The day to day ramblings of the LTL business.

Yeah a 7 day week once in a while is one thing I did one July 4th weekend, but I tell what one of those goes a long way sometimes it almost seems like 2 day weekends are not enough.

Lets face it human beings need down time. Heck God rested on the 7th day and he's God so if God rested imagine how much rest us mortals need.

 

If you join a credit union and sign up with a decent deposit, they'll likely offer you a credit card. If you use that CC a lot and pay it off every month --which is easy because they can do that for you automatically from your savings or money market-- you'll build credit.

They also have mortgages and are more likely to help you get started than a bank. Their loan officer will see that you've been paying on time and see the deposits from working regularly like you do, you're likely to get a mortgage earlier there than a bank.

Seriously, leave banks behind you, once you get used to not having fees for anything you'll never look back. My last one, with little prompting, gave me a 20k credit card and 7% interest. If you only use 2-3k a month and pay it right off, your credit score looks really good because you're not using the full amount you could, and you're paying it off regularly. A bank would rather gouge you on fees now and hold you back so they can profit off you, they aren't a good partner.

Paying cash makes no sense if you want to build credit because no one sees what you do. Paying off a card regularly makes you a solid citizen.

 

If you can't answer this question I understand, but all those acronyms are those marked on the side of the contract hauler trailers, because all the contract haulers well not all but a lot of them like Golden Eagle and B&B and Area they all have like DET911867543 on the trailers on the side and I figure that means something. I've never seen it in real life, but I have seen pictures of it and you see like DET-CHI which means Detroit to Chicago on like the back of a trailer.

It seems though like the smaller haulers like Kuchenreither or Sodrel don't have the strange numbers on the side same with like Midwest Distribution Systems.

 

Yes you are right in everything you say. I have to start building some credit so I'm going to start buy gas for my car and paying my cell phone bill with a credit card. I probably may do some calling around though and see what credit unions will take me.

 

Go visit them to see which one feels good. A week of vacation would've been the perfect time. :^)

Some CU's suck, you can tell if they have lots of fees and interest rates are lower, they are often set up to profit like a bank and will be just as dickish about every little thing as a bank, will be no better for you than Bank of America. If they act like a bank, walk out. You want professional, but not stuffy look down the nose at you.

Often the good ones are for employee groups, like if there's a factory or large HQ. The one I now use most was formerly for PacBell employees and has a strong service ethic, I can get a lot done with a phone call.

If you choose one that belongs to the Co-op network you'll have about 30,000 free ATM's in the US available, and thousands of branches of other credit unions across the country that will treat you like you are a member.

Tel them what you want to do, buy a house, see what kind of help they offer. You might find you can do it right now.

 

I was planing on taking a trip to a credit union tomorrow as a matter of fact.

 

Dunno if you have Kemba up there, but they're a good one, originally started for Kroger employees back in the day. I agree with everything that has been mentioned - credit unions are the way to go.

 

I agree with credit unions as well. They've been the best for me. Make sure you get one that is part of the shared branching/co-op network. Basically you can go to any credit union. No matter the name on the sign, as long as it's in the network and do your banking just like it's your own credit union.

 

The only thing I can't disclose publicly is how our operation actually works. That would be considered giving out insider trade secrets. From what I was told from management, it's the reason why if you worked for Fed Ex or UPS, you couldn't work for USPS, but apparently they changed that policy some time ago because we have a lot of former Fed Ex and UPS drivers on our roster, including me. But to answer your question without going into full detail, it depends on if the contract carrier uses their own trailers to pick up and deliver mail, or uses ours. Usually if they use their own trailers, they'll have their own name on it and have numbers and US Mail written on the back of the trailers. Sometimes they'll even have HCR and destinations written on it as well. If they pull one of our trailers, you won't find any of they're names on it, just the numbers.

 

Have not seen them there is on close to me though that has a 5 star rating on the Internet and shares ATMs with Dollar Bank so that's probably a good start.