My first week's experience with FedEx and as a OTR trucker

djtrype · Aug 28, 2011

Well, aren't you just a ray of sunshine?

twicepipes · Aug 28, 2011

Gee, did I rain on this guys parade? I do get my feathers ruffled when he portrays himself as a Fedex Freight Road Driver. We have company road drivers sitting at home not working because people like this guy are willing to haul the freight for next to nothing. He probably doesn't pay any taxes, and used the hospitals emergency room for his health care.

Quinid · Aug 29, 2011

twicepipes said: ↑

Gee, did I rain on this guys parade? I do get my feathers ruffled when he portrays himself as a Fedex Freight Road Driver. We have company road drivers sitting at home not working because people like this guy are willing to haul the freight for next to nothing. He probably doesn't pay any taxes, and used the hospitals emergency room for his health care.
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Easy kid. Yur partially right. When I started, I didn't know the difference between freight n ground when I made the post. But my owner DOES own the truck infact he owned 3. I DO pay taxes, I Do have to wear their Ground shirt. I posted my experience a while back when i was brand new. We lost a truck due to another semi running a light plowing into us at 55 mph. Boss has been injured since. Then business has died for fedex ground. Teams running wild hardly get work now. I switched contractors and ran local runs, which I hated czu yur on call ALL the time. Since then I landed a dedicated run and doing just fine. If it makes u feel any better, the owners are barely breaking even now with the lack of freight and the rise of fuel prices. They lost the fuel contract 2 years ago where fuel was locked to like 1.25 a gallon. I don't know why yur so upset and hating on us. Everyone needs work right? And from what I'm hearing, UPS is playing with the idea of the same setup. I was brand new and needed work just as much as everyone else. Now I have a year OTR experience I have better options if I'll ever need to look for other work. But with this job, I can take off time during planting and harvest seasons.
I have a hasmat endorsement thank you very much and I had a clearance in the military, so background is clean. Did I mention I have been driving straight trucks since I was 14? Driving a combination truck since 17 or 18(u can look up agriculture regulations on that, its legal) but it don't count as OTR experience without a CDL. So no flipping burgers for me.

dannybam · Jan 13, 2013

Hey. U sound pretty confident as a driver. I just got hired by fedex. Took a month to pass my app, supposed to start this week. Im little nervous, havent done otr before. Any words?? Thanx

TruckingSexy · Nov 23, 2018

Quinid said: ↑

No. But get caught doin over 79mph or 10 over in a construction zone and you are automatically fired, nothing can be done. Speed limit could be 85, hit 80 and job over... They have been putting GPS trackers on the front of the newer trailers lately and dispatch definitely checks on them. We have very short time to destination so they check on a normal basis worrying. So the governor I'm on doesn't really matter.
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How do you get caught? Like, how do they know you were speeding? I know the Qualcomm monitors it but do they REALLY check it??

x1Heavy · Nov 23, 2018

Quinid said: ↑

So after 3 weeks of background checks and such. I was officially hired two weeks ago. I am team driving with a O/O contractor who also owns two other trucks. We leave for routes almost always on a tuesday or wednesday. For our first drive we received a rare "bump" for Saturday. We drove from from central, IL to Arkansas to meet up with another fedex truck and swap trailers to take back. He had me take the first drive so he could guage me on how well I can do this. I'm still green, because I only have 6 months verifiable local driving experience and have NEVER pulled a double/triple setup. My fathers hopper bottom International was an automatic, so it took me about 15 minutes to get the hang of stick shifting and floating gears again. After that the boss told me he doesn't think he will have to stay up as much as he thought he would have to and went to bed.

I woke him up when we got to our destination. We only had to wait maybe 6 minutes before the other drivers showed up. Very nice timing. The bossman took care of the paperwork, as I unhooked and got aligned for the other trailers. Even tho my 11 hours were not up yet, the boss decided to drive the whole way back, which was fine with me. I couldn't sleep, so I sat with him the whole drive back. We got back around 5pm.

He told me to keep the phone around for around midnight, we may have another "bump" to do. I called him at 12:30am, he said they decided they didnt need a bump.

Wednesday came, the boss calls, we are going to Sacramento, CA immediately. So I shower n haul butt to meet him. He's asleep in the sleeper, they delayed us. So I take a nap as well. Bout 4 hours later we get a call. We hook up doubles and head out. He takes the first shift. I finish sleeping. my shift comes up while we are still in Iowa, so I drive clear to Wyoming. I think I like that place. i have never heard of a 75 mile an hour speed limit for anyone let alone for trucks. I have never been west of Illinois in my life! We are taking I80 the whole way

So I'm trucking at 75mph just flying past other truckers. I didn't know better so I asked why everyone else is going so slow, am I missing something? He says cuz everyone else is either governed or trying to save on gas. We don't worry about gas, cuz the longer it takes us to get there, the further down the list we get for another route. Well that's fine with me driving slow has always make me sleepy. On my first 11 hours I was actually scared. 75 mile an hour just didn't feel exactly safe. ESPECIALLY going down mountains. I lost count on how many times my butt puckered. And I'm a speed demon. He said I'll get used to it, and I just need to learn to ease on the brakes and not stab them like my instructor told me or we will have problems in the winter. He's right I got used to it and is braking perfect. I also hit my first weigh station. I've never had to worry about a weigh station before, so I woke the boss up again. He explained the pre-pass. We got a green, and he went back to bed. Later, I notice my trailer lights are flickering as if my flashers are on just after I pass a truck. So I took the next exit. Bossman woke up to ask me what I'm doing. I shoved a piece of paper towel around the trailer socket to fix the lights. He goes back to bed. I drive for another 30 minutes, pass a truck, trailer lights are completely off now. The the next exit is just ahead. I had to hit the braked kinda hard to get in there ok. P.S. I am soo sorry to that driver that was behind me. He didn't honk or anything, but I bet he was furious that he didnt know I was slowing down. Boss woke up again, and decided he would shove a piece of cardboard from a notebook in there. That fixed it for good. He said some trailers are just loose like that.

