Boro Enterprises

Dude, get some help and quit feeling sorry for yourself. Start looking for anything you can get that fits your needs, maybe driving isn't your deal, there types of jobs in transportation that pay decent and get you home every night.

 

<smh>.....dude is this for real?..you my friend need some serious help! Be a fkn man and get out there and do whatever it takes to provide for your family! Let me tell you a little about myself. I started back in the early 90s and drove till I found a different adventure. Well here's where it gets good,I was making a 5 figure paycheck till the fkn economy took a dump in 2007. So instead of being a BOY, I did what I had to do and hit the road again after many years off to provide for the family. My point is, things hit rock bottom but the strong will survive! Get off your ### and do something! I don't care if you have to go work for 25cpm! If you decide to take the p. u zzy way out my friend, then at least get your family a great insurance policy so they can say at least he left us with something besides debt.

 

I have been driving for 5 years now. I put myself through truck driving school in 2008 so I would not be indebted to some bottom of the barrel company for years like Swift, Werner, Stephens, or the like. After doing a lot of research (mainly on here), I decided I was not going to do that. I was not going to be tied down to some company that pays you crap, and even pays you less the more you drive! No way. I went to driving school myself, and patiently waited for a decent job, which came quickly.

I have hauled a box around, watched employees at a company we were delivering to (while working at Rosedale) sit on their rear ends doing ABSOLUTELY nothing AT ALL for three hours before unloading our truck, because we were early! It is not like they were busy. It was just because they could. We were treated like garbage, but not so much hauling cars.

I am not going to go to Wal mart distribution centers, wait several hours until I get called to a lane, lower my landing gear, have them put locks on my glad hands, only to be told I wasn't perfectly straight, so I had to re-hook up to my trailer, raise the landing gear, and repeat until perfect. Then they have me bobtail and sit for 5 hours until they call me on the CB and tell me my trailer is loaded. No more. I am not going to do 34 hour resets at truck stops, some of them so nasty that there are thousands of bats flying around at night! I am not going to sit for nearly a week waiting for a load, not making a penny. I have been there, done that, and am not going to do that again. I would rather be homeless. That is what a lot of Werner or similar companies drivers are (no offense to the many Professional, courteous, hard-working drivers who work there that are not steering-wheel holders - there are plenty of good drivers at those companies, but there are many more that are not that are not). Many are basically homeless people living in a truck, hoping and praying for their next load. No thank you. That is why I want to make %, not CPM. It comes out much higher in the end, especially for the hours worked.

I am not going to be like my wife's cousin who worked for Swift. He was in Atlanta with a truck that needed repairing, and we offered to let him sleep at our home a couple days while he was OFF DUTY, but even though we were less than a half hour drive from the yard, and the repairs were going to take a couple days, they would not let him leave his truck, even though we could get him back in 30 minutes. Unbelievable. I will not be subjected to crap like that. I don't have to be.

I am not going to go through crap like that again. I am not going to haul a box unless is is line-haul with a Union company like UPS, Yellow, or OD, or some company like that where I will spend every night in my own bed, or in a company-paid hotel. I hate driving a box. You can't see around it real good. You can see better around and to a certain degree through car haulers, especially if empty.

You get treated like garbage and you make crap. And for your information, I go hired within 2 weeks of leaving driving school by what had previously been a moving company, but they got all kinds of contracts through this one guy. I pulled for UPS (even though as a seasonal driver I would have had to have had a minimum of two years driving in snow and ice), and I made .35 CPM, and had ABSOLUTELY no training. The only thing that sucked was that it was team driving, and I didn't know him well at all, and he didn't know me. Being so, I was nervous of his driving (which was fine), but I couldn't sleep in the back hardly at all, and I figured it was the same for him, so we were always tired.

Every roadway bump woke me up cause it sounded like we were running off the road, but we weren't. If I had driven with him a couple months, I am sure we would have been used to each other, but we were promised that after Christmastime, we would be solo. So there you have it. 35 CPM out of driving school, and you expect me to take a .33 CPM job 5 years later hauling a box around? No thank you. We were dispatched through Turbo, and we had to call in every 2 hours and report out location. It was snowing so heavily at one point that we called them and told them we were going to have to shut down for a few hours until it got better.

Why did I leave that job? Because they hired everyone (even people right out of driving school like me, and many of them were not professionals like me I was no pro right out of school, but I took my job very seriously. I always have and always will. I have no accidents, and a clean 7 year MR with no points, no accidents, and no tickets). They sent them on the road with no training except a 2 hour orientation where we went over everything. Safety training was maybe 10 minutes. Backing up to the beginning, we had to pay for our own drug tests, so I said to hell with this. I went home and did not take my drug test. The boss called me the next day and asked if I was ready to go out. I told him that I had not taken the drug test (and never did even though I was supposed to, but they forgot about it). He said, "That's not what I'm asking you, what I am asking is, are you ready to take a load tomorrow?" I said sure.

