How's Everyone Doing in LTL Right Now?

Two thoughts - while credit scores are a sham, you don't need to carry a balance to make it go up. Longevity and total available credit matter more than utilization.

Secondly, why care about getting over 800? Once you're over 760 there's no real advantage to trying to improve your score. You'd be better off negotiating for a better rate (like putting $20,000 in a two year cd to get your mortgage rate cut by a half point).

 

Because having the 800+ score is a lever to pull when you’re dealing in manually underwritten loans.

 

I had a fun day.

Been spending a lot of time in the shop with trailer issues. Today I saw almost an inch of daylight between a brake shoe and the drum. "That ain't right." Rolled it to the mechanic.
"I'll adjust it but I'm sure the slack adjuster is toast."
"Do you wanna put a new one on?"
"We don't have the part."

I've had some version of this conversation on repeat for weeks. Shop is kinda useless without parts. But this is Cooper policy.

So my decision when any little problem comes up is, run the trailer or sit, unpaid, while the dock swings the bleeping thing.

I call my TM today and ask "Can I at least get paid for the time I spend dealing with these maintenance issues?"
"Nope. That's not our policy."
We argue a little. I tell him 99% of drivers pass the junk right along, and here's why- they don't want to give their time away for free.
He says they'll start if they don't want to get punished. He tells me to tell him about every instance I have to swing a trailer or spend time at the shop due to a repair, so that he can track down the previous driver of that trailer and reprimand or fire them.

This is not the outcome I was hoping for.

I was hoping to get paid. I was hoping he might see if he could get the shop stocked in parts. Instead he's telling me to rat out other drivers so he can potentially fire them.

He says if I want to complain about that stuff, call the regional head of maintenance. So I do. His answer: it's on the drivers.
I tell this guy, the incentives are whack. He admits there's more they could probably do, like, and I'm not making this up, offering a candy bar every time a maintenance item is properly reported.

I ask him why the shops aren't stocked with parts. "New inventory controls."

I ask him why our shops used to do four inspections a year and now they only do one. "Increased workload as per rapid growth of the network. We need to rely on drivers to do post trips."

This is where we're at at Cooper.

Today it was a slack adjuster. Last week I brought in a trailer from Chicago and watched our trailer mechanic pull off the wheel, the drum, and the hub to get to a bad wheel seal. He sorted through his meager inventory of seals. No match. So he put the same bad seal on and buttoned the whole thing up, poured in fresh grease. That's as good as he could do. That trailer went to Fargo the same night.
I told this to my TM trying to make a point about the inventory but all he heard was "the mechanic should have put that trailer out of service, I'm going to reprimand him for that."

The week before I was building a set. It was a Monday and Mondays are flat tire days (IYKYK). While my rear pup was jacked up got my dolly in place and the lead trailer in front of that. After the rear was dropped back to earth I slammed the set together, aired it up, and found the front trailer had a massive air leak at the chamber right behind the license plate (the one supplying air to the dolly). Naturally the shop didn't have the part, so I had to have the dock swing the trailer, while I sat there, for free.

I could've run most of this equipment. Even some of the tires that were at 25 psi. Could have gotten down the road and saved myself hours upon hours of time. That's what everyone else does. Instead I'm at loggerheads with two people who could fire me for sticking my neck out about the abysmal state of trailers. My other option is to rat out other drivers. In fact that is not an option it's a mandate from the TM now, following our conversation.

Why do I even open my big mouth

 

Funny enough I've tried to get banks to manually underwrite a mortgage to no avail. Even a credit union I've kept 30k cash in for over 5 years wouldnt hear it.

 

Why not simply go on duty and get paid by the hour?

 

It's not much of a lever, in my opinion. Certainly not one I would spend resources to obtain. Manual underwriting doesn't even really look at the score, it's more about assets/income compared to liabilities. Even with an 800+ score, I still have to negotiate rates.

 

Sounds like it’s time for a move. Come over to where I’m at.

 

Linehaul, I'm paid by the mile.

 

Linehaul can go on duty for delay pay everywhere else I've heard of.

 

Not at cooper I actually logged in today for the first time in a while and this being the first post I see is funny. because I was going to see if anybody else was frustrated with them. AFAIK the only way a line haul guy can get any hourly pay is by dock work and the occasional training

I’ve only been here for 7 months but recently things have gotten crappy in more ways than one