After a few shifts we make it to Cali. EVERYBODY knew my boss, he never had take his ID out of the truck. I'm going to take this as a good thing. The dispatcher was really cool with him. Again, I bet this is a good thing. We took showers and hit the beds for just over 10 hours. I just slept so he gave me 4 pills of his 30 dollar bottle of Tylenol PM's. I got to buy some, those things rock. I sorta felt drunk and passed out within 15 minutes.

We get the call in the morning, we are not gonna get a tangent route as we hoped(he wanted some quick extra money before going on vacation on the 19th) so they give us the route back to Illinois. We still made crazy miles in a few days. We just got back yesterday at 6m. I still had some questions.
I asked why we never had to weigh, he said cuz they know FedEx is so strict that DOT can hardly ever find anything wrong with us. Then I told him I can't help but notice when a truck in front of me passes another truck, the passed truck flips his lights to let him know when clear, but when I pass, they usually either won't signal me when I'm clear, or flip me off when I pass them. The boss laughed and said they hate that we don't get weighed, pulled over, don't have governors, and a lot couldn't get hired by FedEx because of their strict policies.
I also mentioned to him I hit 79 before hitting my brakes going down a hill, just before I see a state Cop SUV on the left side of the road parked with no lights on at all as if there was an emergency lane there, which there wasn't. I thought I was busted, cuz the cop pulled out with lights on. Turned out he wanted that charter bus the flew by me minutes ago. *Wipes sweat of forehead* Also, I could have sworn its illegal for a cop to be on the side of the road with no lights on at all. The boss first glances at me, and said to not let that happend again. FedEx if a FedEx gets a ticket for 80 n over, even if the speed limit is 75, hes fired automatically.

He then tells me I did MUCh better than he expected and that he would go ahead and give me the full pay. I never discussed pay, because I felt lucky to even get hired. He was gonan giv eme .18/mile till i figured it out then up to .36/mile.
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Tynenol PM contains a active chemical capable of messing with your driving. People have been convicted of DUI after making basic mistakes in driving cars on those things.

You will need to be able to sleep at any time for however long you need to day or night without pills. Sitting up all day will hurt you when your time to drive comes around again to go.

He should have taught you jacobs braking by now in the mountains, if you are able to come down them in a timely manner and keep your brakes cold you will be in a very good position should something happen and you have need of the braking.

You seem to be on your way to doing well Keep in Mind Arkansas is now a 75 mph state, but until the new signs go up (Never...) it will have to stay 70. And 65 on rural two lane roads too. (Which is kind of fast on some of them, particularly coming out of curves)

Nothing like Winter to teach you wyoming. And in doubles to boot. Awesome. Learn everything and anything you can during this time.

rowekmr · Dec 17, 2018

To the OP are you still with FedEx?

line · Dec 17, 2018

Quinid said: ↑

Easy kid. Yur partially right. When I started, I didn't know the difference between freight n ground when I made the post. But my owner DOES own the truck infact he owned 3. I DO pay taxes, I Do have to wear their Ground shirt. I posted my experience a while back when i was brand new. We lost a truck due to another semi running a light plowing into us at 55 mph. Boss has been injured since. Then business has died for fedex ground. Teams running wild hardly get work now. I switched contractors and ran local runs, which I hated czu yur on call ALL the time. Since then I landed a dedicated run and doing just fine. If it makes u feel any better, the owners are barely breaking even now with the lack of freight and the rise of fuel prices. They lost the fuel contract 2 years ago where fuel was locked to like 1.25 a gallon. I don't know why yur so upset and hating on us. Everyone needs work right? And from what I'm hearing, UPS is playing with the idea of the same setup. I was brand new and needed work just as much as everyone else. Now I have a year OTR experience I have better options if I'll ever need to look for other work. But with this job, I can take off time during planting and harvest seasons.
I have a hasmat endorsement thank you very much and I had a clearance in the military, so background is clean. Did I mention I have been driving straight trucks since I was 14? Driving a combination truck since 17 or 18(u can look up agriculture regulations on that, its legal) but it don't count as OTR experience without a CDL. So no flipping burgers for me.
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Well played . Ignore that jack wagon

line · Dec 17, 2018

I hung up my owner operator sours last thanksgiving and my last contract was with FedEx . It was fine, my fleet manager knew I was looking for a line job and I had an offer to hire in my email from Freight within a week . I ignored it . Dealt with enough danks and arrogants at Freight and Heavyweight over the years , mostly drivers

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My first week's experience with FedEx and as a OTR trucker

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