Picking my own freight baby! My journey to & of being on Schneider choice, the Adventure & Numbers!

Opus · Jun 13, 2015

TennMan said: ↑

He needs pm not quarterly.
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10-4......my bad......but good info for the quarterly...LOL
I have my PM's done at Speedco in Jackson GA (201)......they always try to upsell you stuff, but other than that, they do ok by me

TennMan · Jun 13, 2015

They do pms but you have to schedule it. I was referring to the 15 minutes.

Opus · Jun 13, 2015

dieselfuelonly said: ↑

I agree with a lot of what Dougal said. I'm not jumping on the "lets bash someone" bandwagon, I just chime in from time to time on this thread and post my own thoughts and experiences as I've always done.

My thoughts:

SNI does short us on the fuel discount. You know that we aren't receiving the "full" discount. Just look at the discounts that some other carriers get. We don't get the full discount that SNI is getting, plain and simple.

SNI _wants_ to make it difficult to string together the good paying loads so that we are inclined to take some of the crappier loads. Loads show up on the board at random times. They sit in the "appointment not completed" time for days and then show up, with absolutely nothing changed, on the board as ready to be booked randomly. Try running good paying loads from point a to point b and back. Eventually loads from one of those points will disappear or booking them will be near impossible. It's simple, they want to make drivers pull the cheap freight sometimes because it makes up for some of those nice good paying longer runs they entice us with sometimes. Look at why some loads book 3 days in advance and why others book the night before.

Of course running the Northeast looks good on paper but remember the $2/mile that we're making running those short, high dollar loads, SNI is probably making at least double that.

Is there money to be made? Absolutely. Am I still here? Yeah. Will I make a change at some point? Yeah.

This is the hilarious thing that I've noticed. The friggin attitudes that come along with some of these drivers that believe they are the elite of the elite rolling around in their black Cascadia or their T680. Won't give me the time of day. Ever since I bought my own truck and leased it back on to SNI I have noticed that I hardly ever receive a wave from the lease guys. It's like "Dude you're not part of the club any more. You're stealing our loads. Go work somewhere else". Instead I get waves from the other o/o that pull for SNI, usually because they're going slow enough that I have time to actually throw up a wave instead of getting passed at 80 MPH, only to slow down after passing me, in their show of extreme power (13 liters of fury) and dominance that they feel a need to exert. I'm not bashing anyone. It's just my honest experience. I've been on both sides, leasing and owning.

Regarding FW's #s. Looks like you've been doing good and you're happy with what you're bringing home and the job and that's great. The thing I will ask though is could you be doing that good if you had put double that mileage on the truck? You've taken a LOT of time off. It's a tradeoff... run low miles for high pay or sacrifice your pay to run longer miles. That's how SNI wants it it work.

I'm no long time choice veteran, but I have been on here a while longer than many of the drivers participating on this forum and I can honestly say that in the time I have been here I have noticed a huge influx of new drivers on the board, but not the same influx of freight. Back when I started it was... stupid easy. My very first full week I think I grossed around $4,500 running down SOUTH. Now it takes a lot more camping on the load board and running freight into the crappy areas to do the same.

Obviously I know freight patterns change and you have to adjust, but I will still argue that the amount of new freight we're getting just isn't keeping up and it surely isn't what it once was.

Schneider is probably testing to see how many drivers they can get on the program and how low they can push the rates until people start saying "no thanks". I mean they're a company, obviously they want to grow and expand and make more money. But, they may lose drivers like me since nobody has any say at all over what I do with my truck other than me.

Anyway... I'm still here for the time being. Probably will be here throughout the end of the year. Will be interesting to see what it holds.

I'd love to hear the thoughts from some of our resident long-time choice members such as Dipschitt, Ricky Bobby and Atruckr.
Click to expand...

