How's Everyone Doing in LTL Right Now?

Lot of different ways this could go. It could be one bill with 10+ pallets going to one customer, or it could be one bill with maybe 1-6 pallets/handling units going to one customer.

But I've also seen it where you have 41 bills containing 41 handling units going to a single customer. So if you have 300 bills for one day, and 15% of those are going to a single customer, it means the bottom of the seniority board may not have anything to deliver for that day. If that happens, they usually get sent out empty to do trailer swaps or do pickups.

 

Almost all of the weekend runs are volunteer. Maybe a couple laydown bids and FedEx Ground bids on the weekend here and there. Almost none of them are the extra board being forced out (would have to be severely short on drivers and too much extra freight).

 

Exactly. If there’s 10 drivers going to the same place but they only have enough freight for 8 drivers, then drivers number 9 and 10 get cut to the extra board.

 

Ok, so thank you for propping that door open cause this does add some good discussion material without starting a new thread.

At my old barn at USF Reddaway, everyone on linehaul and city was considered "extra board". Major caveat was that management was lazy and they usually kept you on the same route (or city for P&D) 98% of the time. Win-win since your workday was predictable and you were the subject matter expert for that route/city. Major downside was when the 2% emergency showed up, you were caught with your pants down. "Crap, this is a layover run and now I have got to find a dog sitter" or "hope they like returns, cause this city is so foreign to me they might as well dropped me off in Belarus".

My current company USF Holland on the other hand has everything chiseled in stone. You are on a bid. If they run out of freight they need to make something up, otherwise there are some consequences if they break your bid. Usually this may intail some financial benefits towards the driver that got his/her bid broken.

We do use about 10% of the barn (on the city side) that can bid on an "unassigned" bid, which means they call you around 4 PM and tell you what time you can expect to come in the next day. This start time could be 1 AM to about 3 PM; or your 10 hour restart. You also never knew where you were going.

My question to everyone (and I genuinely can not find a pool of more qualified people to answer this). Is your barn set up the same way? Do you have the same terminology and structure?