How's Everyone Doing in LTL Right Now?

I did that right after Yellow went bankrupt. Concrete companies hire pretty much anyone regardless of background, experience, other companies firing you, or even length of ciminal history. If you have a valid CDL and medical card, they only need to know what your uniform size is.

I wish I was halfway joking but I am not. There are a ton of perks worth mentioning if anyone is interested:

1. Local work. Cement becomes concrete once you add water, you will not go out further than 1.5 hours at most when loaded. Some pours can be less than 5 minutes away.
2. Competitive wages (almost on par with LTL)
3. Guaranteed 40 hours of pay. If you are available to work all week, you will get paid at least 40 hours.
4. Raining? Unless you are pouring inside a building (rare), enjoy your day off.
5. Year-round work in most cases. Never seen a layoff down South at least.
6. If you break enough stuff to get fired, you will have a job the next day.

And of course a bunch of downsides as well.

1. Shoddy benefits. Barely any vacation time and health insurance that is meant for unmarried drivers
2. 100,000,000 different ways to have an accident each day. I was accident free for 20 years, then I had mutiple in a year after doing concrete
3.. Frontend mixer trucks are 100% a death trap. Head-on collision? You are done.
4. Some companies loan you out. You may go empty out of town and work a city that is foreign to you.
5. ELD exemption . The nature of the job makes you virtually exempt from logging. I've seen drivers get pushed 18 hours before (rare)
6. Forced Saturday work as needed. If you were off half the week due to rain and arent near 40 hours, your Saturday work will be no OT
7. Dispatch/management will leave you out to dry. If you have a jackhole customer that is verbally abusive, your boss will side with them and not you. Customers pay the bills and any abuse you deal with is just part of your job description. (true story).
8. You will be constantly washing and rewashing your truck. Concrete is impossible to clean once cured, especially when it is on your truck.
9. Your job is unpredicable. Coming in at 1 AM doesnt mean you get off at 2 PM, you might be there till 5 PM or 8 PM (happened to me).
10. It is Class B work. If you do it long enough, you will have a hard time finding Class A work again.
11. People constantly quit or get fired. I've seen entire plants quit together. Then the company's problems are now YOUR problem to deal with.

I did the whole concrete mixer driver for 18 months and then a Class A pneumatic tanker position within the company came open. I quickly jumped on it and was fortunate to get the position. There is no way I would have stayed driving a mixer truck. Feel free to ask me anything on it.

 

10. It is Class B work. If you do it long enough, you will have a hard time finding Class A work again

Insurance companies have #### near made it so that 2 years non-class A means you've never driven a truck. Seen a lot of jobs now saying 1 year without class A exp. is unhireable.

 

10/4

 

Sounds like you need the counseling, bozo

 

10/4

 

I don’t provide counseling to man children, please grow up first and then we can talk

 

Yeah. Unfortunately I have Class A licensed colleagues that have been driving a mixer for more than 3 consecutive years and they are more or less "stuck" in the new driver status and can't get out of it despite their prior experience. I felt it was worth mentioning this to anyone considering concrete work.

I know times are rough and people are getting laid off left and right and dump trucks and concrete mixer work is always steady to jump into. But it comes with the risks you just mention if you stick around too long.

 

Not sure if I wrote something that you found offensive, but I would like to apologize to you and anyone else if I did.

 

[QUOTE="Opus, post: 13266735, member: 77070"
My point is this; you may think that they're screwing you over, but at the end of the day, they're just trying to get the job done......nothing more, nothing less. It ain't always about you.[/QUOTE]

Can you come to my barn and explain this to everyone?

The amount of inferred drama is ridiculous. It's all low key, so it's not a big deal - I just mentally roll my eyes and keep moving. A few weeks ago there was a kerfuffle over a late canceled bid run and who fell where onto extra board and when the board was set and who was getting preferential treatment. With the benefit of hindsight, technically I should have been one spot higher. I was told I should file on it - for a $5 difference. I will PAY $5 to avoid filling out a form and having two phone calls.

When I know it was a hectic night and a lot of things were in the air, why get twisted up? Nobody really got screwed and even if they did it wasn't malicious.

 

Reminds me of the linehaul driver who would get pissed off with me if I fueled the truck after a long P&D run. I was stealing his 3.50 from him since I was hourly.

Then another linehaul driver took the bid and he #####ed to the TM about me not filling the truck before his run.

Some of those guys have no idea how good they have if those are their complaints.