About six months with Eagle Express Lines. Pretty happy.

The vast majority of Eagle's operation is sub-contracting for the USPS, pulling bulk mail between distribution centers. They had bid on some new routes out of their normal areas of operations, routes with end points in the SE, where Eagle doesn't have a strong presence.

Both I and a friend applied for this route (2 people drive half of the 6 day route each, about 50 hours per week for each) and after doing the DOT medical and drug screens locally, they flew us out to their HQ where we met the Director of Safety (nice guy, very professional but personable, and something like 3 million accident free miles under his belt, so maybe he knows a thing or two), road-tested, went through an accelerated orientation, met some of the company higher-ups, and were put up in a decent hotel overnight, with the use of a company vehicle if we wanted to go shopping or whatever that evening. That was day one, a Saturday. We had taken the red-eye from our south-east coast city to Chicago, both tired, but neither one of us crashed the truck or set anything on fire so the day went well.

Day two was basically "Here are two brand new trucks for you to take back to south-east coast city, here are two trailers, your route starts Tuesday, hope you remember everything in orientation but it's not that hard, best of luck to you!"

Some people might find this irritating or sink-or-swimming, and I guess it was a little sink-or-swimmish but at the same time I also took it as a vote of confidence. It was also way out of the norm for them, and purely a result of the down-to-the-wire starting time of the new route. Anyway, we got back, started our routes, and had no major problems. After a week or three our fleet manager (who we had a name for and a number, but no reason to call other than introductions) called each of us and introduced us and basically said "no news is good news, really pleased with the lack of issues and keep it up, but definitely call if you have any problems." He's had several opportunities in the past six months to demonstrate what kind of FM he is, the biggest of which was during that huge (for the SE) snowmageddon event that essentially shut down KY, TN, and NC for a day, and he has consistently been very helpful and on guard for his drivers. I'm really impressed and glad I'm on his team.

The pay is the best I've earned yet in the industry. My only complaint is the schedule I'm on has me away from home 90 hours per week, which doesn't really leave a lot of time for getting much of anything done, but all my bills are paid, I have good health insurance, and every single Eagle employee I've met has been a good person, easy to get along with.

I can't speak to how operations run in the rest of the country, but my FM is very solid, my truck was brand new when I got it, most of the trailers I've used have been great, and every admin-type person I've spoken to or corresponded with via email has been great. The pay is great, the benefits are maybe a little pricey but good. I'm pretty happy here.

 

I hear you, G13Tomcat. Definitely feel like I won a lottery or something. I started OTR Teams with Covenant and then worked for an O/O where we both subcontracted for Fedex Custom Critical.

Our route is actually 52 weeks, so barring mail holidays when the route doesn't run it's 90 hours away from home 52 weeks per year. It's like a standard work week, just with over the twice the hours away from home, which makes a lot of stuff hard, but the bonus is I don't have a ton of time to spend money - I'm either driving, sleeping, holed up in hotel at my midpoint, or trying real hard not to do anything during the precious few hours a week I get to be at home. The real downside is scheduling doctor appointments and similar is pretty difficult.

Thank goodness for ecommerce - dunno what I would do without Amazon, haha!