I will give a good story I tell people of the reason myself, along with about 30 other drivers were laid off. We were not fired. The notice of separation said "Lack Of Work" as the reason for separation. OK back to what happened one day. My co-driver and I got a call from Turbo dispatch asking if we had heard from such and such drivers (I didn't know them now or then - not that their names mattered). Anyhow Turbo asked if we had heard from them, and we said no we had not. They told us that they could not get hold of them, and the very last time they had spoken with them was 4 hours ago, and they were headed in the wrong direction!!! Stuff like that caused us to lose the contracts. The company is now back to being household movers. I had pulled for Wal-Mart, UPS, and even AAFES. Some with Flatbed experience even hauled military vehicles such as Hummers and the like - AND THEY HAD NO SECURITY CLEARANCE!!!

The next day, I checked online on my UPS tracking number, and saw that my Rand Manually Deluxe Motor Carriers' Atlas was out for delivery, and I called UPS and they let me meet their driver at McDonald's while he was there sorting out his packages for the rest of the day. Even though I had a GPS, I knew from working at FedEx Home Delivery how unreliable they were, and it was not a truck-specific model. Being that I was going to be driving all over the eastern US, I needed that map! He scanned it and handed it to me, so then I was ready to go.

The UPS truck was fairly empty, so from former experience, I knew that he didn't have that much left for the day. I did drive locally for FedEx before my boss got his contract revoked and was banned from the building due to an accusation of sexual harassment. I have no idea if this was true or not. He was a contractor, not an employee. Drivers are not employees at FedEx - They either purchase or inherit a route, and have to buy their own trucks, and pay for their own fuel, so it is not cheap.

I was a sub-contractor of his. When I worked at FedEx, I delivered locally to homes and businesses (mainly homes because it was FedEx Home Delivery, not Ground, but that did not mean 100% of home delivery went on Home Delivery trucks or that all business packages got loaded onto ground trucks. Most did, but not all.)

Both drivers at UPS and FedEx get paid about the same, BUT FedEx drivers are responsible for the purchase and maintenance of their trucks, as well as diesel (FedEx does have discounted diesel that you could purchase - it was around $2.00 a gallon when it was nearly $4.00 a gallon elsewhere), but still you see that in the end, FedEx drivers make considerably less than UPS drivers. I am not sure what the current UPS contract is, but I know it is over $30.00 an hour, and unlike federal guidelines require, they go one step further - if a driver works more than 8 hours in any single day, they get paid time and a half, even if for some reason they didn't work 40 hours a week! You get 1.5X pay over 8 hours period, and I think they get 3X pay for working on Holidays. When I was a driver's helper, the day we got paid, my driver showed me her check. It was at the end of November, and she said she had over a month of time off! What was her gross pay, YTD? It was over $79,000! UPS is a dream job, and I am going to try and get hired on seasonally this year if I can get a good reference.

Drivers at UPS are employees, (not that any of this matters). I got hired at UPS as a driver's helper seasonally for Christmas, and the management would only pay for 4 hours for the driver's helper, but the girl liked my services so well that she paid me out of her own pocket to run the whole day with her (no hankey-pankey - I am still not sure of her sexual orientation - she never said. I am not God's gift to women, but I am not too hard on the eyes. Women don't usually run away screaming and vomiting when they see me. I then became hired part time as a package handler - I started as package car loader then later unloaded tractor trailers. It was a very hard job, and I made $8.75 an hour, and averaged about 17.5 hours a week. If I had stayed longer, we would have had fully-paid family insurance, dental and eye, as well as college re-reimbursement. They try and keep you with the promise that you will be a driver one day (they said 2-3 years, but good, hard-working non-whining employees had been there for 9 years), and after hearing that story one too many times, I gave up, regardless. Going in at 3-4 AM, working 3.5-4 hours a day, and unloading 3 trailers a day for $150.00 a week before taxes, FICA and Medicare was too much. We were taking home around $120 a week. I learned that promotions were based on tenure, not performance. I said enough was enough. I finally made my way into CDL driving.

You obviously are not a car hauler, and have no idea what we make, or what we go through. We get to the auction when we want. We make our deliveries generally when we want, but unlike hauling a box, the dealers are eager for their cars. If you are late, you might get an earful, but you will NEVER have to wait 24 hours to come back for a missed appointment like when pulling a box. You get exercise at auctions, finding the cars. A LOW paying car hauler pays $600 a week. A high paying car-hauler pays $2,500-$3,000 a week. An AVERAGE car hauler makes at LEAST $1,500 a week. If you get a job like I had at BORO driving from GA to FL twice a week, you will spend Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday in your own bed at home. WORST case scenario, you will be gone FIVE days!.

