Parked Here for the Night

Watched Better Call Saul last night. Very good so far. Now I know why Saul is a good lawyer....he's from Cicero, IL lol

 

We quit R&L yesterday

 

The job we accepted was not the job we ended up doing. Pretty much everything we were told about the job was inaccurate which was extremely frustrating. We tried our best to make it work and try to focus on the positive but to be honest there were no positives about working at R+L.

1. We were told our load would be ready every day at midnight and that we would get back to the terminal around 7pm, leaving us with some downtime to sleep/shower/shop/etc. In reality it was ready everyday between 3 and 5am, usually closer to 5 which meant that typically the guy we were meeting up to swap with had to come closer to us so that he wouldn't run out his clock waiting for us. That resulted in a sizable decrease in the miles and therefore pay.

2. We were expecting to gross over $1500 per week each which would include the pay for each drop&hook that we did (one hour's pay each at $26.15/hr). When we got our first paycheck we were shocked at the amount and contacted payroll. The woman informed us that we were not paid for drop and hook time and that she had no idea why the hiring manager would have told us that. She couldn't have cared less that we accepted this job based largely upon the pay we were promised. We ended up making the same paycheck that we were getting at US Xpress but working TWICE as hard.

3. Because our load schedule was completely inaccurate that affected our hometime in a major way. We were told we would be back every saturday evening. We ended up getting back to the terminal Sunday mornings between 3-6am. That's about half a day of lost hometime and more importantly, because we were getting back so late we were exhausted and spent almost all day sunday sleeping. That left us with only our partial monday time off. Plus, since we were always behind it left us with no time to shower. I did not like living like a barbarian during the week.

4. R+L has a transponder on the cabs that communicate with the fuel pumps to allow you to fuel. All of the fuel islands at their terminals are from the 70's and we always had issues with getting the pumps to authorize correctly. What should have been a quick 15 minute fuel up would always turn into spending at least 30 minutes moving from pump to pump trying to get the pump to authorize and then pump continuously without shutting off at random. R+L also loads heavy in the front of the trailer which meant we were ALWAYS over on our steers and had to be very careful about not filling all the way up.

5. Our driver manager was completely unavailable. Not once did he ever respond or even acknowledge any emails or voicemails we left for him, even on urgent issues. The couple times that he did answer his phone he was very abrupt and more concerned about getting us off the phone than actually answering any questions.

6. The equipment was a huge issue. The very first day our ProStar wouldn't start and had to be towed into the shop for them to fix it. We would routinely see the team trucks and even the spare trucks in the shop. This past week all three team trucks and spare trucks were at some point broke down. Nothing ever gets fixed....they fix it long enough to get you through another day.

7. E-log machine. See my previous post about this POS.

All of this and some other things made us come to the conclusion that this wasn't for us. The reason my wife and I got into this profession was because we wanted to make money and have fun. That wasn't happening here so it was time to move on. We don't know what we'll do next but a strong possibility is going back to US Xpress and staying out for weeks at a time till a dedicated account that has weekly hometime opens up. Better the Devil we know than the Devil we don't.