Team Company Recommendations

look into conway/cfi

 

Great thread idea, I had thought about starting something similar myself. I am going to start team driving for CFI on Sun, so I will post here after a week or so and let you know how it's going.

FYI- CFI has their trucks at 65mph and starting team pay is .44 CPM.

 

My choice would be Tri-State. Only because of what I've seen and what their drivers told me. They pull alot of government loads.

 

I ran team for CFI/Conway for a while and if you are willing to run, you can make money hand over fist. I averaged 6500 miles a week but could pull more when we were lucky. Rarely saw a paycheck less than a 1000 bucks take home. If you get a lot of northeast runs, you can see well over that.

I have a couple of friends who are married and still run teams for them and have their routine down pat and see over 3000 a week gross from Conway. Not a bad way to make a living in someone else's truck.

If teaming would have been my cup of tea, I would have never left that place because their team freight is solid and you pretty much just run terminal to terminal so you NEVER have to deal with crappy directions or businesses that are hard to get into and so on. It's always right off the interstate, you can drop off/pick up 7 days a week from the terminals and the only time you have a run that is short is when you are headed home and they start hopping you. I normally ran Or to Il, Il to LA, LA to Ar, and AR to Calexico and started over again. You get into a routine to where you never even crack a map or look at the qualcom, just watch your bank account grow.



I just wasn't a fan of team driving so I had to go back to solo.

 

Hum, when I started with a company around December i ran into an ex dispatcher for Conway/cfi.. He was starting with the same company that I was and he told me that he had quit Conway because he hated working there.. He said that dispatcher were always yelling and cursing ext... Another words the place was a horrible high stress work environment and everybody in that office was always ticked off... Of coarse this just one persons opinion....

I myself think Schneider has a decent program for teams.. The benefits are good, pay is average and the trucks are usually brand new for teams.. A downfall is they are 65-68 Mph trucks...

Most teams in almost all companies say 6000+ miles but the average is more like 5000-5500.. I know a few teams that I stay in touch with and that's about what they tell me...

You being in the business you know that driver dispatcher relationship is what makes money.. You get hooked up with somebody you can relate to then you will make money...

 

We have ran team with CFI/Conway for about 8mo now. First 5mo running all 48, since then we were given a dedicated route and get home every week for a day and a half. We run 5710/week and have time to sleep enroute on most legs but one. It seems most team running now is from Conway terminals. Conway truckload is really pushing teams now. So much so, it sounds like the solo runners are suffering because of it.
There have been a couple of fleets created strictly for teams only. We stayed with a "mixed" fleet due to having a good fleet manager. Now running a dedicated, we dont even deal with fleet manager much.
Pay is about the best you will get with at least one of you being new. Benifits are ok, and get better after a year.
BOL

 

I don't work for that company any more and stand to gain nothing by painting a pretty picture. I just tell it like it is and after talking to many other teams in truck stops, my partner and I were out running them all miles wise and money wise for the most part and I had no complaints. I am just not a big fan of teams, prefer to be by myself but if this guy wants to run teams, it's the place to be.

 

Perhaps I phrased that wrong... what I wanted said was most companies claim 6000+ miles average for most of thier teams.. I was not suggesting anybody was not telling the truth.. And as always you have to consider the exception as well, what I mean by that? well for example, bad as most talk about how bad it was to work for CR England there is always somebody who is getting treated well..... As I said in this post earlier, you get a dispatcher you can relate with and you will make money, this would pretty much cover any company you work with.....

 

A little late on my update but here it is. We started off strong going 3k miles the first 3 days we were teaming, then were involved in a very bad accident. We were cleared of any wrongdoing and sent home to see the doctor and be cleared to go back to work. Once this happened we were given another truck (old one was totalled) and routed back to Joplin. Once we were there the safety department and the company as a whole treated us great. We were issued a new Cascadia (we were surprised by this, the truck we had was fine) and sent back out. We have had 2 full weeks of driving so far and they have been 6400 miles and 5300 miles. I will probably repost my story in the 'companies we like' section due to how well CFI/CWTL has treated us.