Brother, the way I look at it is, "does it work for me?", and the answer is yes.......
Man, there's 1001 different things to hate on Schneider about, but at the end of the day I:
1. get up when I want to get up
2. go to sleep when I get tired
3. take a break when I want to take a break
4. drive as fast or slow as I wish
5. idle when I'm hot
6. work how much I want to
7. decide how much / little I want to make in a given week

and most of all, and I think we have all done this, it's Wednesday or Thursday afternoon.......we're looking at the board for our next load, then the thought occurs to us, "F it, I wanna go home.", and so we do.......and don't say a #### thing to nobody......just point it towards home and push the GO button. And there just ain't too many jobs out there that will let you do all of the above.......and that's my deal.
Man, I'm spoiled......I can't work for anyone else.......

my 2 cents

91B20H8 · Jun 13, 2015

Nope, SNI can't touch the 680's....yet

dieselfuelonly · Jun 13, 2015

Might be for the best. Was wondering why your PMs were always done at KW.

Popcornky · Jun 13, 2015

TennMan said: ↑

Loads are always better this time of year.

My SFI rep told me SNI wants to be at 5,000 if drivers within 24 months.

If so growth like that will kill the choice board. Just think of the issues customer service has now multiply that by 3.

My worry is they grow the number of trucks but not the available freight.
Click to expand...

Most brokers DO want 10 trucks competing for 1 load.

Popcornky · Jun 14, 2015

Josh_ said: ↑

FSC from Prime's driver POV.

Click to expand...

My question to this prime lease operator is, when was the last time he pulled green backs directly from his bill-fold to purchase fuel for this tractor or reefer that he's leasing? By his definition prime is the entity purchasing the fuel. He is merely paying them back from his settlement. I'm sure he enjoys a certain discount @ the pump, which he in no way contributes to obtaining neither does he negotiate this pittance of a fuel surcharge. Now he's hollering about 10%? Are there no real-live owner operators left? That said, they told him 100%, OMG! Those lying buggers! I know it ain't right but rule one in the OWNER-OPERATOR world, GET IT IN WRITING!

stevep1977 · Jun 14, 2015

Just thought I'd add an update to my previous post. Yesterday I had them take off the empty trailer shuttle that was sending me 42 out of route miles for a measly $25. I offered to do it for $75 but customer service refused to approve that amount.

Fast forward to today in the Tunk trailer. I'm sitting in there watching TV and start talking to a 22 year veteran driver and he's complaining that he had a 600 mile load to Michigan pulled so he could shuttle a trailer 100 miles to the same place they wanted me to take a trailer LOL.

The kicker of it all is since he was pissed and they pulled a good load from him to do it his DBL paid him $100 bonus, plus $65 layover for getting screwed out of the load, plus another $45 for the 100 miles.

So Schneider made a good business decision I'd say. Refuse to pay an IC $75 to shuttle a trailer, then pay a company driver $210 to do the exact same thing PLUS fuel and wear and tear on top of that. Way to go team!

Popcornky · Jun 14, 2015

freightwipper said: ↑

This needs to be said..
When you're an IC you're not a employee.

When you accept and book a load you are accepting a load based on the pay, appt times, stops and miles etc etc.
Can you call Schneider after the fact and say "I want to go home so even through my delivery appointment is tomorrow I'm going to camp on this load for an extra day and be late"?
No!
Terms are provided and when you accept those terms you're expected to follow through.
However once after the fact if Schneider changes it suddenly becomes a load I didn't accept. As simple as that.

I'll use today as an example.
I did a drop and hook at a customer that has inbound and outboard freight.
My next load was hooking to a relay load in the same city.. turned out to be 2 miles away.
After I book the loads Schneider changes my workflow and has me taking an empty out and bring it to a different shipper out of route. I'm freaking two miles away from picking up a relay load and they want me to do charity work in between! That is not the terms I accepted when I booked the load.
So I said uh oh looks there's no empties here so I went ahead and bobtailed to get my relay load.
My fixed costs are $1100 a week and fuel is nearly $3 a gallon. It's one thing to do something for free.. it's another to PAY to do free work.

