Looking for info on Roadrunner Transportation

I was there for 6 months. They are decent people but I never felt a part of anything, just a number. I found it difficult to develop any type of relationship with dispatchers which is what I think it takes to get decent runs. Atlanta is the worst and also the closest terminal to my home in FL. Regularly deadheading from Miami to Atlanta or Charlotte was frustrating. Loads to Miami, Rock Tavern NY and other dead zones are most of what you will get. Maybe it changes after years of being there and there are contractors who've been there 20 - 30 years but most of them were complaining about rate cuts. As a single my experience was they strongly favor teams - singles beware. No good lanes open for singles, you will wait at the bottom of the list. Waiting is normal once you're dispatched. They take 12 to 36 hours to load you. Then your run is scheduled with no leeway in time to get to delivery point. Short runs (less than 700 -800 miles) are 90% of what they offer singles and they only load 3 or 4 days a week after they gather up LTL's depending on the volume. Back hauls are tough to book due to their crazy tough credit restrictions for brokers. They charge you 10 bucks a call after 3 or 4 calls a month to ask for credit approval of brokers. I ultimately only looked at CH Robinson loads and you know how those are. Forget about the brokerage department for loads. They mostly look on load boards and then cut the rate they offer to you. The same loads you were declined to haul are offered to you by the brokerage dept as approved, at a discounted rate. They are there to make $$$ for the company, not to help you. The last month or 6 weeks I gave up on the company freight and did only outside loads but that didn't work either because the % they take goes up every load. I'm no dummy and I averaged 1.13/mile gross for my time there. Of course they had questionable charges to deduct when it came time for my escrows to be returned. I figured I'da done better with Swift or Schneider or whoever at 90 - 92 cents a mile plus surcharge and discounts on fuel, etc.

 

You can do 1.30 a mile almost anywhere including the surcharge. Roadrunner rarely offers guaranteed round trips to anyone who's been there less than several years but you could be the exception. I'm always reading teams are in demand. My suggestion is to talk to Forward Air if you want to do this type of tight schedule trucking. Every time I see a lease operator with RRTS on their door I feel sorry for them because they are working for peanuts. Good luck.

BTW - They called me a few months ago demanding that I provide the BOL on a broker load I hauled for CH Robinson that they were refusing to pay due to an illegible BOL. If I didn't provide the paperwork they were going to deduct the load revenue I'd been paid from my settlements. Apparently the settlement dept had no idea I had left the company 6 months prior. When I informed them that they had no leverage since I was long gone they then tried to be nice about it. Says a lot about their attitude toward contractors. One more thing - Christy Dunn is so nasty and negative that you will think it's an act, but it's not. She is in charge of settlements.

 

It's interesting that companies almost never get better over time, they almost always get worse! I nearly starved when I was there a few years ago. I think that maybe if you stay there for 4 or 5 years starving you might eventually get on the inside track with someone and start to make it. But when I was there they seem to have a scientific formula that sets the lane rates so that you will earn as little as possible and they will earn as much as possible.