Any XPO Last Mile drivers here?

Before I got into semi trucks I use to do last mile deliveries in Chicago. First Company I signed on with was a place called X. I honestly can't even remember the name because I was only there for a month before I quit. A friend of a friend told me about X ( last mile company). The Suit and Tie guys said they would pay me $2,000 a week. I was so D#$% excited (aka Dumb as Hell)! I had never seen that kind of money before so I signed a "agreement" to make last mile deliveries for them under a home depot account. I ran under their authority, used their truck, but had to pay for my own fuel and my helper's pay. I think they charged me for insurance too...can't remember this happen around 2012-2013.

To make a shorter story shorter....I didn't know how to count or read back then and quickly realized I was in trouble when I didn't have any money left to pay myself or my friend. After they refused to pay me more money to cover my expenses, I started looking for the same gig just with a different Company and found XPO.

XPO had an account with Sears making home deliveries in Chicago.
XPO use to provide you a 26 foot rental truck via Ryder or Penske and they offered to you vendors like TrueNorth for insurance as well as fuel cards and tools. XPO would just subtract the payments from your weekly settlement. It was a sweet deal because it didn't require any real start up capital and your yearly gross was over $250,000.

Every morning at XPO starts around 5:30-6am. Each Team consist of two people sometimes 3. You are responsible for loading your own truck. You get your paperwork which has all the items that needs to be loaded onto your truck as well as the customer's information such as phone number and address. Once again this was a sears account so you could have just about anything from a Washer & Dryer to flat screen TV to a riding lawn mower. Around 8am you have your morning meeting with XPO suit and tie guys who tell you this and that and how they want their location to be number 1. Blah Blah Blah. Average day consist of 10-15 stops. God forbid a customer does not answer at the first 2 stops because your going to have to rearrange that stuff every time you stop to get to your next stop items. It's extremely tight back there and yes stuff falls over when not strapped in correctly.

Some days it was fun and you meet great people and somedays it was rough. You got the customer from hell who nit picks about every little thing or upset with you over something you have no control over like ordering a large refrigerator that won't fit in their tiny kitchen. Also be prepared to remove doors to get appliances into tight places. I don't know if you ever been up here to Chicago but parking is tough, everyday we risked getting tickets trying to make deliveries. Those metermiads showed no mercy and could careless about your delivery. Some days you had to park a block away then dolly the appliance down the street or you show up to a building with no elevator and the delivery is going to the 7th floor. O and since were on this topic lets not even forget about the customer's who have bed bugs, mice and roaches. Every time we would see them we would drive to the end of the block and get out and do the " You check me and I check you; See anything crawling?" Last thing you wanna do is take that crap back to the terminal or your home. It has happened.

Xpo was a 7 day a week account including holidays. We were only required to work 5 days a week but some weeks we worked everyday. Like I said earlier the number of stops are around 10-15 a day. They "USE" to pay by the stop not sure what their doing now. They will teach you all about appliances and how to do basics set ups like hooking up washers, dryers, refeers, stoves, dishwasher ect ect. It's honestly not too hard. Your'll even learn the terminology....What you would call a stove is technically called a Range. Don't be fooled It's a physically demanding job and not for the weak. Some days started at 6am and we didn't finish until 10-11pm at night and had to be back in the morning. Just like USPS Rain or shine you are required to be there. We never packed a lunch. Everyday we got tips which we used for lunch money. On a few occasions the customer would even offer us dinner or give us gift cards. And No offense to anyone but believe it or not....most of the good tips came from the lower class neighborhoods. Those rich folks up North (Lake Bluff, IL area forget about it).

While at XPO the Company got sued. After the plaintiff's attorneys "Woke us up" and showed me how business is really supposed to be done and how this was a 1099 scam I chose to join the class action lawsuit. After the lawsuit, a lot of stuff changed at XPO like needing your own truck and MC number. The money also went down. It went from as high as $6,500 gross (5 days) to $2,500-$3,000 a week!

i'll look in my email and see if I still have the expense sheet but it was only like truck note, insurance, fuel, and escrow.

Under the new agreements you "The Company" are now responsible for any damages to the customer's home. You also use to get paid for doing extra stuff like going up x amount flight of stairs, or hauling away the old appliance, returning to address you already attempted to deliver too earlier in the day and compensation for things like that disappeared. Now that I knew how to add, subtract multiply and divide I realized I was making about $10.00-$12.00 a hour under the new agreement so I quit.

