Random LTL Rants (all are welcomed)

During my Reddaway days all of us were assigned a 28 ft pup lift gate trailer along with our trucks. But we would also pull up to two additional P&D trailers upfront.

Typically the front would usually be a drop at a customer and pick up an empty. Although we've had it where we would take the empty from our first customer to a second one so they could load it, then pick up another loaded from them to take home. It would not be unheard of to handle 7 or 8 different trailers as a P&D driver on a single shift.

I also had my own mini drop lot where I would keep all of my converter dollies and extra empty trailers. It was wild how much trust and responsibility I had to maintain everything over there as not only was I the only driver servicing that city, but also the only one even heading west as everyone else serviced areas east.

Bit of a culture shock to eventually end up at R&L where you only get ONE trailer. And that's it.

 

You can do way more with pups. If you have an extra trailer or two, you then always had extra storage to swing returns into so they wouldn't get in your way while running a route. You also had way more flexibility with shortcuts and getting spun around if you went into the wrong direction or or something was going on where you had to go back from the direction you came from.