Caledonia Haulers

I've been driving for Caledonia Haulers out of Minnesota for about 6 months now and wanted to share my experience. First of all, I'll just give an info dump on the company in general:

• Headquartered in Caledonia, MN. (Roughly 25 miles Southwest of La Crosse, WI)
• Additional terminals located in Janesville, WI and Cedar Rapids, IA
• Local and regional driving jobs available in the Midwest - OTR jobs available within and slightly outside that area
• Food grade tanker (mostly). Some loads are not edible (for example: epoxidized soybean oil and contact lens cleaner). Almost all non hazmat. There are only a few trailers in the fleet that can haul hazmat as it is very uncommon.
• Mixed fleet of Peterbilt 579 and 567, 72in mid roof sleepers for OTR/regional, smaller sleepers or daycabs for local, ~90% 13 speed manual transmissions, the rest are automatics (but they will not hire drivers with automatic restriction), and sleeper trucks are equipped with thermoking APU, refrigerator, and inverter.
• All trucks (excluding some local trucks) have super singles. The trailers are about 50/50 super singles/duals. I know some people don't like super singles, but I don't have a problem. Just check your tires during your pretrip like you're supposed to. I also got tire pressure monitoring that goes on the valve stems of my truck tires. Not to mention, all of our trailers that have super singles have built-in tire inflation. Some of the trailers with duals have inflation as well.
• $0.65 per mile for all empty miles, $0.65 per mile for 151+ loaded miles, $0.70 per mile for 46-150 loaded miles, $45 flat rate for 1-45 miles, and $30 flat rate for preloads less than 1 mile (personally I've never done this as an OTR driver).
• $25 for live tank washes (not hugely common; most of the time you're picking up pre-washed trailers)
• $40 to pump load or unload (roughly 75% pump unload, pump loading is extremely rare)
• $100 Northeast pay (you get $100 for crossing the border into PA but not out)
• $100 for crossing border into Canada (not out)
• $100 per hazmat load
• $200 layover pay (24 hour period)
• $250 for doing a 34 not at home (must be out of hours and no recap available)
• $24 per hour detention pay starting after 2 hours
• $250 holiday pay (if working on said holiday) - holidays include: New Years Day, Easter, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. After 1 year of employment you will get $100 holiday pay on holidays not worked.
• Vacation pay:
  • 1 week after 90 days employment
  • 2 weeks after 1 year
  • 3 weeks after 5 years
  • 4 weeks after 10 years
  • 5 weeks after 20 years
• $200 bereavement pay (case by case basis)
• After 15 years of employment you get a "special" truck with a paintjob and 80" sleeper. (there might be other options you get but I don't recall) and you can choose the model - as far as I know it still has to be a Peterbilt, but that does give you the option of getting a 589. I know we do have at least one 589 in our fleet for one of our 15+ drivers.

That's everything I can think of at the moment that is more concrete info. Now, for the more subjective things.

I was hired as an OTR driver out of Oklahoma which is slightly at the edge of the hiring radius so I have to stay out at least 3 weeks before I take home time. I usually do 3-4 weeks sometimes 5 weeks out so it's no issue for me. If you live closer to one of their terminals, you can be home every 2 weeks as an OTR driver or weekly if you can get hired for a regional job. They say OTR is all 48 and I'm sure you could see all 48 if you spent many years at Caledonia but I've only seen certain areas. A lot of Midwest and Northeast, but not too far into the Northeast. Upstate New York and NJ is as far as I've been and from what I've heard that's usually as far as we go. I've also had one load going to California and a few going to Washington and Idaho. Almost all of these loads originate in the Midwest and once I delivered I got sent back to the Midwest. I almost forgot, I've also ran loads out of the Midwest going to Louisiana and Mississippi, and a couple oddball loads to Tennessee or Virginia. Like I said though, they do really run all 48, but these are just the areas that seem more common for us to run in. I know they will go as far as Florida because I have seen Caledonia trucks getting a tank wash in Winter Haven at Indian River when I used to work there, I just haven't been down there myself.

Overall my experience so far has been great. I have almost literally never stopped working since I started (minus my home time of course). I have very rarely had to wait for my next load after a delivery. My only downtime has usually been when getting maintenance done on my truck or when a load has a lot of time before an appointment (not very common, and less than 1 day at the most). Even when I do get my truck worked on, it's never more than a few hours of downtime. To be fair, I've never had any major issues with my truck. Speaking of my truck, I got a 2022 Peterbilt 579 with 310,000 miles when I started. I'm at about 376,000 miles now. Considering I run recaps and usually don't run my hours out, I'm pretty happy with the miles I'm getting. I also take a pretty good amount of home time. I've never agreed with the "1 day off for every week out" thing that most carriers do and I'm happy to say Caledonia has no problem with that. I will usually take 5-7 days off after 3-4 weeks out.

