Highest paying LTL trucking company

Estes trains dock workers for the road. Dock to driver program. They said 2 years "preferred" on qualifications. Training for the doubles is usually just a week riding with a guy then your off to feed the fish. As far as placards go they give you a sheet of paper you sign when you have hazmat on that trailer. It shows what placard is required. You just flip and go.

If you dont have a cdl then go apply to be a dock worker for 20 something an hour and apply for the next school date. Let estes pay for your cdl.

Starting pay is .615 cents a mile. 5 days it's easy to gross 1700 week. Wanna work 6 days you can go 1900 plus. Once you hit top rate we have guys who love staying out. 2600 I've seen dudes gross regularly.

 

Good God almighty. It kind of makes what I'm doing out here OTR seem silly in comparison. 7 days for $950-$1,000 gross compared to 6 days for $1,900 or 5 for $1700. Wow.

The training for LTL sounds way better mentally than my month of OTR training! Like a normal job training type of deal, where you and your trainer part ways at days end.

Do most guys seem to do ok with only 1 week of training though?

The placards don't sound bad at all! I guess for some reason I thought of it being more complicated than simply signing a piece of paper and simply displaying the correct placard. I was thinking I'de have to be digging through an encyclopedia size manual or something.

I have my CDL class A with my tankers and doubles/triples (I think it was labeled as "twins") endorsements. I started orientation with my company in December 2018, started training January 2019 and went into my own truck solo on about February 22. I've been pulling reefer and dry van, all nationally. I stay out 4-6 weeks at a time.

Are you saying that even with my CDL license I'm going to have to work exclusively the dock at first with their driver to dock program?

I know some LTL companies (well I think anyways) make you unload or load sometimes, but it would be a bit disappointing to have worked so hard for my license only to have to become a 100% dock worker for a few months........

Though I will admit I don't know how to drive a forklift so I would need training on that as well. Nor would I know how to properly load a trailer for proper weight distribution either.

 

Forklifts aren't hard to run. Loading can get tricky depending on freight. Just have to use common sense.

Sometimes beggars cant be choosers when it comes to training. Paid for college so i could have options. I did locals and day trips at my first company for two months before i got let loose.

Just focus on your experience and when the time is right you'll know. I got burnt out after a year and started researching leads. Thought about tanker or LTL. Took another year to make the leap so i had better options and it paid off.

 

I never run a fork lift. I also sleep in hotels not the truck... if you wanna stay out here 4-6 weeks I have a few buddies who do that. Last year they made 120k... I’m basically doing what you doing just sleeping in hotels and out only 5 days. I avg 1950 week gross. I’m still 4 cents away from current top rate. Never hurts to apply.

 

I didn’t know if you had your cdl. No you won’t do dock work as a linehaul driver... where do you live? I think we have 215 terminals so you gotta be close to 1 lol


Its basically what you do now. Nothing really to train other than break a set hook a set. Once you see it a few times it's no big deal

 

I'm in the Charlotte NC metro area. Hate the traffic here though our infrastructure just hasn't kept up with the population growth and I can't see myself driving in the metro area everyday, unless I'm doing the graveyard shift and don't have to deal with traffic.

Honestly, I run a lot out here in the Nebraska - Iowa - Illinois line, and I do have to say I wouldn't be opposed to moving to somewhere like Iowa or Nebraska. I say that now, I guess I might get tired of the winters eventually though.

I've be open to moving to other places, is what I'm basically saying. I'de stay in the Charlotte metro area if I knew I could get out of driving in it during daylight hours within a year. Graveyard shifts seem to be popular with LTL's, from what I've seen on this forum anyways. So maybe that wouldn't be a problem (dealing with Charlotte traffic during daytime).

EDIT - do your buddies who stay out 4-6 weeks run teams or solo? If I'm running that long at a time out, which I would DEFINITELY be interested in for the kind of money you're talking about, I guess it wouldn't matter where I lived if it's like OTR where they send you everywhere.

 

It's a pretty convenient system, but it's not foolproof. You still need to know what you're looking at, and not trust that sheet of paper until you've verified it is correct. I don't find many errors, but I find them often enough that I won't leave until I double check the paperwork.

 

It's not like what you did before because you already know how to drive. I train at my place and I only do 3 days for experienced drivers. I'd do more if a guy wasn't getting the hang of our paperwork and computer system, but so far I haven't needed to. Granted, we don't pull doubles, but I've heard that at many companies that basically consists of showing you how to hook and break once and then you will get plenty of practice thereafter.

A lot of it consists of on-the-job training. Get a bunch of phone numbers from other guys you work with so you can have some people to ask about getting into various terminals or whatever. You can't possibly learn even a fraction of all of that information during training.

 

Same here. It's garbage in, garbage out. The biggest problem I've encountered is when they enter the weight for a tote under non-bulk.