Still overall enjoying the job at the time, I thought i'll try my luck again with another Company. Just as it was at XPO the money was great so I added 4 trucks. XPO will let you add more trucks too but as your about to see that's when all the problems started. I would show up every morning make sure my guys were loaded and had everything they needed and ride with them as a 3rd man on one of the trucks. The suit and Tie guys would tell my employees what to do or how to do something or even call them at home to ask them about a stop and I would call them out on it every time. It started getting to the point where say a guy... who is also a contractor for them with only had 1 truck and let's say his helper called off and now this guy is screwed.....They would break up one of my trucks and giving every contractor/ truck a extra 2-3 stops. What that did was free up two of my guys which the suit and tie guys would tell 1 of them to ride with the other contractor who didn't have a helper. So me and the Suit and Tie guys would bump heads about that and then I started having problems collecting payment from these contractors for using my help. It was big mess. Lesson learned!

To rap this story up someone sued the Company who's name I won't say due to a current class action lawsuit over same problems with XPO. They say your a o/o but your really a 1099 employee. After I joined the class action suit they canceled my contract and tried to get my guys to sign agreements with them directly cutting me out of the picture. Some stayed on and some left.

Like I said before they control everything. The only way I would go back to doing it is if I had the contract directly with the vendor. No Suit and Tie guys in the way.


Let me know if you have any questions...

 

Late 2015 I left. My trucks were leased from enterprise. Back then all you needed was a letter from the broker first weeks payment and a deposit. Insurance was set up with true north and they would fax it over to enterprise. Most of your deliveries are team lifts. Every truck is a two person operation. There is no way your going lift a 400lbs refrigerator by your self.
Plus we were getting paid by the stop and the longer you took at a customer's home the less likely you are to finish the route, any stops not completed you did not get paid for.

The other contractors always showed up to work but their helpers were sometimes no shows or would quit on them. When that happens the broker would break up 1 of my trucks. I've seen the same thing happen at XPO were some of those guys had 7 to 10 trucks.

Broker controls everything...... they route you, tell you what time to be at the customers home and how to deliver. Their are plenty of lawsuits out there so im not sure what their doing now to get around the control issue.

The only company I seen doing it correctly is JB Hunt and a small outfit in Columbus, Ohio. With them you are their employees and are paid very good.

 

JB Hunt use to be in house meaning you were their employees, I don't know if they contract it out like XPO. If your their employee then JB Hunt does not charge you anything.....hell you might even be a hourly employee.. But if you go with XPO then yeah your going to be a 1099 employee and responsible for insurance, fuel, escrow, damage ect.

I'm looking at my email now and will get back to you with the insurance. I'm sure i have it somewhere.

 

They say if you take a picture it will last longer........Here are some pictures of my crew I found.

TEAM LIFT

400 LBS REFRIGERATOR

DISH WASHER INSTALL



DISHWASHer install. If the customer has copper then we don't install it.



we had to remove the doors to get this into the customer's home.

 

I hated when we got places like this; they know your coming and they order a bunch of stuff and you show up and this is what you find. Then you call the broker/XPO and say hey this is what I got and im not going to deliver here and the customer flips out on you.....

 

Kind of makes me tear up a little bit. We had some great times! But now you see why this is a team truck and not a 1 man operation.


and for anybody who's just passing through to read this thread please tip your appliance delivery team; I will never understand how someone can tip the pizza guy but not someone who carrying a heavy appliance into your home.

 

insurance was 275 a week per truck. Truenorth wouldn't give me a discount for multiple trucks either. Insurance covers the truck and workman comp.
Xpo performance bond (escrow) was $1,000.

EDIT:

They will charge you back the cost of your drug screen and background check in your first settlement. They will also take a small amount until you reach the $1,000 cap. Truck rental was $450.00 a week no mileage cap. This includes all Maintenance. You only buy fuel and def. If you need them to give you a loan to buy your tools then they will set up a payment plan and take weekly payments from your settlement as well.


only deductions on my settlement were insurance, fuel card use and truck lease. Everything else is yours and Settlements are paid every Friday.