Advice about picking a LTL company

Cooper and swift love mandatory overtime things about to change over there at MME.

Cooper likes making people do multi-roles too.

 

R&L does not provide those. You will pay for that electric jack out of your own pocket to the tune of about $3,000. They will take the money over time out of your weekly checks.

 

This varies greatly by terminal and by region, but I can give you info on Old Dominion from the Pacific Northwest. Driver‘s average 90 K to 115K a year. Line.
Hourly pick up and delivery starts around 25 an hour, overtime after 50. Drivers usually don’t see overtime unless it’s really busy. Cents per mile cap out at .73 hauling doubles, and .76 triple. Starts 60 something nowadays i think. Hourly pay caps at i think 32? Basically you get a raise every six months and your pay caps out at your two-year anniversary date. Annual cost of living raises. Usually a .01-.03 cmp or I’ve seen dollar plus raises hourly. Pay is great to begin with so nobody usually cries if they don’t get an annual. Not based on performance, based on area.
Wasn’t sure if you’re just getting into LTL or leaving another LTL. The hourly pay is just that, say maybe 28 an hour. One week you might work 30 hours, they gave you Wednesday off because it was slow. Some days are 12 hours, some are six hours. Definitely a lot more work, in and out of the truck a lot. A lot of heavy lifting, a lot of driving in city traffic. Decent pay, another benefit is that you’d be working Monday through Friday, and in the daytime like a normal person. Majority of linehaul is night driving, and Old Dominion operates 24 seven. Again all that varies by your terminal and your location on the map, but typical linehaul schedule could be like Tuesday through Saturday start time at 0:45. Sunday through Thursday, 2200. Bid runs.
The driver with the highest seniority gets to choose off of the available bids first. And then the next guy, and then the next guy all the way down the list. Usually a handful of wild turn drivers at the bottom. Or extra drivers. Whatever you call them.
They run all the extra trailers that couldn’t be moved by all of the set bids. Usually on call, you might cover someone’s vacation for a week. But it might be a crappy schedule, and being at the bottom of the board is no fun regardless. Some drivers wait months and even years to get a bid run. Some get one immediately the first day. And depending on where you are in the country, wild boar drivers might have an actual schedule. Say Sunday through Thursday. But it will very likely be unfavorable days off, and unfavorable start times. Some terminals designate you only nights, and some only days. But wild board in a lot of locations is the hardest part to stomach about any of this foremost drivers. But if you can make it through, the pay is awesome and if you’re able to move up in seniority bye other people quitting or retiring or best case scenario new bids opening up it makes it worth it.
I came from a different LTL and was tired of driving nights. Linehaul was the only position open so I took it thinking I would get my foot in the door and then transfer at some point to P&Dif it opened. Turns out I love driving night after all. I just didn’t love driving nights for the previous company.
Basic linehaul pay breakdown:
City a to city b is 550 miles round trip.
@.76 = 418

drop and hook is 2 dollars. Triple counts as 7. Basically anytime your fifth wheel hooks or unhooked from a trailer is a hook or drop.
So this trip you built a set of triples, drove it to another terminal and broke those triples apart to put the trailers away. You built another set of triples after that and brought them back to your home terminal where you broke that set and put everything away. Sounds like a lot but it’s pretty quick.
Drop and hook‘s counts as 28
@2.10 =58.80

every time you fuel is 3.60

congratulations! You made 480.40 for a pretty typical day of Linehaul.

all of these LTL companies are pretty comparable in pay. Some of them have rules that others don’t, some of them are picky about this or that. Some of them have faster trucks.

honestly if you can get into LTL in general, I think it’s a great move. There’s a lot of things I’d rather not have to do or put up with. But in any case, when I do the math, there are quite a few things I’m willing to put up with for a paycheck like that. Home every day, weekends off, daytime linehaul shift bids are in my very near immediate future.

Anyways, p.m. me for more details if you need it and thanks for reading my novel!

 

I’m 100% fine with that.
70 bucks a month to save my back? Sounds cheaper than health insurance.

 

Word of advice.

Eliminate any company from consideration that feels the need to put a driver facing camera in the cab that watches the driver either constantly or with so-called camera activated incidents.

Fascist nazi scumbag companies like Saia, XPO and FedEx Ground and any others that use driver facing camera’s don’t deserve the drivers they have because they weaponize their camera’s against the drivers and are looking for a way to get rid of their drivers the minute they walk in the door.

You don’t need that stress. You don’t need their crap ### jobs. You don’t need to be micromanaged, oppressed and treated worse than a criminal by these fascist scumbag companies and their micromanagement company policies.

 

I’ll take a driver facing camera over a 14 hour shift that involves 3 hours of driving and 11 hours of dock work.

 

To be honest driver facing camera isn’t that bad if you know how to drive and just do your job. I’ve had a driver facing cam staring at me for five years I’ve maybe had 10 reportable events and I’d argue half of em are bullcrap.

It’s a good tool to fix bad behavior. Guys just get butt hurt when they roll a stop sign and get called out on it; it’s 100% illegal.

That being said, they’re gonna 100% leave you to dry with the prosecutors if you doing anything dumb.

 

you’re just one that doesn’t get it. Why even hire a driver to begin with if you don’t trust them to drive your equipment without a camera?

I’m fine with road facing camera. I do my job without being needed to be babysat.

Where does it stop? Saia is already implementing Samsara cameras that report you if you take your eyes off the road for more than 3 seconds, if you reach down and take a drink, or eat a candy bar. DOT/FMSCA state drivers need to remain hydrated. Why should anyone have to pull over and stop just to take a drink of soda, coffee, juice or water? Again, where does the bs stop?

 

You gotta remember the trucking industry is trash. If my employee could make me sleep in a daycab they would.

I’d deal with saias bullcrap because they pay overtime. Which they’re not required by federal law. The trucking industry seldomly does anything to benefit the driver.

I mean look lunchbreaks aren’t even legally required for local guys. You can work 16 hours without A lunch break and it’s 100% legal… and DOT doesn’t bat an eye

 

Estes wasn't mentioned much but they are super super laid back. Of course, estes is one company where each terminal is different but I never really felt rushed or even got talked to when I did P&D. The money wasn't there for me personally running city so I switched to extraboard. Literally 0 micromanagement, just do your job and dont mess around taking 14 hour breaks everyday and youll get miles. first full week I was out I had a $2k check. My terminal was highly unorganized though, and still did decent even as a newer driver. Extraboard seems to kind of eliminate terminal drama though especially with self dispatch