Eagle Transport (Gas Haulers)

No SmokiMac and Claredog1 I'm a night time driver. Reason being that Charlotte is the 18th largest city in America and one of the oldest cities therefore the traffic situation is pathetic. Day drivers do little more than sit at stoplights all day and look at the babes in the cars nearby.

I like to do the longer runs if possible which usually works out to one short, one medium and one long run in a 12 hour shift. For instance I would like to do a Florence SC, a Monroe NC and a short Charlotte run on a shift. Company reduced our split pay and our night shift premium last year so night shift only pays $13.50/ night and splits were reduced to the same thing ... $13.50/ split.

I work Mon thru Fri one week and the next week I work Mon thru Sat ... 5 days one week and 6 days the next week.

There have been some rather drastic changes at the ETC Charlotte terminal this year with changes due to ethanol. We lost alot of loads to Kenan because when ethanol first became available ... Kenan was able to get a tank installed on their property for ethanol storage and usage by their own trucks while Eagle had to wait for the gas terminals (PB, Marathon, Shell, Motiva, Magellan 1 & 2, Citgo, Exxon, Phillips, Kinder Morgan 1,2 &3) to make in-line blends available. Therefore Kenan was able to haul ethanol before it was available to us. Our largest customer wanted ethanol right away because they were able to get a HUGE tax credit from the goverment by selling ethanol blended gasoline. As a result, we lost alot of stores in the Sunter SC market to Kenan and when ethanol eventually became available we never got those stores back again so our largest customer is now using both Kenan and Eagle to service their locations. I always thought it was rather stupid idea to give your largest competitor business from your largest customer. Eagle should have installed a tank at our Charlotte location just as Kenan did, but they didn't because of zoning ordinances ... or so I have been told.

Anyway ... that is a large part of the reason why I didn't make as much moola as in prior years and the recession being the other part. But I've been in this business a long time. If business slows down a little ... not to worry ... this country has an unsatisfiable desire for oil and petroleum products ... and when the economy picks up again (and it will) you will be missing these days of light work.

 

Thanks for that info. Eagle sounds like a good company I'm going to stop by the office this afternoon.

 

Good luck ... just take your time ... be careful ... if you aren't sure about something, ask. This is one industry where it pays to be absolutely certain about what you are doing.

 

Yeah, we aren't too short on drivers now. We have one of the worst safety records among all of ETC ... seems like everytime we start to go on a roll of good safety something happens ... a wreck, a cross drop, a spill ... you name it, it'll happen. Had a senior driver trainer jackknife up in the Boone/ Blowing Rock area last week coming down a hill at 20 miles/hour empty ... looks to be about $20-25,000 damage to tractor and tank ... or at least that's what the black box in the tractor said. Tractor may have been doing 20 but the tank was doing about 30 in a foot of snow. Two days later had a driver deliver ethanol to a non-ethanol store ... he got terminated because it was his second incident in a month ... prevously he had left 1200 gallons on the tank at the end of his shift and the next shift driver tried to load on top of it. Not good!
In our situation, Eagle can't afford to let any of these stores run out so it seems like they always hire too many drivers, figuring they will lose a certain percentage of them before their training period is up and a greater percentage as soon as they are set loose on their own ... so if they need 3 they'll hire 5 or 6 and hope for the best. It's always been a high percentage of turn-over in this business. People get the basic proceedure down fairly well and then start to slack off on paying attention and the first thing you know .... doo-doo happens and they find themselves in a bind they can't get out of.

Drill sergeant huh??? The greatest thing I can say about my old drill sergeant was that I hated his guts ... but he taught me enough to keep me alive through a year in an infantry platoon working out along the Cambodian border in Nam ... so I guess I owe him alot ... it never really was a populatity contest, now was it!

 

Ohhhh one more question ... how da heck do you guys down there rate a $22.50 night differential when we are only gettin' $13.50/night ... and we had ours cut last year fron $15.00 to $13.50??????

 

Dog please dont change the pic lol

 

Weekend premium pay ... what's that??? We used to be on the Balor System where if you agreed to work every Fri, Sat, Sun & Mon they would give you an additional $250/week on top of everything else. They ceased that about 2 month ago. If you were out just one of those days you received nothing extra for that pay period. Since I am off every other Saturday & Sunday (because my wife and I are only off "together" every other Sat and Sun and it's the only time we really have to be together) I have never received any kind of premium for weekend work.