No I HATE pulling boxes around, and I sure ain't gonna do it for .33 CPM when I made .35 CPM 5 years ago, right out of driving school. You have much more work and responsibility hauling cars than a no touch freight job. If a 6,500 pound SUV falls off the back of your truck at 70 MPH and hits a car on the highway, you can imagine what will happen. If you damage a car, you typically have to pay for it. I never had a damage claim. The only time I had damaged cars was when my boss at BORO first got a 10 car stinger, which neither of us were used to. We loaded it at night with flashlights and vehicles, and he didn't account for the bouncing of the vehicles on the highway, so we had several busted windshields. I had to unload those cars at the port, and had NEVER unloaded anything but the EX loader. It took a few hours to unload! There are TWO sets of 18 hydraulic levers, so that is 36 levers, and 2 ways to move 10 (or 11 small) cars!

It is not for the feint of heart, the stupid, lazy, or those that are not highly mechanically inclined, and you must have very good judgment. There is a lot that can go wrong. A lose chain can bust a windshield, or grind off leaving sparks for miles the whole trip home. You can get stuck SO easily, because you are 4 inches off the ground, and even less in a stinger! It is SO much harder than pulling a box, but you know the old saying, "There are two types of truck drivers - car haulers, and people that want to be car-haulers!" No disrespect to folks who pull 53' dry vans, but it is mainly the money I want and the waiting that I don't want. I want to get paid for what I do. If I am a slow-poke, then I will not make as much money, but if I hustle, I will make really good money with a good company. I enjoy my freedom. I will tell you that my logbook was always 100% legal, but 18 hour days were not abnormal, but I NEVER spent 11 hours straight hauling cars back and forth between GA and FL. If I loaded all the cars at the same place, I could make it from near Atlanta to Jacksonville and back in one day. 11.5 hours driving time, but do you really think I am going to drive 11 hours, pull over for 10, then drive the last 30 minutes home the next day? You be the judge, but I will tell you I always used loose-leaf. I tried my hardest to be legal all the time, but stuff happens. The 11/14/10/70 hour rule is a government intrusion that should not be. I have been able to drive 13 hours without being too tired, yet other times I needed to take a power nap after 7 hours. This unfortunately has had the UN-intentional consequence of giving dispatchers the power to FORCE drivers to drive 11 hours, and even with a 30 minute meal break, several months of 18+ hour days really adds up. That is why I got back to running as legal as possible.

That is why unless it is a true drop and hook from the same place, and I am home at least 48 hours per week, I don't want it. I don't like CPM because you don't make a penny if you sit in traffic and it takes you 2 hours to get through a city, and only go 10 miles. At .33 CPM, that is $3.30 for 2 hours of work, assuming that is 10 miles. That is $1.65 an hour by CPM. It just gets added in if you are paid by percentage. It still sucks, but it doesn't make you nearly as mad. I don't want to sit and wait for loads or to get unloaded. I want the auctions to be happy to get you out of there (they could care less if you are there an hour or two days although most don't allow you to sleep overnight, but that can be hard to prove in a busy auction). At an auction or other pick-up point, YOU determine how fast you get loaded. As long as you are safe, if you are fast, you can get to an auction, get the keys to the cars, find them, stage them, load them, and get checked out in a couple hours, maybe even much less if your cars are ready for you and lined up. With post-trip inspections that some dealers pay for, it may take you 5 hours to get all your cars, but this is rare as long as your dispatcher gets the loads BEFORE you get to the auctions.

You get get to stretch your legs and walk around instead of sitting in the truck. You get some cardio, and plenty of exercise, but it is not as hard as hand-loading or un-loading a 80,000# truck by hand that is not palletized. I have never done that, and don't intend to. Hats off to anyone willing to do that. The worst POSSIBLE thing that can happen is that you arrive late at an auction that closes, and you have to wait until the morning, but this is rare, as at least check out stays open for many hours. The office to get the keys usually stays open until the evening

Unlike a dry van or a reefer (I hate trying to sleep next to one of those), you pretty much make your own hours. Think about that. You don't have dispatch calling and harassing you all the time. You can expect to talk to your boss 2-3 times a day! There are trade-offs between boxes and cars, but car-hauling has far more benefits. If a car-hauler were to be paid CPM, most would make close to $1.00 per mile or more, just doing simple math in my head. No offense to those who work by the mile - my heart goes out to you, and you are really being over-worked. What made me maddest was during the worst part of the economy several years ago (not that it is that much better now), you would see ads with people making pick of the best and paying them peanuts. I saw companies looking for employees with at least 10 years of experience, and they wanted to pay .26 CPM! I usually wasted my time to write them an tell them what POS's they were. Maybe they placed those ads to see how mad they could make people - maybe it was a joke.

