Conway Freight

yeah, it's a shame that the southern portion of Conway is still behind on overtime practices. The other regions pay overtime after 8 hours a day. It doesn't matter how many hours that you have for the week. The FACs do have dockhands and a lot of the terminals have at least one. We are a small terminal and can't seem to keep a dockhand. The drivers work the dock and make up the slack. I hear a lot of complaints about working the dock but don't quite understand it. It's not like you are handloading the freight. You spend the majority of the time with your butt parked on a forklift. If a company is willing to pay me over $21 an hour to drive a lift then I'm definitely cool with that. Besides the pay, if I should ever (God forbid) lose my CDL then I can always work in a warehouse or somewhere as a forklift operator.

 

Driving a commercial vehicle is exempt from overtime laws. It has nothing to do with being a sales rep. As with most trucking companies, Con-Way doesn't pay overtime until 50 hours in south.

The terminal I work at has about 15 dock workers. A lot of drivers complain about working the dock because they're under the impression they were hired as drivers, when the truth is they were hired to move freight.

I think Con-Way is a pretty good company.

 

Congrats! I am a Con-way newbie myself. Got just over four weeks in now.

 

How ya liking it over there Soda?

 

Been kind of slow. Been doing a lot of dock work so far. I am at a smaller barn with about 30 drivers(linehaul & city). They hired three of us at the same time so we are well staffed. Have a couple guys retiring this summer along with a lot of vacations starting next month so it should pick up a lot. The job has been pretty laid back and everyone that I work with have been nice and helpful whenever I have any questions. I had three weeks of training with one week each of classroom(videos and paperwork), city PU&D and linehaul. The first week of classroom can be overwhelming with all the policies, rules, regulations and procedures. Especially if you don't have any freight background like I didn't. It's not all bad though once you get out and actually start doing the actual job.

 

I got 15 years so far... Welcome. Any questions, fire away.

 

Well I'm thinking about going back to Conway because i heard of big changes. Like no more residential deliveries and if you don't feel safe at a delivery or the consignee doesn't want to help you. That you don't have to deliver it. Is this true?

 

The service center I operate from still does some residential deliveries...if you're lucky, you'll get a liftgate...if not ya gotta do it the hard way. The part about safety is true though. If you are unable to safely load/unload at a location you can refuse/return the freight. You do have to inform dispatch about the issue though...I returned a piece that was 600 lbs and 8 ft long once because of no equipment/help. Brought it back in a liftgate the next day and with some help got it unloaded alright. My management didn't question my decision to stay safe.

 

Not true. I've received ot after 8 per day of 40 per week for 12+ years as a dsr. True that you can refuse delivery or turn around on bad roads if you don't feel it's safe. Just one of those things you don't wanna make a habit of unless it's real. If a situation on the road or at a customer is unsafe, you have the ability to make the decision. I turned back once in 2007 during severe winter weather.

 

He's down in the south where all us Con-way boys know our place...