A & R Transport... any info good or bad?!

Not the company that it once was, it has gone steadily down hill since an investment group bought into the company. Now just another company run by bean counters that don't know or understand the business. You can still make a good living, but not nearly as well run as it was when it was completely family owned. JMHO.

 

I understand what you are saying. Just watch K & J in Columbus, not always real honest with you (but what dispatcher or tm is). Not much left in long freight if that was what you were looking to do. Good luck with you next adventure.

 

I doubt you will ever see TX out of Columbus. Even if they had a load going towards TX it will either go on a TX or a LA truck. You will see alot of Chicago area and some east coast. Most of the long freight now goes by rail and is trans loaded closer to the customer for delivery by truck. You will find that a 300 mile load will be a long load anymore, not saying that there aren't any long loads, but not many.

 

The loading process takes some time to get good at, you need to learn the different products and how they load and to be able to load it properly to get it to scale and to load enough product. You will load alot out of railcars and fairly often out of unmanned rail sites. It just takes practice to get good at it. Unloading is pretty straight forward, but once again depends on the product. Some loads will require and air to air trlr (it will have a cooler on the front of the trlr to cool the unloading air so you dont melt the product. Some customers will have a max unloading pressure so you don't damage the pellets as you unload them. Once again time and practice to become proficient.
Trucks used to be better and more importantly better maintained. Since the investment group got involved they don't like to spend money on maintenance. They used to run nothing but virgin rubber, but now have gone to running recaps with the resulting issues from running recaps.
You will have a benefit that Columbus does have a shop (good luck getting them to do much), so hopefully you can get any issues and regular services done without any hassles.

 

If you can go to Canada you will probably get more miles. You will get to know Dow in Hanging Rock, OH on a first name basis (or at least they used to load out of there all the time).
You can have a microwave and inverter in the truck, the only issue might be finding a place to put them if you wind up with one of the old flattops, not much room for anything in one of the those.