T-Force/What's It Like Starting Out Here?

Ill second this as ive been with parcel for a couple years now and been on a scheduled run for around 3 months. Didnt take long to climb the board with all the sleeper runs being added. People below me are teaming and having consistent work.

Also found out people in progression got a nice pay bump due to not being able to attract/retain drivers.

 

Niteliner runs are 99% NOT NG runs BUT, there is usually dockwork involved. So, in otherwords, you'll take your outbound trailers to a hub terminal, unload them (or other inbound from another terminal), load yours going back to your terminal and/or some other terminal's, hook your set and rush on home. So, keep that in mynd IF you were set on just driving. HOWEVER, there MAY be (again, it's terminal dependent) set runs that don't involved dockwork. Or you can run extra board---800 and 900 series runs, but the chances of those extra board runs being NG is increased, but i also confirmed that just because a run is NG does not mean it will be sporadic; You can look at my checks when i ran extra-board road. It depends, is a generalized way to put it......

i have no idea about the 401K, pension or future and i don't give a plop about any of that right now.

Also, i've noticed that we are getting new KW T-680's for road. Personally, i think 'Liners are the best we have but whatever......

 

You can leaf thru my paychecks here:
UPS Freight Diary:

Now, keep in mynd that:

1) i did not start to run road until 2018, so you may want to leaf up there and start monitoring the paychecks from that point on. Before, i ran city, and have returned to city for the sleep reasons i mentioned.

2) When i DID start to run road i was still not at top scale (normally takes 4 years to reach top scale), so keep that in mynd. Now, because we are desperate AF to find drivers right now, you may very well start off at $28/hr .72cpm instead of normally starting at $17.40/hr .50cpm. Once again, the famous ring words-----terminal dependent. Even when i was not making top scale, i felt i was still making king money.

3) i would pass a lot to less senior drivers; i look at it as, the pay was so good i could afford to take a day off in the middle of the week because i felt it was better to be well rested vs. beat to death. In fact, if i had my way i would only want a 4 day work weeks. Either wednseday off or either monday or friday off. So, that's another factor in the pay. My pay was likely lower than average for a t-force road driver, but still very good.

 

Now, here's another factor i like to bring up when you're looking for an LTL or i dare say, Food delivery job:

LOOK AT THE EMPLOYEE PARKING LOT:
With companies like T-force, FedEx freight, R+L etc. you tend to see mostly newer crewcab trucks,suburbans, bwm's, mercedes, newer impalas, accords, maximas etc. You don't see no 93 tauruses, no 2007 minivans etc. THAT, right there, should say a lot.

And, don't just look at the cars. Look at the parking lot itself: Lots of potholes, uneveness, ghetto looking? Some parking lots aren't even paved, just gravel. Or modern, lines neatly painted, gates not falling apart?

Go to a place like Central Transport and the story starts to change............

 

That has a lot to do with location. I live in a somewhat rural area, and if you were to drive by my barn, you’d see a parking lot full of mostly older vehicles and a gravel yard. You wouldn’t know that almost every driver is making over $100k and the gravel yard is graded a couple times a year.

A fancy yard and expensive cars could just mean that the company spends a lot of money on itself, and the employees are up to their eyeballs in debt.

 

was it because ups ltl was failing just prior to the buy out?

 

i disagree with that logic. some folks choose to not spend their money on cars regardless of how much money they have. cars can be one way to stay broke. having a worse car doesn't say much about the person, it's an irrevelant factor.

where i live in so cal there is alot of crimes on cars. cars burnt down, stolen, vandalized. where i live it's wise to drive a car under 5k dollars at any given time. the only need for new car is if plan to drive across the country or something, but if we are settled down with our job here there isn't much need for that. just my opinion.

 

The Estes terminal I work out of is dust in dry weather and mud in wet weather and many of us myself included drive vehicles from the 90’s era with 300k miles, got several making 100 G’s.

 

Ok, i'm not saying that if the parking lot has mostly newer cars then it's automatically a dynamite place to work and everyone there is in good financial shape. And i'm also not saying that the opposite is automatically true.

What i'm saying is that IN GENERAL the above tends to be true.

You never see consistently newer cars and well maintained lots (gravel in itself is ok, if not ghetto-y) at ghetto/no-name companies such as central transport for example.

 

A lot of disagreement in here, but I agree with him. Car purchases and maintenance are a piece of the puzzle as to how the employees are living.