ATS Lease Program?

Dude one thing that I know is you need to fricken chill out. First of all if you read around more threads than ATS you will see that I was called back to active duty in 2006 and pulled out of the truck. I am a WMD specialist working on a civil support team. Im not going to bore everyone on here with what I do but if you like you can go to globalsecurity.org and search for CST and you read all about it. I make good money protecting the citizens of this great country. However I love trucking. I have as far back as I can remember wanted to be a truck driver. I too have an impeccable driving record and I pull job offers still and I haven't driven since 2006. I didn't try to insult you at all. You are just reading my words in a negative tone and in doing such place a negative spin on the meanings. I will return to driving myself soon because it is what I want to do. I love driving and it's not a job to me. I think that it is fantastic that you have a local job pulling a grand a week. Good for you. I am sick just sick of reading all of the conspiracy theory posts about the companies are out to screw the drivers. Yes they are all trying to turn a profit and stay afloat. If you were the owner of a company and had good drivers or customers would you go out of your way to submarine either one of them? I think not. SO when you have a large company with millions of dollars on the line, and lots of jobs and families depending on the company to be around for longer than just this months bills. I'm willing to be you pull out all of the stops as well. Are there less than honest or even down right dishonest/bordering on illegal things going on? Sure there is. As I have said before. The times are tough and everyone is hurting. Everyone is in survival mode just trying to be around when the storm lifts. We have to look at where we were before everything fell apart and how we were treated back then. Hedge that against what is happening now. Take CR. They were a joke ten years ago. They were a joke ten months ago. I'm sure they'll continue to be a joke for some time to come. They may never change. We get it. But I don't get that impression from driver that have driven there in the past. So settle down. Enjoy your cushy high paying daycab job.

Best of luck to you and your family

 

Just got my settlement. $4000 to the house.

 

Okay, Franco. We get it. You can stop saying the same things over and over again.

I had a really good week this week. At the end of the mediocre one I had last week, in which I got REALLY nervous about going backwards in my lease, I showed up at Cloud Thursday, and was hoping for a 200-300 mile quickie. By 9 am Friday, I was sweating it pretty hard, and my FM knew that. He sent me a few messages to just be patient, that I was a good driver, and things would work out. I figured he was just "doing his job". By 1 pm Friday, and and a pound of shot nerves later, no fewer than EIGHT offers came across. Oh, there'd been other ones, but they were all crap. 300 miles and sit all weekend. Great if youre loking to run home, but these were going the wrong way.

So, I started thumbing through what I'd been sent. My FM has a tendency to call immediately after they come, or start hammering me with messages about his suggestion. I appreciate the help, but would rather I had five minutes to make a decision myself. I'm not an idiot. There were some decent loads, and some not so decent. One caught my eye, and I decided to do something I swore I'd never do.

I snatched up a load to NYC.

Good miles, through the house (even only for a few hours), bridge pay, arb pay, and good surcharge. Plus, my Ipass arrived at the house that morning, so I didn't have to spend my eatin' cash on tolls.

As I was on the phone, I told my FM which load I had just grabbed, and I think he pooped a puppy. I simply said, "It's the best payin' one on there."

At 7 am Monday morning, I had better than $2000 made.

After that, I loaded (the same day by ONE pm!) two tank container things going to St. Louis. Compared to the NYC, it was junk, but it was SAME DAY, and got me the hell off the east beach. After St. Louis, I went to Peru, Il, and delivered this morning in St. Joseph, MO. Holy frickin GOD is it hot out.

I got empty around 1 pm next to a Co. driver who somehow has been following me for a week now. Couple ants short of a picnic this guy is. Anyway, I delivered right across the street from the place here in St. Joe we load out of, and saw 2 dropped trailers in there loaded and ready to go. It's freakin' hot out, and it's been a stressful week for me in NYC (even though it went well, my nerves are pretty frayed from being out of practice), and I'm tired anyway. So, I'm getting a good nights sleep, and looking forward to decent frieght tomorrow.The load offers I got today were all garbage, just like last Thursday (I think I see a pattern), and I'm hoping for either a St. Joe long for the weekend, or Nebraska Boiler (Lincoln is 140 miles away) into Canada. I could use some more of that Arb pay. If not, even just something longer for the weekend would be good. 1100-1500 even. I'm short on hours, and hate bouncing 70 all week.

