Starting Schneider National Dedicated Flex Fleet

Yeah that's the whole reason I chose NDF over OTR, OTR out of Louisiana only gave me access to the eastern 37 and I want to go west as well, especially considering my gf lives in Oregon lol. NDF is lower 48, but I'm coming to find that I'm prolly gonna be on this Home Depot Home Delivery account in Minnesota for a hot minute. I have yet to go West and I've been with SNI for 6 months now. Someone was telling me about Syndicate Sales accounts and Master Halco accounts that happen out west that NDF drivers can end up on. So, that's what I'm hoping for as time goes on lol. I'm about sick of this Home Depot account. It's a lot of 12-14hr days back to back and I am absolutely worn out. Especially with as hot as it has been in Minneapolis the past couple weeks. Barely any time for myself anymore and I feel like I'm burning the candle at both ends. Missing the VTI account because I got to make those long 2-day drives where it was just open road and listening to podcasts, before going around and doing my deliveries. Now its just deliveries all day every day, 10 hour breaks are literally 10 hours, and 34 hour resets are literally 34 hours. Its a grind but I guess SNI is getting their money's worth out of me lol.

I thought I wanted a P4 when I first started too, but they assigned me a P3 and honestly I don't want a P4 anymore because I've become so comfortable and familiar with this truck. I hope I get to run in this truck til the wheels fall off lol. But I've seen them phasing out the P3s as well and am dreading the day I get the call that it's time to move to a new truck. I know a couple NDF drivers personally who just made the trek to an OC to get brand new 2022 P4s with less than 100 miles on them. I've seen some internationals around as well, but I'm fine with my freightshaker.

 

Been a hot minute. I've been on this Home Depot account for 3 months straight. Been grinding it out. I got really, really good at the Home Depot account and have routinely been getting off before 4pm even with 13-15 deliveries per day. Learned some tricks to make things go faster that helped out a lot. Using an electric drill to wind up my straps has been a life safer, saving me at least 10 minutes per delivery. It got to the point where I could actually enjoy the account and not be in a race against my 14hr clock. I also got to know some of the Home Depot staff that I would consider to be my friends now, which is cool. I learned a lot up here on this account and I'm ready to see how much of it I can apply to my future gigs.

However, all good things must come to an end, and yesterday I got the word that I'd be switching accounts.
Seems like the summer rush around here in Minnesota has died down quite a bit so they're pulling me out.

Today I said goodbye to my trailer and forklift for the last time, was a little bittersweet watching my trailer disappear in the mirrors as I drove away. Felt like I left a part of me behind on that drop lot.

Now I've got myself in position to start the Master Halco account out of Minnesota on Monday. Gonna be hauling fencing products on a flatbed to the Minnesota/Wisconsin/Dakotas region. I've never been to ND/SD so I'm excited to potentially get to check those states off my list.

I also got two raises since the last time I wrote. I got a SNI wide pay raise of $60/wk and a $100/wk raise for making it past the 6 month mark. Pretty sweet because I didn't know I was going to get a raise so soon.

Anyways, stay tuned, I'll check in again eventually. Hope everyone is doing well and staying safe!

 

There are a couple ways you could do it, it depends if you leave your straps on the winches between deliveries or if you roll them up completely and stow them when you're done.

If you leave your straps on the winches, then you can just use a big Allen key as a bit on an electric drill. Then you can put the Allen key in holes for the winch bar. Like you see on this video:

Or, If you roll up the straps and stow them, then you can use a regular hand crank strap winder, and replace the hand crank with a bolt that will fit the threads of the fork that the strap winds around. Then you can just use the correct socket on the drill to interface with the bolt on the strap winder.
You could also buy a bumble bee but this way cheaper.

 

So, last week I sat from Sunday til Wednesday waiting around to find out that Master Halco wouldn't have a load ready for me until August 9th... Ended up going back to Home Depot for a couple days to do some more running around, had to say goodbye to my moffett and trailer all over again. Doing my 34 now, trying again tomorrow at Master Halco lmao. Stay tuned.

Added some heatmaps of my travels in the Minnesota region over the past 3 months. Pretty wild. Feels like I've lived here most of my life. Lol.

