Anything but Tanker?

Any good news since the buyout?

 

I usually flip 2 of the dome latches up. I'm guessing the tank didn't have a Chicago fitting or a Christmas tree on top?

 

I'm not Mustang190 but I'll give my two cents. The good: Groendyke pays for more frequent truck washes, including the engine; they are investing money into terminals. The bad: they dropped our top speed from 68 to 65; they have more rules to follow; their equipment has fewer bells and whistles than McKenzie.

Honestly very little has changed so far, IMO.

 

What’s the pay like at Groendyke/McKenzie?

 

I can't say what they are offering new drivers because my pay package was grandfathered in at the time of take over. OTR guys willing to stay out minimum of three weeks as part of the defunct McKenzie Gold Team were/are making .60/mile loaded and .31/mile empty. Not great unless they keep you loaded. Under a certain mileage threshold per run, the driver gets paid a percentage of the load instead of by the mile. Local guys get paid by the hour.

Layover pay is 55 bucks. Demurrage is paid at an hourly rate that varies by time with the company. Currently I'm at 18/hr. No load/unload pay, per se, unless you are on site more than 2 hours. 15/hr for waiting at tank wash. Holiday pay even if you don't work. Not sure how it's calculated.

Overall you can make money if you never go home and they keep you running, loaded. Take away any of those variables and it's a different story.

 

Was just curious~Thanks for the info

 

I got my license in 1994, then worked for CRST for a month.

I'm glad I wasn't under contract.....

After I got home, I started riding/walking around town, looking for local trucking jobs. I got on with a little mom-n-pop outfit that was willing to take a chance on me, noob that I was.

I've been in and out of trucking since then, and except for a sweet LTL linehaul gig that didn't last, it has all been tanks for me.

GasHauler gave you some good advice. Beat the bricks a little. Do some backslappin' and gladhandin'. Find a place you want to work and build rapport with the TM. He/she may still tell you "Our insurance requires two years experience", but you might be first in line when they decide to bend their hiring rules. Good luck!

By the way, I trucked 8 years with a 10-year break.

I got 31 straight rejections.

In two weeks, I'll have a year with company #32.

Hang tough.

 

Still here. Been with McKenzie for 16 years. Since I’m a local driver now I really haven’t seen a change except they cut the trucks down to 64 mph. They say it is 64.9 mph? WTF?
It appears to me that GT is just a big mega company, we are now numbers instead of names.
GT must have a high driver turnover rate, looks like us McKenzie drivers are at the top of the seniority list! LOL

 

@Bolt Thrower I second @Chinatown 's advice. You're going to have to pay your dues in the tanker world as well as in the trucking world in general, so you might as well get them both done at once.

I started off swinging doors (dry van), then pulled an end-dump before I finally got a job pulling a tanker. If I had known how much better tanker work was, I would have gone directly into tanker yanking right out of school.

Even if your first tanker job isn't all that great, once you have a year of tanker experience you will have a lot more options available to you than you would if you only had a year of non-tanker driving experience.

 

I'm looking at them (Love's-Gemini), but can't find any pay information. They have an opening advertised for Van, Texas which is close to my residence, but would like to know what they pay before doing the application......anybody know what they pay nowadays? If they pay depending on experience, I'm over 10 yrs, experience, no accidents or tickets.