Confessions of a Schneider Newbie

DFO has set the bar pretty high on his thread,lets see if you can top it

 

Glad to hear you're coming aboard Sadwar, I'll be really interested to hear about how it goes on you're side of the country. I look forward to reading it because I feel like usually I'm spending all my time on here blabbing away in my own thread LOL.

 

you are.
And he isnt even telling where the best cheeseburgers are. Not very helpful, is he?

 

I don't understand how some people get lucky like this. I'm OTR, started out regional, and I might get two hauls a week over 400 mi. Most of the time I'm chasing down an empty trailer that probably isn't there or stuck at a shipper that doesn't have a clue. A week or two ago I spent 28 hrs at a place in Battle Creek MI. Immediately after that my truck was in the shop for four days for a new radiator. As soon as I got back on the road I spent so much time searching for an MT that it pushed me past the business hours of the shipper and I had to wait to pickup the next day. Last week I dropped off my relay in Tonawanda, and it took 5 hours for the box planners to find me an empty they sent me to three different places and none were available. I got lucky and caught another Schneider driver getting unloaded and called my dbl to clear it with her to get the MT from him. I spend most of my time in Ohio, New York, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Almost every load I get is 40k plus unless its a relay. My truck is beat to hell. 08 century with a hard 600k. I've got sheet metal screws holding the headlight assembly in place, same for the dash. Steering wheel sits at about half a turn when rolling straight down the highway, fairings dented to crap, body panels held on with zip ties, bumper warped all to hell where it had overheated at some point in the past and melted I'm guessing, holes rusted through on my shock absorbers, bad tires and a leaky windshield that causes the defroster to blow water all over the dash. The shop has "fixed" the windshield a couple times already. Other than that they replaced my windshield wiper when the arm broke off. They say I'm sol for the shocks and tires though. Its amazing to me that someone gets miles like that out of the gate. I might get 1500-2k if I get lucky. No bonus for me ever, my DBL says the out of route mileage thing is screwed up somehow and they're working on fixing it. On my scorecard my out of route miles is around -1750%. A lot of guys say if you take per Diem you're screwing yourself, but honestly if it wasn't for that at this point I'd never bring home over $500.

 

Your experience as a company driver sounds like mine, what OC are you based out of? I spent most of my time running around in the NE, way up there. My first truck was a real piece of work like yours, 06 Century with 850k+, had it for 6 months. My second one was much nicer, guess they felt bad for making me put up with the starter truck for so long lol. I took at look at my W-2 today that they mailed to my house, I started training at Charlotte the last week in January 2013 and ended my time as a company driver at the end of October. You know what I GROSSED, before taxes? A little over 11k. I'm not kidding. Only reason I stuck with it is because I had the goal of becoming an IC in mind. Tell your DBL you want to see improvement. If you don't ask for another DBL. If still no improvement, take your experience and start looking elsewhere, that's what I would have done had I wanted to stay a company driver. Not trying to bash Schneider here, just saying that man I feel your pain. Seems with Schneider its either really good or really rough. Could always consider looking into bulk if you want to stay with SNI, seems like most of those guys do pretty good.

 

After reading that I was thinkin maybe they found a new DFO, iliketodrivetruck do you feel SAFE driving that truck with those issues?