Schneider Midwest Regional

Next month will be my 1 year with Schneider as a Midwest regional driver and overall I'm real happy with my situation. I'm based out of Des Moines, IA, live in KC, and spend most of my time in Texas. For some reason my DBL has a hard on for Texas. I average 2600 miles a week and normally get home saturday afternoon. My week starts Monday morning. If for some reason your not getting the miles you want talk to your DBL or OC manager. I had to change DBL's because I was only getting 1800 miles a week or so, nice guy. It couldn't handle running me enough I guess.
Now odviously your work at Schneider will be dependent on your DBL. If you get a good one you will love Schneider, a bad one will make you cuss, spit and holler about what a crap company this is. I've talked to both kinds. Personally I'd recommend Schneider, they have treated me well and kept me rolling A LOT better then good ol TransAm.
Let me know what questions you have and I'll do my best to answer for you.

 

Mid west runs a lot of texas freight but all drivers i have talked to seem to be happy. I've been with Schneider 7+ years and like working here. I run dedicated now but have run otr and Schneider will keep you busy. But you need to learn the system and how to stay busy.

 

I hear time and time again about "you need to learn the system" from multiple companies. When will someone explain the system so others may benifit? Nothing against you driver, but people talk of the"system" like it's top secret or something. C'mon give it up!

 

"Learning the system" is figuring out what works for you. You need to learn how your manager works. They need to figure out how you are as a driver.

Learning the system does not have a black and white guide. You can not be lazy and have everything handed to you in this industry. It's part of what's wrong with it today. Too many drivers needing their hand held. Buck up, and use your head and figure things out on your own. That goes for all drivers.

 

As for learning the system, I agree with the last post from Biscuit but i'll give you an example... At schneider we have to put in mac 18 which our expected time of availability and every dbl wants it every morning so they can plan your next load. sounds easy right . well at schneider take our Laredo O.C when you are going there a lot of new drivers and experienced drivers will put in a mac 18 the morning they deliver there and then when they get there will put another one in when they are empty. However they don't know because it's not explained that laredo is a first in first out area and everytime you send a mac 18 it time stamps when it was sent so everytime a driver puts in a new 18 and many do several times a day while at laredo and it puts a new time stamp which then moves the driver to the bottom of the list every time. When i deliver to Laredo I will put in my macro for delivery, then once empty i don't send another 18 that way i never go down on the list. If it's been a cpl hours i'll call in but never a new 18. Also the new drivers need to learn that your DBL looks at your tracking every morning to see where you are. Not just for on time delivery but also to track how you run so say driver a only averages 300 miles a day and still makes on time delivery but the Dbl has a 1000 mile load in 2 day to deliver well driver b does 525 miles a day who do you think is going to get the load. So drivers need to learn their dbl and they need to learn the mcp200 and how they are used and tracked.

 

Thanks for the information, I understand totally what you are talking about. This is the type of information that is helpful to the new driver. So much better than " Buck Up".

I' am a former driver about to "Buck Up" once again and get back out there. Just checking things out. Thanks again!

 

Not sure what midwest "regional" is supposed to mean. I'm on that board but spent 3 1/2 weeks on the east coast. Furthest west I ever made it in 3+ weeks was Dayton, OH. Pretty much spent my whole time in New England, PA, OH, WV and VA

 

For those wondering, they run midwest OTR to Texas a ton because Schneider has a huge market share of import freight from Mexico, HUGE.