 

A week of Master Halco is in the books. Master Halco seems to use mostly 48ft trailers, took me a second to get used to 48ft after using a 40ft for so long, but by the end of the first day it was no problem. Trailers are a bit different, but its nothing too crazy. The loads mostly have you making your deliveries and back to the yard well before 4pm, the days here are a bit shorter than at Home Depot. The easier days have allowed me to decompress a bit and relax. The HD account is a grind, and while I love the grind of the HD account too, I must say the decompression is nice.

Monday I took a one stop load about an hour and a half west of Twin Cities, came back and dropped my empty. Tuesday thru Thursday I actually had a trainee ride with me. There was a local guy that was driving for Master Halco under a temporary contract with a different company, but apparently the company got absorbed by Schneider and now this new guy had to be transferred into SNI and taught The Schneider Way, so they told him to ride along with me. He knew how to do the paperwork and knew most of the clients of Master Halco already; so he taught me some of the tips, tricks, and locations of the account while I taught him how to use the tablet, and told him how Schneider might do things compared to his previous company. I kinda felt like a TE for a minute haha. Made me realize I could actually be a TE if I really wanted to, but I don't want people living in my truck with me. It's crowded enough in here with all of my own stuff as it is LOL. Maybe if I could pick them up at the beginning of the day and drop them off at the end of the day, it wouldn't be so bad.

On Friday I took a 2 stop load solo, and the guy I was training had his own daycab arrive at the MH yard from the Gary OC. They also flew in an actual instructor from the West Memphis OC to give the new guy a proper Schneider orientation. Didn't know SNI had mobile specialist instructors, but I talked to the instructor and apparently there are a handful of them. And apparently he knows my DTL lmao. Was pretty cool to poke my nose in on that process and I got some nostalgia for my days of orientation, even though they weren't THAT long ago haha.

They had a one stop load scheduled for me on Monday, but I got a message on Friday saying they took that load off of me, so I now have Monday off. I think they probably gave the new guy my load so that the instructor could ride along with him and drill in the SNI protocol further, while also getting some work done. At least that makes sense to me, anyway.

Found out this account only runs 5 days a week, M-F, which is a very welcome change after running 6 days a week. Since I had a 3 day weekend I decided to schedule my 2nd vaccine dose on Friday, just in case I needed the days to recover, as I've heard the 2nd dose hits the hardest. Got a call Friday right after I got my vaccine, the DBL from the Home Depot account asked me if I could do a bonus Home Depot run on Saturday and also get a tablet upgrade. I considered doing the run but I didn't quite know how the 2nd dose was going to affect me, so I told him I would sit for a bit and wait to see how it affected me. Only took me about 45 minutes before I started feeling unwell. Called him back and told him I wasn't comfortable doing the bonus HD load and needed to get parked ASAP.

Kinda bummed because I like those HD account guys and didn't want to let them down, If I had more advanced notice I probably could've shuffled around the vaccine appointment. Seemed to have been a good call though, because the rest of the night after the vaccine I had a bit of a fever and felt like I was down in a well or something, definitely didn't feel myself. They were wanting me to go, that day, to get pre-hooked to my HD trailer and pick a moffett and all of that stuff, but it wasn't in the realm of possibility for me in that state. I woke up the next morning still feeling a little weird and feverish, so I took an ibuprofen and chugged a Mtn Dew. By noon I was back to feeling about 80%. While I didn't run a HD load on Saturday, I did work up the energy to go meet with another driver to install my upgraded tablet and mount, so I now have a new tablet. The new tablet is waaaaaay faster that the old one. It no longer takes me 2 minutes to change my duty status. Thank God. Interested to see how well it does with workflow next week.

And now today (Sunday), I'm feeling back at 100%. But holy crap, I realized how bored I am with nothing to do today or tomorrow. Going to try to find something to do today, have a little bit of extra time on my 70 that I could technically use to do some shopping today, as long as I get back with enough time to complete a 34 for Tuesday.

Anyway, I'm having a blast as per usual, changing accounts is fun because it injects some novelty back into my life and keeps things fresh. I welcome that with open arms.

Til next time. Drive safe.