How's Everyone Doing in LTL Right Now?

You scared me away (jk lol)

 

What part of the country are you in? Out here in the state of ID the local jobs hardly pay anything over $20-24 per hour.

 

Do you not have Albertsons? They should be close to $30/hr. I know there's LTL companies out there, and the big ones all pay around $30 if not higher.

 

Well, I didn't get run off, but life has been keeping me away.

I am currently out of LTL and have been since 2023. As some of you remember, a somewhat noteworthy event happened in the summer of that year were two groups of grown men decided they were no longer getting along. The people that lead the charge and countercharge walked away fairly well off. Everyone else in the middle kinda ended up being unemployed. This had a very profound impact on both my finances and psyche. (Sorry, I am still super salty).

So I moved on and ended up working for a concrete company driving a mixer truck. After about a year of doing that, the lone Class A positioned opened up in the company and now I am driving a pneumatic tanker and occasionally a dump trailer. Of course as usual, I have way more luck than common sense, and a previous layoff at Holland placed me on a farm in Montana driving a pneumatic tanker for a few weeks in 2022. This was enough experience for my boss to give me the position over anyone else. And yes, there were others that were incredibly pissed off that I got that job.

My job consists of driving out an hour, getting live loaded with cement, then bringing the load back where I live unload it by blowing it out into a silo. A round trip with loading and unloading is a 4-5 hour process, so usually I only do two trips a day. Believe me when I say this: THIS IS CAKE WORK. The worst part of my day is having to go over a east and westbound scale; twice a day each, and hope they do not call me in. I love my job. So I now make $25.60 an hour, which is only down a few cents where I was making $26.50 at Holland. The real benefit is that I get at least 10 hours of OT a week where I was basically getting no OT at Holland. People also leave me alone and I can pretty much pick what time I want to come in. There is always something to do. If there isn't enough construction going on, I will drop my pneumatic trailer and just stockpile rocks or sand for my plant.

The other life changing event I had was that when I lost my old job, I followed some advice from a financial guru on the radio. After about 2 years of doing things differently, I managed to pay off all of my debt and I am almost done paying off my house. I have like $46K left on it and I should be able to get it knocked out in three years. I've also made the decision to pack up when the house is paid off and move back West. The South is not for us anymore. I think once I am back in Montana, I'll either stay doing aggregate work or maybe switch over to LTL again.

As always, I hope everyone else is doing well. I know things are shaky but I honestly think that things with the economy are just short term. There is a lot of geopolitical posturing going on between everyone and it is freaking out the markets. The US economy has always made a comeback and this time will be no exception. I know that doesn't help much for people feeling the pain right now, but keep your heads up and keep looking if you are underemployed or out of work entirely.