Craigslist Carriers Strike Again

Hey, with only 10 toes and 10 fingers to count on, lucky they even made it to $28.50

 

If they figure your OT that way I wonder what else they can screw up.

 

i wonder if that was for a driver/leasing/temp agency, that gets a kick back from the worker.

 

Sounds like East Coast Driver Solutions (ECDS). They are basically a temp agency for CDL drivers. Making the fairly long leap that this is actually who we're talking about...

They contract with Eagle Express, which is a US Postal contractor. The Post Office supposedly mandates that driver pay be split into two categories; Heath-and-Welfare (HWP) pay, and regular pay. About $5 per hour is HWP, and about $20 per hour is regular pay. (Specific numbers vary slightly with the route and location that you are assigned to.) ECDS generally advertises in Craigslist, in the area where they have routes that need coverage. They may claim, in the ad, that they pay time-and-a-half over 40 hours; this is a "misunderstanding" between Payroll and Recruiting, probably based upon confusion about the details of employment law and exceptions for the trucking industry, and postal contract specifics. When I was recruited, they gave me this line about how you get time-and-a-half for anything over 40 hours. I questioned the math, and it was explained to me that it didn't apply to HWP; only to regular pay. Of course the numbers still don't make sense, but that's probably because the recruiter doesn't understand it, either.

There is no time-and-a-half; regular pay is around $20/hour, and the $5/hour HWP is supposed to go to pay for health insurance, with anything left over (and it isn't much) supposedly going into a 401k. As a 1099 worker, you get the whole $25/hour in your check, at ECDS - you aren't eligible for group health insurance or 401k participation, anyway. As W-2 employee, it gets confusing, rapidly, likely because ECDS doesn't understand the postal contract, and isn't a party to it, in any case. It takes several months to become eligible for W-2. This is how it was, about a year ago...

On Craigslist, ECDS indicates that their company is located centrally in whatever area the specific Craigslist that they are listed in, covers. In fact, they are based out of New Jersey. As far as I can tell, they are in rented offices, they have no rolling stock, no equipment, and no assets of any note, of any kind. Eagle appears to use them as a shield against liability for routes that cannot be run as scheduled, within hours-of-service rules. Drivers have effectively no recourse against a company with no assets to take, in a lawsuit... and since ECDS is not registered with DoT as a carrier, all that DoT can do to them is fine them into bankruptcy - where they have no assets to lose. ECDS is free to engage in all of the deceptive recruiting and pay practices, log harassment, and pressure tactics, that they want - holding Eagle at a distance from this behavior, and essentially making everyone (except for the driver) immune to any serious backlash for doing business this way.

Now, don't get me wrong... it's not a bad gig, if you don't mind being set up to be thrown under the bus. If you do what they want and don't complain, the money can be excellent - I billed 80 hours per week, working for these folks, at $25/hour, some weeks. Yes, that's $2000 per week, on 1099 tax status, and also a big fat "egregious" violation of the 70-hour rule (not to mention most of the other rules). But, since you aren't an Eagle employee, you aren't in their electronic log system, so it pretty much has to be paper logs... and as long as you don't get busted, all is well. But if you do, you *will* be thrown under the bus, and if you complain about being asked to do it in the first place, they will stop sending work your way, and either starve you out, or starve you into compliance.

The Post Office usually starts running extra routes, near Christmas, so that's likely what would drive Eagle (and maybe others) to start using companies like ECDS to fill the extra slots. Don't expect the work to last, after Christmas.

Now, what you are seeing may not be ECDS. Probably not, in fact; it's a fair stretch of the imagination, since they don't hire very many drivers in any given area. But that's the model, and it applies equally well to any line of trucking, so don't be surprised if whoever it turns out to be, is operating similarly.

Heads-up!

 

Post the link, I'd like to troll the hell out the poster

 

That's how they roped me in... I responded to a Craigslist ad with a wise crack about the supposed location of their headquarters. According to Google maps, in their Craigslist ad, they were located in the middle of a large historic cemetery.

The recruiter lady tried to dress me down about the inappropriateness of my response to her job ad, and I suggested that she should probably think harder about the wisdom of hiring people to drive her $150,000 truck, who were trusting enough to send all of their personal information and employment history to some stranger on Craigslist, whose company was located under a headstone...

She must have been pretty desperate for drivers, to hire me after that...

 

I didn’t realize craigslist was still around after all stories in the news of people using it to rob or murder their victims.

 

I've, of course, seen that in the paper What I've always been curious about is if it happens more or less than someone putting an ad in the classifieds.