Roadrunner

I was just wondering if anybody, maybe anybody in particular who currently does or has ever driven for Roadrunner, might be able to share some information or experiences about Roadrunner. I was actually a bit surprised to find that RR doesn't have their own board on here, given how many of their trucks I see on the road...not as many as the big mega-companies (Swift, Schneider, Werner, etc), of course, but I've been seeing more and more RR trucks, every week, as of late.
I've been searching long and hard, for a long time now, for the right company to lease with, since getting enough experience under my belt as a long-time company driver, and coming to the conclusion that what I would like to do with my career is lease...and eventually own my own truck. It's still a very actively ongoing search, and needless to say Roadrunner is the latest company to peak my interest.
I have searched on here in the already existing posts, to see what information I might be able to come across, but the few posts I have found seem to be pretty old and dated, and so I'm not sure how reliable they might still be. That and they don't cover everything I'm wanting to find out about.
So my inquiry to this company started out when I called up their recruitment # listed in one of those truck stop publications. I called to ask what their program is all about, find out what kind of leases, trucks, runs, etc they have to offer; and to be frank, I was probably left with more ?'s than answers by the time I got off the phone. The recruiter I spoke to did sort of seem to come off with a sort of used car salesman kind of pitch, but I'm way too used to that when it comes to dealing with recruiters. On the other hand, he seemed to possibly be honest with me, even divulging me with information, that I didn't even ask for - that their typical "owner operator"'s average weekly expenses come out to about $1k/week, on average...since I'd have to lease my own trailer as well as my own truck, along with fuel, insurance, maintenance, etc.
However, where he started to lose me a little bit was when I was asking him about their pay rates. He said they pay anywhere from $1.10/mile - $1.80/mile, depending on...I forget how he termed it, but basically depending on from which terminals you're running to and from. Having only experience as a company driver on a sliding pay scale, usually the shorter the run, the higher the pay rate, I asked him if that was the case. But what he told me totally lost me and I couldn't make much sense of...he said something like a run from their LA terminal in Commerce, CA to Atlanta would be about $1.10 a mile, a run from LA to the Bay Area terminal would also be about $1.10 a mile...there's one short run and one long run, both with about the same pay rate. However, something in the middle - distance wise, like a fun from their LA terminal to the Chicago area terminal, would be near the top of their pay chart at about $1.80/mile. HUH??
The other thing he lost me on was that I'm not positive about this, but I think he mentioned that all their loads are LTL (less than truckload), now I have a little bit of experience, but by no means do I claim to be a trucking industry expert. What I think I know and have learned is that generally speaking, the loads I've always ran with companies like Knight Transportation (dry van) are truck-load loads...meaning whatever I haul is 99% of the time, however much they can stuff in the trailer, front to back, whether it's light stuff that only comes out to 5,000 lbs or a nice heavy 45,000 lbs load. To my understanding, less than truckload is a more specialized/expedited form of transport that may very well consist of a trailer with one single item in it. If I'm wrong about these rough definitions of truckload and less than truckload, by all means, please do correct me.
But anyway, like I was saying, I'm not sure, but I think he mentioned that all their loads are LTL. The other thing that threw me off is every example of their pay rates he mentioned, he kept mentioning examples of one terminal to another. Now if I'm leasing my own trailer, I would be lead to believe, by the little experience as a company driver I have, that what that would mean is every load I pick up and deliver would have to be 100% live loads and live unloads. So when he kept mentioning this terminal to terminal business, the question that crept up in the back of my head was why would I only be driving to terminals...at what point, when would I get unloaded to empty my trailer for my next load? Would they always off-load me at the terminal, put my load onto another trailer, then hand it off to a local guy? Or what? I know maybe it sounds like a stupid question, and of course, this is something that I should've asked him...but to be honest with you, I had already had a very long 10 minute conversation with him, as it is, and I figured, I'd rather look into the company a little more (such as ala thetruckersreport.com), and maybe save some questions for him for another day.
I know I mentioned earlier on, how he came off a little bit like a used car salesman, although I did appreciate what I perceived to be him being honest with me, about the expenses I could expect to incur. But the other thing about him that rubbed me the wrong way was the supremely typical recruiter attitude of "let's try to get me in for orientation tomorrow". Not his exact words, but as seems to so typically be the case with every recruiter, he just wanted to get my application filed, so he could being me in for orientation, asap...so he could collect his recruitment bonus off of me, and be done with me. So typical, and such a turn off! Even after I mentioned that I don't currently have much $ put away to use as a down payment for my truck, and it would probably take me at least a month to save up the $1,500 he mentioned as an average down payment (not exact figures...one month to save $1,500, just something I kind of threw out there at random to try to back him off a little bit), even after I mentioned that, he still wanted to "just get me in for orientation as soon as possible, so they can get the ball rolling with me, until I have enough put away for a down payment". I know, just a little bit of a red flag there, right? Lol.
But anyway, enough out of me now. Like I started with, any information or experiences you'd care to share with me would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thank you for the post. I was looking for more information on these guys too because I like the idea of terminal to terminal. I'm getting so sick of going to customers all the time, especially hard to find ones, and complicated ones where they give you the address to their front door but the docks are down the street, then when you get there, you end up going into the wrong shipping and receiving door, the one you need is at the other end of the complex and 'you can't park here' attitude blah!