I'll run all the NYC they want me to if it pays like that granite did. Even in Manhattan, it wasn't that bad. I used to run NYC all the time, but grew sick of it, and swore it off. But, they dangle a big enough carrot...

Good weeks, and bad weeks. Hell even my bad week last week wasn't all that bad. Definetly better than as a company driver.

I got my monthly noob message from the driver services gals today also. I'm to work with my FM to get to Cloud and test into Class 2 asap. I misunderstood. I thought I was supposed to wait 30 days, then test in. They tell me I was supposed to test in withing 30 days! Oops! That's fine. As long as I'm bringing good money home, flags and banners aren't that important to me. I wanted to learn the ropes on general freight and blades = massive time away from home anyway. Plus, being a 2, I don't have to worry about blades. They told me there's plenty of other OD for a 2 to haul.

I'm thinking I should have come here years ago. My wife figures I'd be pulling Schnables over a year ago already. Sometimes I'm kinda thick headed.

My only whine is the hometime. In 30 days, I haven't been home for anything more than 24 hours. I did get 2 days at Cloud when my truck needed service 2 wseeks ago, so I brought the wife and son out, stayed in the Days Inn (CLC card is cheaper than the ATS discount btw), and we had a blast in Cloud. It's a pretty good town, and my son LOVED the huge park with the splash pad, four playgrounds, pond, ducks, swans, boats, turtles... But, I'm still just getting started at this place too, so maybe I'll fall into something really neat out of Wisconsin at some point. Plus, being home a good amount of time this early in the game would probably really screw me up in the lease anyway.

I'm liking it big time. Just having he power to say "no" to a garbage load is worth it's weight! Yes, it's expensive. Yes, they hold too much power over you. Yes, it's a huge company with rules and regs out the ying yang, but people, I'm a maverick. I didn't start driving to follow all kinds of rules. For 12 years I've worked for smaller companies with little rules or policies. Sometimes though, that works against you. If I can get a long here, anyone can. Just do the #### job, don't be too much of a pain, and everything else seems to fall in place.

30 days in, and I'm pretty tickled.

 

I just got my weekend dispatch. 1803 miles. Farm equipment going to Cali for Monday. Loads Saturday out of Kansas. No Tarp pay or anything, but it shouldn't be too bad. I think I can even work in a reset! It's not the NYC load I had this week, but I'ts not sitting on my hands all weekend either!

 

Sinister, that is why you are making a profit, you are willing to run, the difference between makeing a profit and not makeing one is taking an NYC load vs. sitting for two days because you won't take one, I hate NYC with a passion, but have made very good money going in and spending the day there once in a while. Once you have been there a couple times and gotten completly lost for an entire afternoon, you'll learn three things, it is a very big place, hardly anybody speaks english and you never want to come back. but if you want to make a paycheck, sometimes it is a evil that must be dealt with, or you can sit in a truck stop and complain to anybody who'll listen that there is no freight, the company sucks, the dispatcher is in cahoots with the load planner to make sure you fail and so on

 

Agreed!

 

hey guys im thinking about hitting up ATC for a career. from reading your posts it seems like a good way to go if you're a worker. i live in phoenix is that a good place if i want to work for you guys?????? thx in advance for any into!!

 

Ive been waiting for Mr Franco to tell you all the rest of the story.

Of course, you guys know that ATS has a van division. Last year, the van drivers had so many damage claims against them that 5 of their main customers took their business elsewhere. Freight became extremely slow and a bunch of the doorslammers and FMs got their walking papers.

Mr Franco chooses to point fingers at ATS but never once did he mention that it was the drivers of the van division's fault.

 

triplesix.........so who's mr franco??? and are you saying that its not a good idea right now or at all???

 

actually before you answer my last post.. lol im a runner and a worker. im not afraid to sweat. im a car hauler right now and have been most of my career. ive done limited flatbed but i know one thing, i want a specialty that seems to be the way to keep my family with cash. im just to a point that im ready to be my own boss. i'm really tired of being a company driver and noone taking pride in their jobs and trucks they drive. I'm also tired of everyone only looking out for themselves and not looking at it like a family.
In your post about securing your loads better so the whole fleet can make money makes me want to be at the same company as someone like you!!! Anyhow thats kinda my deal right now and why im looking at anderson.