Good LTL Companies?

My first driving job was with a company that operated its own fleet. It was something of a source of company pride, operating its own trucks. Corporate fleet mangagement was pretty good, but things broke down at the individual locations where you had production supervisors overseeing the daily truck operations with zero to very little knowledge of the rules and regs governing commercial vehicles. It led to some drivers taking advantage of the situation to cut corners because no one knew enough to hold them accountable. Others would try to do things the right way, only to have some manager big dog them into doing things they knew they shouldn't. CSA 2010 drove the nails into their private fleet coffin. They never received any major violations but getting nicked repeatedly for little things adds up, sort of like bleeding to death from a thousand paper cuts. It wasn't long until they were half a step from getting their trucks shut down and had no alternative but to outsource with a common carrier.

I transferred to the new carrier. It was nice in some ways because now I had a buffer when someone tried to get me to do things improperly. The new company guarded its CSA score vigilantly, and I saw my terminal manager put the smack down a few times when someone tried meddling with the operation of his trucks. His favorite line was "You tell us what to take and where to take it, but you don't tell us HOW to get it there." It ended up being like having bickering parents that were always sniping at each other. One just wanted to get things done, the other wanted to get things done right and those two viewpoints came into conflict quite a bit. I hung on for a while, but finally got to the point where I was ready to leave driving altogether just to relieve the stress.

 

OK, I think your post just proved a point here. It looks like there is/are a driver/drivers that won't be kept busy all the time. I don't know too many of us that can afford that!

 

Ahh but im guaranteed my 40 sooo... no concern here

 

40? I didn't know you were a part time employee.

 

#### sam! I thought you was a truck driver? Sounds to me like your a "worker", not a driver...

 

Southeastern freight has a terminal in Durham might wanna check them out. Just remember all the ltl companies go by seniority so you will probably start between 10am to 12.

 

Mack , you know work is one of those 4 letter words . We are not to use those 4 letter words ...

 

Good insight thus far. I will add my two cents.

The area you live in isn't great. Some top options though include Old Dominion, UPS Freight, ABF, FedEx Freight, Gordon (as mentioned). If you can handle the beer gig, anything you do LTL will be easier.

Last week I worked 39 hours and grossed $1382, home daily on my route, driving doubles and working some dock with an 9 pm start time. I get mileage pay for the driving and hourly for everything else. You are being grossly underpaid in my opinion.

Since the private carrier thing has been brought up, I worked for a private carrier and they decided to outsource (go figure), I was grossing about $1250 weekly, home every other day and weekends while logging approx. 55 hours a week. It ended up being a blessing in disguise for me.