lol. I took the conestoga into the Indy shop to let them "schneiderize" it and put the cab card on it and give it an AVI. Took about 30 minutes and then I was good to take my 10 hour break.

Now I'm back in KCMO on my reset enjoying my life and being grateful for the change of pace. Excited for wherever next week's travels will take me. This account goes to Colorado sometimes so I'm hoping to get some REAL mountain driving under my belt soon.

Yall stay safe!