stepdeck....whats your opinion??

Could be him. What color was his truck when he was leased on to Pape? He was a decent person to me, but I didnt work with him. I do know a few drivers that I would consider a friend that I wouldnt hire because theyre too hotheaded.

 

When he worked for us he was a company driver. He had previously been a contractor and even a small fleet owner. The whole time he was talking about getting his own truck. He basically quit under dispatch on a permitted load because he found a truck he could afford to buy. Between that and the crappy attitude, I was just fine when I found out he was going to work for Warren.

 

Wow. My company has a thing where they give you some sort of bonus for getting another driver to come aboard. I dont like doing that because this is not a company thats easy to work for. If you're good at what you do, you can make great money. But then, good drivers dont usually need a referal to get a job, do they? Have a buddy that tried to help a friend of his out, got him a job here, same dispatcher. Dispatcher calls my buddy asking him why did he refer this guy to him and his friend calls him complaining about the dispatcher.

So cpape, I would like for my friends to do well and make money, but I wouldnt send then your way unless I knew for sure they were solid drivers.

 

We are not really interested in big growth so we can afford to be selective. Our hiring process usually weeds out the bad ones, but once in a while we take a chance or go against our gut. Usually when we have a couple empty trucks or when we are very busy. Always seems to bite us in the ###. We are kind of in a hiring hold for the next month or two unless a great candidate or contractor comes our way.

 

Getting to the pay thing....what is your opinion on this. A monthly salary not based on miles but gross revenue to the truck per month. Maybe something like start at 4k per month and move up to 5k based on 20k gross revenue to the truck per month. Of course you probably wouldn't be able to gross 20k every month. Winter time might be less but summer months you'd be able to do more. Have a bonus program based on gross revenue per month. Maybe a thousand extra for hitting 24k and more as you go up. Do you think something like that would work? I'd think it would be easier than keeping up with how many miles someone ran each week/month. I know the vast majority of all fleets pay by the mile, just trying to think out of the box here. Of course you'd have to find some motivated people but you wouldn't have to run too hard to hit 20k a month, particularly March through October. I don't think this idea would work for the bigger fleets as they can let their drivers sit for too long sometimes and they surely wouldn't want to give someone a consistent paycheck. I figured the bonus idea would reward more effort. Any thoughts?

 

I have thought about a salary before. I believe that compensation should be set up so that the employee and employer goals are aligned. For example, we do a fair number of runs under 250 miles and many under 75. These runs can be profitable for us, but hard for a driver to get many miles. We have tried to overcome this by paying drivers $18 additional for short hauls. I don't believe in paying company drivers percentage. The issue I have with the salary idea is the loss of incentive to work hard.

 

I worked for a company (Pratt Industries) that paid it's OTR guys (500 mile radius) mileage and the local guys (200 mile radius) an hourly rate. Some days, the local guys had to go OTR for a day and were paid mileage, and vise versa... it's just how the cards were dealt. In the end, everyone made about the same amount of money each week. Saturdays were voluntary as well.

Mileage was .50cpm
Hourly was $18.50 hour

they hauled their own products tho and are the largest corrugated factory in the US.

I would never want to work for a Salary again, as in my experience (and my wife's) you always wound up working MANY MANY more hours than you were paid for. I used to easily put in 80 hours a week and paid for 45. My wife had it even worse..... salary never seems to be a win for the employee.

 

Where I work if we are under 200 miles on a run it pays 21$ for every 52 miles you run...

I very rarely fall into that category, i usually do mostly OTR stuff...

 

.38 might be alright. No way to tell without knowing the details. He might be home every night every weekends off, 50% empty miles, dedicated truck and everything pre-strapped.

We pay $.32 for all miles on outbound loads like that one mentioned above. I also give $25/every two weeks if there are no DOT violations, tire blow outs, or damage to the equipment. $50 for every clean DOT inspection. 2 weeks vacation. Dedicated outbound. Kenworths, bunk heaters, inverters. Drug, vision, dental plan (we pay half until they get to 10 years then we pay all). $.02/mile annual bonus for being accident free.

If the driver picks up a reload, cpm goes to .38 for all miles. .14 cpm bonus for OD up to 10 wide. Another .14 up to 12 wide. Another .14 up to 14' wide and another .14 for loads over 14 feet.

Funny thing is, I've never have to increase the $.32...most guys would rather make $30,000 and be home every day doing dedicated runs with no touch than make $45,000 and run off the GPS.

 

I am thinking of buying a second truck and putting a driver in it. Do you think offering a flat rate of $1000.00 per week would hire a decent driver? The truck would be on Landstar so miles could vary every week. We would probably offer a bonus when truck revenue exceeds 5k per week. This would also be pulling a flat or step deck.