hauling mail vs doing ltl

All 6 years doing mail and less then a year ago. Dont get me wrong they will run your wheels off and you WILL make money and good money at that. Insurance is the best i ever had too. But doing teams that job WILL wear on you. All the tattletails are annoying as hell too and dont help.

Just dont expect to have time or energy to spend any of that money. They also have banned inverters, fridges and microwaves so expect lots of truckstop food and weight gain because you cant carry enough healthy food and teams its 12 on 12 off with the truck never standing still.

 

Where are you getting 70 from? Even if you worked 6 days a week, 10hrs a day, that's only 60 hours.
10hrs/day x $38/hr = $380 daily
$380/day x 6 days = $2,280 weekly
$2,280/wk x 4 weeks = $9,120 monthly
$9,120/mo x 12 months = $109,440 yearly

And I don't know where the hell they're getting $140k from unless they offer pay increases for senior drivers. I'd ask them to explain that in further detail. There is no way anyone is making $140k hauling mail.

 

We were a team so 81 hours was our flat rate for our normal route at $35 an hour. Only took 1 or 2 weeks off a year as well on average. as that was all that was paid and only 40 hours of it at that...

 

I don't understand. Were you working for a company that had a contract with the Postal service or are you O/O and have your own contract? Because team driving definitely does not sound like a company thing, especially if you're negotiating your own rates. OP is talking about company contracts I believe

 

Sorry for the late reply. I was doing stuff and havent checked here in a few days. Anyway no we were employees of matheson who are direct contractors. The way matheson works is they post loads either team or solo and your allowed to choose them based on senority and if your a team or not. An established team with 2 years will get priority on a team load over a solo with 3 years for example.

These loads are caculated to pay X hours. I.E load 257 SLC, ut to limon, Co is paid 50 hours means each driver is paid 50 hours at their pay scale I.E $35 an hour for that load regardless if it takes 50 or 70 hours in reality. So you take your pay scale and times it by the number of hours the load is posted at to get your pay. The reason they do this instead of salary is matheson posts bids to the USPS on each route and some years the routes pay less and they cut your hours for the load. Others they pay more and they can offer better hours to try and attract a better more senior driver to that load.

The load i was on was always 81 hours paid because no one else wanted to outbid mathesons lowball and at $35 an hour i made about $140k a year plus of minus a couple grand if i took additional time off over my paid vacation or not. Typically i didn't save for medical stuff.

 

I hated hauling mail. I did a few loads as an owner operator they weren't too bad because it was just one pickup and one delivery.

But the loads that I did as a lease operator for the companies that had the contract, that was terrible. Those times were so tight you barely had time to get a cup of coffee and you better run to get it. And if you ended up somehow getting where you were going early they would actually make you wait at one of the stops until it was exactly the clock ticked on to that time.

The worst was they had a load from Swedesboro New Jersey to Cincinnati Ohio. It was a long time ago so forgive me if my times are not exactly correct.

But from what I remember, it took 12 hours to drive that straight. That load driving those 12 hours, you only had maybe one half of an hour leeway. It may have only been 20 or 25 minutes.

F that.