I will also add that no tanker experience is required to work here. You only need 1 year of OTR. They train on how to use the pump and such during orientation.

One last thing I want to add. I love that you don't have to beg for your pay. I've always been paid for detention when I ask for it (not to mention, it's really easy to request detention pay on their tablet), I've always been paid for live tank washes, pump pay, etc... I've never looked at a pay stub and think, "hey, wait a minute, I was supposed to get paid for X". You only have to put load origin and destination on the trip sheets. It seems that the empty miles are in the system automatically. The pay system seems to be automated in general, but I could be wrong. All I know is, when I do my empty call on the tablet and it asks "Pump unload Y/N", if I put Y I get pump pay. They have a very nice document system on their elog tablets. You basically open a form and fill in the blanks, and as far as I can tell, as long as you do that you get paid for what you asked for. For example, if you need detention pay you open the detention request document. It asks for trip number, time arrived, appointment time, time departed, and reason for delay. You can simply just put "waiting to unload". Then, you hit send. I much prefer this over writing in/out times on the BOL and hoping payroll notices. This is an automated system so that when you send that to payroll, it's a for sure thing from what I can tell. Now, if you lie about it and say you were at a place for 6 hours when you were only there for 1 hour, they're not gonna pay you. But if you are owed, you will be paid. To me, that goes a long way in trucking.

I see myself staying with this company long term for sure. The only reason I would leave is to get my own truck, however I may not have to leave even for that. Caledonia does have owner operators leased on with them, although it's very few and not something they like to do a lot so I'm not counting on that as an option. Not to mention, the recruiter flat out told me it's not an option. Either way, it's gonna be a long time before I can afford it.

 

I knew I forgot something. We fuel at Love's or Kwik Trip/Kwik Star, no fuel solutions. Just any location of those two chains. You can technically fuel at the other big chains, but only if you have no other option. If you are caught fueling outside the network too often, you will receive a phonecall. I've done it a couple times because there are long stretches in Montana without a Love's and I've never received a phonecall.

The APU heater keeps me warm as low as 0°F in my experience but there were a few times this winter I did see temps lower than that. I idled the truck not necessarily just for myself but also because the fuel could start to gel up. My APU did stop working last month and I had to idle for like 2 nights in a row before I could get it fixed. As for hot temps, I haven't had to idle overnight yet for that reason as I've been mostly in the north lately. I think my APU can keep up as high as 85°- 90° but I guess I'll have to see. From what I remember in orientation, idling for high temps is completely acceptable as well.

Quite often. In my original post, when I referred to "the Midwest", a lot of the time it was Minnesota. We have customers in Alexandria, Perham, Long Prairie, St. Cloud, Mankato, and Rochester. Those are just the places I've been to so far in Minnesota. As far as the Dakotas, I've driven through them quite a few times on my way out west and back but only ever picked up out there once in Volga, SD.

While there are customers where you simply back into a loading bay or under a rack (and sometimes you do actually back up to a dock where they run a hose out the door), at Caledonia about 75% of the deliveries require driver unload. Basically this consists of hooking up hydraulic lines to the trailer (much like a wet kit), opening the top hatch to vent, making sure the pump has an elbow connected to the outlet valve, and hooking up a hose from the pump to the customer's hookup. Then, once you get everything ready, you get in your truck and turn the PTO on. Then you can use a lever at the back of the trailer to control the direction and speed of the pump. That's about it. This may vary from company to company. When I worked at Indian River, they had a separate division for pump loads. If you opted out of that, you never had to do driver unloads at all. The most you might have to do was open the top hatch occasionally. I was in the pump division but it was still only like 10-20% pump loads.

 

I forgot to mention they have courtesy cars at all the terminals. The only catch is you can't use them in Cedar Rapids after business hours due to the speed cameras and red light cameras all over Cedar Rapids, which requires a sign in/out for using the car. Otherwise, if someone were to run a red or get caught speeding they have no way of knowing who the ticket is for and end up eating the cost. It sucks, but I understand. If I need to go somewhere when I'm in Cedar Rapids after hours, I just use PC and bobtail where I need to go. Caledonia has no limit on PC as long as it is used legally.

 

I would say probably but don't quote me on that.

 

Another thing I forgot to mention: no driver facing camera. There's an outward facing camera and a rear facing camera on each side mirror. They also don't micromanage with the camera. They never even look at the camera recordings unless an accident happens or something. They don't micromanage in general really. If you have your load info and where to go for a tank wash etc they leave you alone to do your job.