Husband and Wife R&L 2021

Not all locations. The locations that are growing in leaps and bounds do “Street Hire”. Means you hire in off the street as a Feeder Driver. Some cities have hired hundreds of teams in a short amount of time and that is the only way they could get that many in a short time period. Chicago needed drivers so bad they hired them in at almost top pay day one. If they don’t do that in your area you are out of luck. I know Pleasantdale Ga was expanding rapidly, but maybe not doing street hire teams. I was a street hire 20 years ago and so are many other UPS drivers, but not all were street hires.

 

I spent 10 years with R&L. There are three ways to do things there, the right way, the wrong way, and the R&L way. The teams do well financially, but they run. Getting personal time off can be difficult and vacation slots go by seniority. A lot depends on the SCM, service center manager, but teams deal a lot with central dispatch in Wilmington. Central can be challenging. There is a lot of favoritism. They are a decent compa but I walked away from a 0900 city bid spot at 51 years old and 10 years seniority about 1/2 way up the seniority board on the city side. That should tell you something itself. You’ll either love it and retire from them or you’ll hate it and walk away. I hated it for the last 5 years but had to stick it out for health benefits for the family. As soon as my wife got a teaching job with bennies I was GONE. Good luck

 

I wish i could get as lucky as you getting hired off the street into a driver position as a team driver with my wife. I dont see it happening in my area near Atlanta Ga nor would i even know if it did id probably be to late since im always either driving or sleeping. What position did you apply for when you got hired off the street? Surely you applied to some position? Did you apply for a driver position or a dock position and got hired straight into driver position?

 

Man what terminal did you run out of for r and l? Thats a long time to stay if you hate it. You ran solo not teams though so that could be too different experiences for you and me. I hear they have miles recently raised teams pay to 80cpm which isnt the best but not the worst pay you get a brand new truck. I spoke with a guy today an hour ago he said at my nearest terminals we can probably get a bid tun immediately in the kennesaw or ellenwood terminals. I dont really like dedicated i like running wild. Dedicated the delivery times are strict and you hardly have downtime to shower or barely eat because nobody factors this in, in the trucking industry they only factor in how long it takes to get some where based upon only drive time.. a driver told me he grossed 120k team driving and this was a few years ago so the pay has gone up since then. So idk i haven't fully made my decision im still going to call estes and see what they say. Od everyone says there trucks suck for sleeper teams they have no fridge cant have pets not radio no inverter there just bare boned.. im still doing my research and weighing out my options seeing the best route for me and my lifestyle.

 

Feeder Driver is what all full time street hire driver positions are. Depends on the location and their needs that determines whether you get hired in to team right off the bat or not. Generally a location either does street hires all the time or never does it unless they have to expand rapidly and change the way they hire for some period of time. Probably LTL will work better for you in your situation.

 

I mean ups is the gold standard as far as pay for the fact you get paid for everything. Ive never been a fan of how seniority works though and ill never vote Democrat since all unions want you to vote that way ive been in one and my dad was union for 25yrs for lockheed Martin and still is with metrolink. Long story short they fired him and didnt have his back in getting his job back and i was in the middle of all this and honestly it ruined my family's life he was the bread winner of the family so unions have a bad taste in my mouth what i mean is ill work for one but i refuse to be brain washed by there political lies. Some chick told me today seniority is all we have its our voice and im like okay you sound like a protester now. You voice doesn't mean a licking to these unions they get you hire pay cause it gets them hire pay simple as that.

Now i aint here to argue unions im here to make maximum dollar for my efforts as us truckers should be paid for everything we do and ups is one of the few if not the only one who really pays us foe all our on duty time. Plus decent pension but doubt anyone will be able to survive off that with as expensive as it is to live now if this was 20-50 yrs ago sure you would he living like a king off your pension.

I have an exit strategy out of trucking i just need as much money as possible to do it as quick as possible it has served its purpose but time to move on. Its sad we need a union to make companies do what they should be doing anyways but i guess thats just how it is these days.

Anyways so your saying apply for feeder position and i guess when they call ask if they have open team positions available? My wife wont do solo work and i will if i have to but not my preference we got into trucking to team together so thats how we want to keep it..

 

Also there's no real hiring position in the Atlanta area or Georgia in general.. the few postings they have for day drivers is from tforce which isnt ups but its posted on ups website which i find weird and i hear they are union though and they for sure hire off the streets im sure. But they only hire team owner operators which i found weird... i would go with odfl or estes but i hear there trucks suck there bare boned no fridge or inverters we bring our own food on the truck so i need these things they are essential i quite frankly dont understand why they aren't standard on all.sleeper trucks..

 

Don’t like unions simple solution, don’t take a Union job. Nobody will force you to do so.

 

Missed my point a bit. In relation to linehaul drivers and city guys R&L runs relatively few teams. My point is they are a unique company culture. They’ve grown a lot in the recent past and there are a lot of guys that have been there 2,3,or4 decades and then the guys that came on in the last 10 years. That clashes a bit between the two groups. There is definite favoritism and getting time off can be difficult. Just because you run system as a team doesn’t mean they’re not watching your transit times. LTL doesn’t really have “dedicated” runs. You have a “bid” run and when a bid comes up it is awarded based on seniority. LTL teams run differently than a true OTR company. You may get to a terminal and sit for awhile while a load is readied for you. Most of they linehaul at R&L is home daily, night time turns or meets. As a team you may meet a solo driver in a day cab somewhere and you are expected to be there at a specific time. Same with terminal to terminal runs. The freight has service times and things are dispatched to meet service times and cut times. Like I said, they’re not a bad company but they are unique, they have some qualities of a small family run operation (how they started) and yet other times act like any other major company. They do not pay per diem,but as a company driver you cannot claim per diem anyways since the tax laws changed a few years back. I was out of Norwalk. We only had 1 solo system driver the entire time I was there and he only lasted a few months. We had about 6 teams there but our linehaul had about 85-90 drivers on the seniority list and 120 or so city drivers. And like I said as a team you will be dealing with Central Dispatch and they are definitely shot through with the Good ‘ole Boy network mentality. Get on their bad side and they will make life difficult for you. That was one of the main reasons I moved from line haul to city. I had many runs pulled out from under me or shortened up the meet spot which affects how much you make because the guys I was meeting were buddies with central dispatch guys and gals. When I said something politely about it, I in essence got starved out. There were some nights I only got a run that paid 90$ for 7 hours work. You do the math. A city slot opened up and I moved. The city side is a whole other ball of wax.

 

Wow im sorry to hear that about your experience now makes it difficult.. i team drive for fedex contractor and i sit for 10-24hrs for loads a lot thats a lot of wasted time i dont get paid for at all. Fedex well is laid back if you dont want to work hard nobody gives how long it takes you to deliver at fedex as long as its not overly excessive but ive never been called upon.. ohh i know how these trucking companies are the freight they dont take in consideration traffic or weather they set a time and expect you to get there like i still have to take a 30 min break use the restroom post trip pre trip change driver they dont factor none of this.. had a dedicated run two actually for ups and you didnt even have time to use the restroom literally and you had to deliver 100% on time no excuses.. so many times i held in a number two thought i was going to go in my pants dont know how i made it never again will i do that if i have to go im going to go i dont care what they tell me. Im not going to truck much longer so as long as the work is there and i can make a consistent paycheck then im going to just do my job and keep my mouth shut nobody cares out here anyway why should i..