Chicago Air Freight

This is the first trucking company I have worked for as a company driver where pluses outnumber minuses:

Some of the pluses:
- number of miles. Before the corona virus shutdown, my OTR average was around 3,600-4,000 miles/week, $2,000 weekly paychecks. This was largely thanks to the work of dispatchers who were managing to find long weekend trips, Friday-Monday would typically be 2000-2500 miles OH-CA loads and such. 95%+ of most routes were on the Interstate and with truck speed not governed, I was able to cover 750 miles/day on some days driving through AZ, NM, TX.. where the speed limit goes up to 75-80mph.
On Amazon dedicated account OH-MO/OH-WI I was averaging around 3,200miles/week.

- easy to work with people. They gave their best to accommodate me to keep me driving for the company, for example, I asked for miles to be calculated using Google Maps, my request got approved. I didn't have the option to choose with some of the previous companies I drove for, one of which was notorious for cheating drivers out of their miles by using some kind of wacky zip-code to zip-code calculation that was paying me far less miles than actual distance per trip.

- dependable. Since this is a smaller company, things would get resolved one-on-one right away before becoming an issue, no gimmicks. It was refreshing to see office people treat me (and my time) with respect for the hard work I put in without being treated like a homeless person with no life for being a truck driver like it has happened all too often with some of the former, mega trucking companies where office people would do things like leave me stranded in some parking lots without the need to keep me informed before leaving the office what is going on or what's going to happen with my next load.

- payroll lady is very precise. I didn't end up in situations where it took weeks to resolve pay issues like it knew to happen with a trucking company I drove for before joining this one, good payroll department/lady takes plenty of stress away.


Some of the minuses
- too much use of personal credit card, to pay for things like scales, tolls. While it's been reimbursed without problems, it's a distraction to use personal bank card often being a company driver.
- 1099 contract, for some it works for some it doesn't. For me it did since I don't drive all year long, things like paid time-off do not affect me.