Estes Regional OTR out of Knoxville

You go yard to yard. Usually at night. And yes, its day cabs. If you are on a bid run you go here to there and back. You likely would start on the "open board" which means you go out 1 day and come home 5 days later. But you take your truck to the motel, so no one is in it but you (except when you are in your home yard). Starting pay doesnt matter how much experience you have, it is all the same. Well, its all the same depending on what you are doing. Estes has 5 different pay scales depending on what you are doing: 1) city (hourly no OT), 2) line haul bid (mileage), 3) line haul open board (mileage but more than bid), 4) hub (mileage and hourly) - you run to another terminal and work the dock and then go home, 5) combo (also hourly and mileage) - they dont have a lot of combo drivers - basically as I understand it is you drive to another city 100-200 miles out, work city P&D and go home. I dont know what their current starting wage is, I havent worked there in 3 years. Was 54 cpm then. I would guess its around 57 cpm now.

 

"A lot" is a relative term. You wont be parked for 5 days like I have been in OTR companies. GENERALLY in any line haul operation (I have worked line haul for Conway 6wks, USF Dugan 2yrs, Midland Transportation 1yr, R&L Carriers 3yrs, American Freight 3mos, Root River 2wks, Michaletz Trucking 3yrs, Land/Air Transport 6mo, Estes 2yrs, Tax Air Freight 1yr, and USF Holland 3yrs) you leave your yard somewhere around 10pm and you generally get to where you are going by 8am. Now again, that depends on the yard and other factors of course, but GENERALLY this is the way it works. For example at Estes, if you get to KC on friday morning, you can expect to be sitting for 18-24 hours before they get you moving because 1) they are slow, and 2) they are a major east-west hub with lots of people coming and going. USF Hollands Wheeling yard is pretty much the same as Estes KC except it isnt a major hub, they are just SLOW. Indy on the other hand will get you rolling after your 10 hours is up any day of the week because its a major yard and they are well organized.

And GENERALLY you are home all weekend. Now Estes open board has a "start day" that could be anywhere from sunday to thursday. But you GENERALLY get 2 days off a week. So for example you have a tuesday start (my favorite). You leave around 10pm tuesday and you are out until sunday morning (early). Then you are off until tuesday night again. So really its like getting 3 days off. I like it because I can watch my Vikings on sunday, do whatever I need to get done on monday (doctor, dentist, shopping, job hunting lol, ect) and even tuesday morning if you need to.

If you are on a bid run (dedicated run), then you have a set start time (subject to change of course). You go to the same places and do the same things. Generally companies re-bid once a year. At Holland we do it twice a year.

 

Well just talking Estes here and just talking open board, the way THEY do things is VERY driver friendly. You call THEM when you are ready to go. Now that doesnt mean they will get you rolling right then, it could very well be a few hours before they got you ready, but they wont wake you up to run. If you want to lay down and take your 34 hour reset, thats YOUR call. You get into a yard and they want you to run this there and if you feel you are too tired to do it, you just tell them you are too tired and they send you to bed. They dont play with driver safety. You say you are too tired to go, they WILL put you to bed. That isnt the case with most LTL carriers. We had 1 driver in Minneapolis did his 34 hour reset in Las Vegas and came home (winter) sun burnt

Now that being said, yeah. I got in to KC one friday morning at about 3am once and went to bed. Called at 1pm on my 10 and they had me sitting until 5am the next morning (16 hours later) before I was rolling. But that isnt the norm. I have just been accepted to Landstar and am in the process of buying a truck. If that doesnt work out, I wouldnt hesitate to go back to Estes. The only reason I left is I was doing a lot of hook and drops around Chicago and it was wearing my shoulders out from all the cranking. But they added a new drop yard south of McCook somewhere so Im sure a lot of that issue is gone now.

Bid drivers are a different story. You have a set time to go and you better be ready.

 

They will do this out of Dallas anyway lol during the busy months you'll almost always leave the morning of your start day but iv had them tell me they had no work only to call me at 10pm to run a 12 hour route they'll also work you into your day off up to 12pm I believe if they need freight moved

 

I don’t know what the hell you’re calling three days off. Unless of course you don’t sleep then yeah you can have all kinds of time off with any job but when I arrive home off the road after five or 600 miles I’ve got to have at least three hours of naptime to feel halfway decent then yeah zombie around for the rest of that day you get the next day free and clear after a good nights rest the following day you have to sleep before you go into work well I have to anyway