In the beginning I wanted to do the right thing and I did call in and respectfully explain the situation and well it never ended where I and Schneider were happy with the outcome.
It once got to a point where I blasted Schneider and said if you change a load I accepted and add miles and stops to it because some other shipper needs a trailer that means it's no longer the load I accepted.
Either change assignment to the one I accepted or else pull the load off me.
They couldn't say crap because they very well know they're basically voiding the terms of a load an IC accepted.
If Schneider wants a driver doing a load to not do a "drop and hook" at a shipper and instead make an extra stop nearby to shuttle a trailer to a different shipper and then bobtail to the shipper then fine ADD that info, the extra stop and miles to the load on the board so we as ICs can make a decision to accept the terms or not. They of course won't do that though as they'd rather you not know till afterwords.
I'm no longer going to waste my time sitting on hold forever with Schneider just to have that conversation with them over and over again.
If Schneider tries to pull a smooth on me then I can play that game too.
If Schneider really wants a different shipper to have my trailer then fine.. pay a company driver to do that along with the fuel or pay me extra.
I've done the whole calling in thing already. If Schneider wouldn't change the terms, stops and miles on a load I accepted then I wouldn't have to deal with all this BS in the first place.
Trying to get ICs to do extra free work they didn't accept to do is what's actually unprofessional.
Going on a trailer hunt because you need one is understandable to a degree but making extra stops because some other customer else needs an empty trailer.. sorry it's not my customer and it's not extra miles and stops I accepted. End of story.
Where I am speaking badly of this it really doesn't happen often to much.. around once a month so far.

There's BS no matter what you do.
Even if you went under your own authority then you'll have other BS to deal with.. like having to deal with and speak to brokers. They try to screw drivers also a lot from what I've read.
So there really is no escape lol.

We've been all bashing Schneider for a lot but c'mon.. what other company will lease you a truck, pay %, allows you to pick from thousands of loads and has many open appointment drop and hook freight?
Any other company???? None I know of!
This program is second to none.
This is a job at the end of the day.
I'll at about 2850 miles at $5586 in revenue between I loads I did yesterday and my next 6 days I have booked through Thursday afternoon. It's 10 loads in 7 days but still I am very happy with those numbers.
At the end of the day for me all the BS (including all the ancient trailers with broken tandems lol) is worth it for the freedom and the money you can earn.
There's BS everywhere, even at Crete they were very anal and I felt like a PA regional driver even through I was OTR.
Enough with the Hateraid and back to the Kool-aid lol..
This gig is still light years ahead of what any other company has to offer in my opinion.
Click to expand...

Clarification: lease operator not IC. Unless you sign a rate confirmation for each load assignment &/or it is written in your LEASE agreement that you may or may not be requested/ required to perform duties for the company whose authority you are operating under.

freightwipper · Jun 14, 2015

Popcornky said: ↑

Clarification: lease operator not IC. Unless you sign a rate confirmation for each load assignment &/or it is written in your LEASE agreement that you may or may not be requested/ required to perform duties for the company whose authority you are operating under.
Click to expand...

In orientation I signed a contract with Schneider that basically said I understand and accept what my pay is, what I'm responsible for etc etc.
They went over saying what the load says it pays is what you get. They said you review the stops and miles as that's what you're going to do and it doesn't change. They said once you accept the assignment you're expected to follow through on WHAT you accepted.
The only thing they said could ever changed is when you have to go on an empty trailer hunt.
Dude running the class said Schneider isn't in control of when a customer you're dealing with will have an empty for you and that's the only time your assignment can change.
At that point they explained that's what the "excuss box miles pay" is solely use for.. to where if you have to go out of route over 50 miles hunting for an empty.
At no point did anyone say that can also be used if Schneider wants you to go out of route because a different customer needs a empty more so than the one you're going to.

At no point during class and at no point anything I signed said anything about that Schneider can change a work assignment I accepted because Schneider needs my empty to go somewhere else to a different customer.
Sorry Schneider.. when I booked the load it said drop and hook at the shipper. That's what I agreed to do.
Just because some customers needs empties more others does not mean I'm going to burn my fuel and waste my time on that. You have company drivers for that.
If I read anywhere or if in orientation that say that was even a possibility I would have raised hell about it in class before signing anything.

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