Was there any mention of a fuel surcharge in the conversation? Where do they do orientations, at all the terminals or just the main one?

 

Yeah I would say all that stuff you're talking about is kind of a pain in the ###, but don't know if I would say I'm "sick of it", I've always just kind of taken it as stuff that goes along with the territory in our field.
He did mention a fuel surcharge, but to be honest with you, at this point, I'm not sure I remember what he said it's currently at...I wanna say I think he said .40/mile, which would be about average for all the companies I've spoken to so far.
I don't know if they do orientations at ALL of the terminals, but the company is based out of Wisconsin, and he was talking about having me come in to Commerce (LA/So Cal) for orientation.

 

So J.D., did you go with Road Runner? I just talked to a recruiter a got the same used car salesman thing.

 

No, at least not yet. I'm still trying to dig up the goods on them, but as you can see on this board, so far I haven't exactly managed to find much help. I've been meaning to try to do a little more of an extensive search on them, like maybe on some other boards, but I'm not really sure which other sites to check on. The other thing is, with my current driving job, I keep busy enough that I hardly have as much time as I'd like to be able to get all the research done I need to do. Usually most days, between my 10 hours of driving I do on average, and up to about 2-3 hours a day keeping busy with other various parts of the job, 1 hour for all my meal-time combined, 6.5-8 hours of sleep, and 30 min showers every morning...doesn't leave me with all that much time for playing around on the net on my laptop.
Usually, the best time I have to get in that kind of research is when I'm on my home time, like I am right now. Lol.
What about you? Are you thinking of signing on with them? Or have you had any better luck finding useful info about them?

 

thanks for the info jd i am going call them tom to see whar they are about

 

the used car thing that most recruiters anyway.long as they make you money thats enough for me all the rest is bullsh**

 

best thing to do is talk to one of their drivers

 

They are an LTL carrier meaning their local P&D trucks would pu freight from multiple customers and bring it back to the terminal for consolidation. These LTL shipments would be loaded into 1 trl making it a full load. The same thing happens when you get to the destination terminal. They offload your trl and load the freight onto local P&D trucks for delivery to the end customer. I'm not quite sure how this would work efficiently if you decide to pull your own trl. These types of operations are usually drop & hook.

 

I talked to a recruiter today(kevin) he is a former driver he sent me a sheet of what pay you get from which terminal, and it seems to me that all of the loads out of the ne usa pay 1.50 - 1.80 per load not counting the fsc which is this week at .43