Any good reefer companies with guaranteed weekly pay?

Average length of haul will depend on what fleet you're in. I'm in the Midwest Reefer fleet and miles per week hovers around 2200 miles give or take, so about 400-500 miles per day. Probably better when it's not winter and there is more freight available. The OTR Reefer fleet has a longer length of haul though because they do more of the western part of the country. Decker has short haul pay too, so if you do get some shorter runs you get paid a little more to take them.

Hometime: depends on where you live, but for Midwest Reefer they offer home weekly as well as home every other week. I don't know the details of home every other week, but home weekly means you generally come home sometime Friday and leave sometime Sunday or come home sometime Saturday and leave sometime Monday. There are drivers that choose to stay out a lot longer though, especially on the OTR Reefer fleet. For instance, my trainer stays out a whole month and then is home for five days.

PC policy: 50 miles or 60 minutes per day. This is actually another reason I switched: Schneider doesn't allow PC on their accounts, at least not the one I was on. Decker also has yard move and split sleeper options on their HOS tablet.

I'd say the main negative thing about Decker is that they have inward facing cameras, but they don't bother you too much about them. And they turned the seatbelt checker thing off because it kept malfunctioning. All they really care about is that you aren't texting while driving.

 

Yeah, I wish they'd change that phrasing on the website. Decker absolutely hires new CDL holders, but they put you with a trainer for two weeks after a one-week orientation. If you have at least three months experience, you get to go into the experienced group, and you might get a truck after a three-day orientation, but sometimes they put those people with a trainer as well for a week or so, especially if they don't have flatbed experience. The website might say that because they didn't used to hire new CDL grads for insurance reasons, but I guess with the new inward-facing cameras they can afford to again. They actually increased the new CDL student class size from three to six at the beginning of this year. The only thing on the website that hints that they hire new students is the pay scale: if you look at it, it says drivers with 0-3 months experience get 52 cpm as opposed to 55 cpm for 3-11 months experience, but after you've been with Decker for 3 months that 52 cpm goes to 55 cpm, so it's not that long a wait to get a pay increase. Very fair pay structure in my opinion.

 

> But it sounds like they are back to accepting new graduates now? At any rate, they seem to modify their recruiting parameters as their needs change over time.

Yes, they just started back up recently, although word has been slow to get out it seems. And Bryce is still here; we met him during orientation. Very nice guy.