Ashley Distribution

Flying to Arcadia the 18th, to start orientation. Gonna be PTP out of advance. 5 years experience and Ashley sounds good so far. Concerns I have right now are mainly the northeast bailout loads. I haven't lost anything north of virginia. Anyone tell me how the dispatchers are with routing you? Do they talk at you or with you? In a perfect world I would be happy as could be with a run to Texas and back, or the back and forth run to jacksonville. I know I will be new but there's only so much "new guy" stuff I can take. Thanks

 

That's one of the better things about being here compared with other places. Dispatch is pretty hands off. No mandated routes. You're the captain of the ship. They send the trip and then it's up to you to make it happen. They're there if you need anything but they don't bug you or micromanage.

Not too much 'new guy' stuff to deal with. Everybody is pretty helpful and wants you to succeed. It's a different culture than at the megas.

We're not running as much Texas from advance as we used to but you'll get out there some. Alot of Tampa/Jax stuff though. They're constantly tweaking the lanes and seem to be keeping us more regional now than when I started a couple years ago but you'll still get some longer runs in there you can stretch your legs on. You'll see some northeast too. Everybody gets their leesport week every now and then but it isn't that bad. Go up get it done get back and then don't see it again for awhile.

 

That is probably about the best you can expect out of any "home weekly" OTR carrier, private or not.

I wish more companies could run so that drivers could run hard 12 to 14 days, and take a full uninterrupted 96 to 108 hours off twice a month. If you do at least 2500 miles a week or average more than that, the truck should be more than paying for itself and the bean counters in the office should be happy and shut up with that "excess equipment downtime" nonsense. Just stagger the off time so that every driver gets that time off over a weekend at least once every two months. I am not one that really needs or wants every single weekend off, sometimes there's things that you can only take care of during the weekdays.

Being home on weekends for a short time is bittersweet. You barely have time to unpack your bags and do laundry. Weekend projects suck when less than a weekend is all you have. Give me 4 days and I can actually get things done and enjoy life.

 

What's the deal with all these loads that Ashley has other companies do? Is it because they can't keep up with their own growth? Or are they tossing the crappy loads to the side that nobody wants? LOL

I am submitting an app with Ashley as well as applying at a small carrier that does outbound loads for them. Wont make nearly the money with the smaller carrier when you factor in benefits, but they are home weekends plus 1 to 3 nights a week...

 

Even before I had a wife, kids, & dog couldn't fathom being gone more than a 5-6 days at a time. I love trucking but no way am I hanging out in this thing for 2 weeks at a time. I had a gig where was home every weekend but one weekend would be for 48 hours, the next for 72-80 hours. That suited me just fine, got home to take care of stuff on Friday's or Monday's depending on when I got in.

And also majority of the times with typical OTR carriers you'll get a 800-900 mile run on a Friday to be delivered on a Monday, so at least one day you doing nothing but sitting at a truck stop hundreds of miles away from home.

Naw man, give me my weekends at home, to each it's own though

 

Already coming on with the wrong attitude.

 

Not crappy. Generally areas we don't have good back haul freight out of get put on outside carriers. Some of the outside carrier stuff is customer requested pickup. And no, we don't have a large enough network yet to cover everything, but we are working on that.

 

I was referring to the ones that get you home every week to begin with.

The one that I am still technically "employed" by, I stayed out 3 or 4 weeks (sometimes more) and took a full 7 or more days off every month. Plus I was at the yard 99% of the time for my weekly restart (or to catch up on hours for a day) anyway.