Schneider Bulk out of Reserve, LA

Didn’t take long. It’s just truck driving. Sure the product moves, but if you are smooth and steady(like you should be anyhow) it’s just freight. Pumping off, airing off and all the safety bs at different plants is the real learning and that doesn’t take more than a handful of times to get comfortable with.

 

Schneider does start out low, no doubt about it. If you stick around for the first year though, it does go up. Factoring in the hourly pay for on-duty time, I'm currently averaging about .53cpm a year into it. I'm not bulk, but dedicated reefer and dry-van.

 

I haven't personally run into that issue, but it's something that would affect OTR drivers more than me. I reset at home every week and am never in danger of running out of hours on my 70. As far as being on-duty during load/unload, if I'm in the sleeper, I'll stay off-duty. A couple of our locations require us to sit at the dock while unloading, and I'll be on-duty for those. They are, however, using the hourly pay as a replacement for other accessory pay like detention or breakdown. So, it really is up to the driver to balance on-duty time with conserving your 70 to be able to drive more. For example, I was in a hotel for a couple days last week while my truck was down at the Freightliner dealer. My DBL told me I could go on-duty for 14 hours each day to collect "breakdown" pay. @gentleroger could probably give you a better perspective on the hourly pay from the OTR side of things.

 

I log it conservatively until I have enough time on my 70 to get to the house, then go back and edit all the off duty to on-duty. When I get to the house I stay on duty until my 14 expires. It's the only way to make up for the line haul and accessory pay they took.

If I don't have hours (11, 14, or 70) to get out of the customer and to safe/legal I don't go in. Full stop. But I communicate that to Ops as soon as I know (usually at least 24 hours before delivery).

 

Van, regional, te

As of right now I have 28 hours on my 70. I am due in end of day Friday and I'm in a position where that is guaranteed. Im likely to be done at the end of tomorrow. That means that once I start tomorrow, I stay on duty until I'm done. I also have 6 hours of off duty time in the middle of Sunday to Wednesday that I can edit on on duty, plus another 7 hours I can add onto the end of the day. No matter what, my 70 will be chased before I start my 34 - it's the only way I match what I would have earned under the old pay structure.

 

That would be something that would be original to your account and situation. You'll learn the customer, habits, traffic, etc. No one can really tell you that. You will know as your week progresses and you do your trip planning. I worked refer for them on a dedicated account and we had to unload our own trailers. There were some locations that you knew you did not want to get caught at nearing the end of your 14 as that would leave a sketchy situation to leave. I would let my DBL/Account mgr. know that X location would not be doable with my clock as it would leave me there to park during X time of day and my 10 hour would come past during the worst traffic time to leave. They would contact the customer and either get a different schedule time or get them to reassign to a driver that had more clock time that made it more amenable. If you get caught out with them its really on you more than them. You didn't do a tripplan and give yourself the cushion you would need. Some DBL's will pressure you to zero sum scheduling at which point you stand your ground. If that DBL argues with you, hang up, call back and talk to a different DBL ( they run in groups of 3) if no good resolution comes up. Start running it up the ladder. BUT, make sure you are in the correct that it can't be reasonably done. NOT because you didn't feel like it.