Extra Board woes

Is there a weekly minimum $$$ guarantee for full time extra board guys?

 

A bigger barn is the long con, like ups freight. Hang long enough to get bidding seniority and your golden. At least thats the idea, get a part time gig for extra money if you want to wait it out. I personaly dont have the patiance for it. Im at a union shop, but if theres no driving, you go into the warehouse. I work either way....

 

I had a dispatcher who always use to tell me that the squeaky wheel gets the grease,i took that to heart and started calling every dispatcher at every shift two or three time every day asking for work.soon enough i became the go to driver,i get calls 3am to repower a breakdown or run that extra freight that didnt fit on the trailer or whatever.
Dont get drunk and keep that phone close and be ready to hit the road at any given moment.

 

No offense but that's the whole point of extra board . You fill in when someone is sick or they need extra people . When someone dies,retires,or gets fired or they expand and need more permanent drivers you'll get in ....At least now you have your foot in the door...

Obviously this also depends highly on the size of your terminal and local politics/favoritism .. I knew guys that were extra board with UPS for 7 years before becoming permanent but now they're set for life !!

 

I got a job with Firstfleet last year delivering groceries to Kroger out of the Peyton warehouse in Cleveland TN. I was extra board. On some weeks I made great money but a lot of weeks I'd only work 1 or 2 days. It was very frustrating. I left after a couple months and took a salary job with Black Horse Carriers. I get paid the same every single week and I have a set schedule.

Having to call in twice a day and never being able to make plans and having to be constantly ready to drive was super annoying too. I hated it. I was told by the terminal manager that it would be about 5 years until I would have enough seniority to bid a whole weeks worth of work. I would have been making more at that point than I make now, but I couldn't live like that for the next several years. I make enough money at my job now to live comfortably and I'm able to enjoy my time off. That's worth a lot to me.

 

It sucks when you are at the bottom, but anyone who has ever worked for a company with seniority dispatch has been the bottom driver at one point in his/her career. You have to have a long term vision in a seniority job. Before long even when you only work 2-3 days a week you may be making more than the OTR truckload driver. One day when you are working regular and making great money you will be glad you stuck with it. Not very many jobs pay a driver that kind of money and when he gets to the terminal he jumps out of the rig and either goes to the hotel or home, letting someone else unhook, fuel, unload and deliver the freight. You have to ask yourself if you want to sacrifice now to have it good later? Only you know the answer to this question.

 

The busy season is coming in Spring. You might want to hold out until then and see what being a low man is like during busy times, then budget for the lean times. A lot of extraboard drivers will make more money during the busy season than drivers with set schedules do. Then they tend to complain about being run way too hard. It's often feast or famine.

You will have seniority issues starting out at any LTL carrier, union or non, because it is a standard practice everywhere to bid for schedules based on seniority. But some carriers are better than others with staffing levels and not hanging drivers out to dry for years like that. In the meantime, is your health insurance fully paid like a guy who is working steady?

 

Being an extra can suck sometimes, but it's all in how each terminal handles stuff. I got in a NEMF and only made it 5 months before I took off. Money was good and we always had work everyday even as extras, we just obviously had the later shifts but always days and M-F. But starting at 10-11 am got me out too late and I was loosing time with my kid. The ABF terminal in my area is pretty predictable with hours even when your an extra but they also work the dock which we didn't. I really miss the Union benefits though.