NO driver with ANY decent car-hauling company would EVER make less than .65 CPM if it were changed from % to CPM. Perhaps this explains why I don't want to make .33 CPM. That is chicken fodder to me. I would seriously rather be homeless. I don't have to and I ain't gonna settle for a crap job. If more drivers took this attitude, they would have much better working conditions and make much more money. Stay at home with the kids, and let your wife work until you get a decent job. That's what I'm gonna do, and I will get a good job sooner or later, but probably sooner because I am stepping up my searching. I am tired of being at home, but I anoint gonna take a crap job because I have to.

I have a 14x70' Mobile Home sitting on almost 4 acres in the beautiful North Georgia mountains. The home, as well as the land are paid for. We have no mortgage, rent, or car-payments. All we need is about another $5K for a well and septic, and we will be ready to move in! Do I want to live in a mobile home? Nope, but I love my land, love my 100 yard range, and the closest neighbor is 1/4 mile. It is very private. It feels very nice to be a land and homeowner at 37 (not a mortgage owner). As long as we pay our yearly taxes, we can never be kicked off our land. At least it isn't in a trailer park. No offense to those who live in one, but it isn't right for us. If I get a good job, I can make that 5 grand in 2-3 months. If I got a good job tomorrow, we could be at our home by Christmas. Or MH is about 500 feet from the road, and can't even be seen in the summer, because it is up a hill, around a curve on a ridgeline. We are living with family until we can ave up the money, so yes we are bums to an extent. We have already spent twice on the project than what we expected. Anyone that will install septic and a well for 2 months of driving, let me know!

 

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r168/martino7334/4bf73d93.jpg

 

By the way, I am a decent drummer. Middle weight. I ain't a rock-star or anything, but if I could get with a decent band and make $100 a night at clubs twice a week, I could work my way up from there. I am also an IT expert. I built a two processor (dual XEON X5650 processors) with a total of 12 cores and 24 threads with hyper-threading 2.66 GHz Nominal Speed (Normally runs at 3.06GHZ with Intel Turbo Boost and 24 MB total L3 cache, four 15K.7 SAS Cheeteah 15,000 RPM hard drives in a RAID-5 configuration, and even though the Supermicro motherboard has an onboard LSI 2008 SAS controller, I bought an add in LSI 9260-4i controller, with 512 MB of DDR2 Memory, as well as an add on battery-backup Libbi that preserves writes ready to be written to disk in the event of a power failure. I have 48 GB of 1366 DDR3 fully-buffered ECC Server Memory, all in a Supermicro Chassis. I also have a 1500 VA Smart UPS, and a 875 watt micro-processor controlled generator. This whole rig is 6.5K, and I built it myself. It would have cost 10K from Dell roughly. I can host multiple websites on it and make money that way, but right now I better spend the money getting up to our home in North GA. Anyone in the central North GA area needing computer building, repair, setup , home or small office setup and networking, web design and hosting, I am your man. I am also an excellent BBQ pit master. I have even sold roadside tomatoes, so I have done anything I can to make money for my family. Some say just get a minimum wage job until something better comes along. Yeah right. You get comfortable at jobs, and never do what it takes to leave. Some of these people that gave me this advice were out of work for several years until they found good jobs, and that's exactly what I am gonna do, but I will do other stuff on the side!

 

Cute. I put it in paragraph forms. It's not like it's one big post with no breaks. I will admit I got carried away. I do that sometimes. If you graduated high school, or even middle school, you should be able to read it. It may bore you to death, but let me tell you one thing my friend. I have watched shows, listened to the radio, or a person, that I knew 99% of everything in there, but I learned ONE THING. If you learned somethng, great. If not, I am glad you knew it all. If it bores you to death don't read it. My gun isn't pointed at your head.

 

Are you getting any leads for car hauling jobs?

 

I learned one thing from reading all your posts. With all your knowledge and expertise you're still an unemployed husband and father of 3 who refuses to work and provide for his family......if you are in fact who you claim to be!

 

Dam...maybe you should try to write and sell a novel on something. That's one of the longest posts I've seen in a while.

edit: here's a link incase the novel thing doesn't sound good
https://intelliapp2.driverapponline.com/c/waggoners?uri_b=ia_waggoners_1083985126

 

Holy crap, I read all of that. You need to get over yourself.