Good, Bad, and the Ugly about LTL (or your company)

I work for con-way freight


Pro's:

Decent/Well maintained equipment..I get pulled in for a level one almost monthly and I've never had any issues.Maintenance issues are addressed here

pay is decent.

Pulls almost exclusively doubles/triples,rocky mountain doubles. I love pulling em.

One board seniority...thought it sucks when you're at the bottom, at least you can switch from dock to city to hostler to night line-haul or day line-haul if you have the strap and not lose time

Monday to friday linehaul schedules with overflow on weekends.

Non- union. Enough said on that

cons

Get written up for every single thing
Lots of dock time..i mean boatloads if you have a bid and at the bottom.
Extraboard bs when you're at the bottom
Just a number here in the meat grinder

 

I work there too and he's about dead on. Biggest positive change here in the last nine years is by far the equipment. Just about every truck here now is 2010 or better and the trailers are getting newer as well.

My biggest complaint is some of the automatic termination things. Some are legit, but a lot of them are mistakes that will happen to people over the years - especially the dock stuff.

The other thing is we run 100% legal. Most, maybe all of the big LTL companies do but it has been strictly enforced at every terminal I've been based out of.

 

It's been slow at my job. Being on the flex board I've just been going in and working the dock. Been luck and getting my 8 every night though.

 

you work for conway?

 

Yeah, in Northern Indiana.

 

Pros
Making more money than I was when doing OTR
Set schedule, no sitting around
Being paid for EVERYTHING work related, no freebies (only time not paid is the 30 minute lunch break)
Very small workplace, everyone knows each other, feel like an actual human being again, not just truck number #35570234034
Excellent terminal manager, helpful coworkers
No threats of layoffs, we are actually understaffed
75 mph truck

Cons
###### equipment, worst engine in the world (Mercedes Benz)
Dock gets COOOOOOLD
Depending on the terminal I go to some of the forklifts can be complete crap
Shift starts a bit too late for my taste

If my company had better equipment and mantained their terminals like they should it would be an excellent place to work at. Even then, it's not a bad place at all.

 

you said non union. enough said on that. after reading your cons are you sure enough said?

 

Only good thing about that non-union status is the lack of lay offs. Don't mention pay or pension.

 

please dont turn this into a u/non u thread. i'm sure there is enough of those on here. Just my opinion.

I think unions are a cancer in the freight world today, especially when you have so many carriers chasing limited freight. They are not able to adapt and change. I see the teamsters thing in your avatar. You do your union thing, and Ill do my non union thing.

I was reading a YRC thread on another board, and tons of you guys are on layoff. That's all Ill say on that.