Making the move to LTL? Estes?

If you need to work a consistent 50 hours and your not willing to run linehaul at night, then I will tell you ltl is not for you right now. It's slow across the board and most city drivers aren't seeing 50 hours a week. Your chance as a new driver will be slim. If you have any Estes questions, I can answer them.

 

@KaoMinerva @jtaran06

 

Why you tag that lazy bum ####### lol. He was making $1700 a week and still mad. He don't wanna work.

I'm not city, but I'm line haul. City guys kinda been getting shafted a while. If you plan on going line haul, you're gonna run nights.

 

Sorry. I was sleeping. I run Indy now and sleep 4 hours a night unfortunately.

Here’s my take on ltl for the guy. It sucks until you get seniority. You get the crap runs or crap p&d route until you get time in. If it’s slow you’re the first guy to stay home or get laid off. If you’re willing to ride that out then you will be fine. But coming into slow season for ltl they will all be begging to work and I’ll be begging for a day off!
Eau Claire is kinda out there. It I remember that’s not a big barn, hopefully they have enough work for to keep p&d guy busy

 

Small terminals are a death sentence

 

Looks like you got Yellow (YRC) and ABF barns in Eau Claire too. Might be others. I am new to LTL myself, got hired last month in Minneapolis. Over here the demand is still very strong for drivers. My advice, get your endorsements and then apply to all the LTL carriers out there. Ask for top pay and two weeks PTO up front (this was advice my boss at my old job gave me). Dress good and apply in person. While you're there, see how many doors they have. Generally you'll stay busier at the barns with the most doors, and move up the totem pole faster. Most everyone should be at top scale of pay. Seniority gets you the better runs. Here in Minneapolis ABF was offering $15k signing bonuses for daytime P&D guys as of last month. Maybe Eau Claire is similar?

 

Great advice. I know Dayton has been known to be amazing. I've never heard bad about them. Are they there?

 

Not always the case. My old barn had 5 drivers and we all got our 65+ hours in. Maybe cause we were doing the work of 7 people cause nobody else was stupid enough to sign on to the circus I was in.

 

Yellow is kinda sketchy now with their ongoing merger. The entire company might implode or somehow succeed. However, one thing is for certain, they are merging dozens of barns and unfortunately the junior guys are the first to go when this happens.

As for asking for top pay and PTO, that might work at some places but not at most. If you work Yellow or ABF, your pay scale is in a contract, so you have to work your way to the top. Even non union barns have restrictions what perks a TM can give you. If anything, we used to give out bonuses and force the new guy to stay bottom pay for two years, instead of one.

As for endorsements, I totally agree. If you don't have them, bite the bullet and go back to the DMV and pay the $15 to reprint your CDL after you take all the tests. The big one is Hazmat which needs additional fingerprinting. Some companies will let you work for 30 days before requiring you to get the endorsement. But then again now is a good time to be more marketable than the next guy that wants the same job you are applying to.