Indian River Transport, Co. - Winter Haven, FL.?

i work for davis express out of starke florida right now, had to wait to go cuz something came up, but i have 2 friends who work there now they seem to enjoy it. i may go next year. there gettin a bunch of new trucks and trailers in next month.

 

Do the trucks have to stay in the yard when you are home?

 

Does anybody have a concrete number on what starting pay is? I've heard .35 cents and I had one guy tell me .42 cents, would like some IRT drivers to chime in

 

Ok well I guess no one wants to touch the money question

 

I just heard a rumor IRT is paying .42 cents, anybody confirm?

 

Man I had dinner tonight at Fred's in Winter Haven, holy crap that is really good food. If any of you are in Winter Haven you should get into Fred's Southern Kitchen for a dinner buffet, $12. I see all but four of the new Pete's from the dealership are gone and the remaining four are lettered up and ready.

 

I drive for irt out of winter haven terminal
pay starts at 32 cpm
i will give my last month which is typical for otr
keep in mind you can stay in the florida area and run percentage loads from juice customers back to terminal.
the fair oaks , in terminal which is south of chicago is a major milk customer. you can stay there and run milk loads through the region which is 500 to 900 miles and deadhead back.

same for clovis,nm regional milk loads and deadhead back. e.g. this month for 2 weeks i ran from clovis,nm to louisiana 900 miles and deadheaded back for 1800 miles. i did it 2 times a week for 3600 miles per week. Some like to stay on regional, but i like a change of scenery.

you may sit at a customer for 6 hours loading or unloading, but you will not sit waiting for a load. if i am empty somewhere and there is nothing, they will deadhead me to where there is a load. i have deadheaded from ny to florida. it is common to deadhead 700 - 1000 miles. i have heard of guys sitting in mcallen,tx for 2 days but it never happened to me. the times i have gone to south texas, i got a load right out . usually to florida and they are good mileage loads

i have done coast to coast 3 times in 4 months. a load from nj to los angeles. deadhead to tulare for tank wash and next day load going to florida. next one was back to ny.

regional drivers in cali run to spokane wa and back to los angeles and local stuff.

there are regional and local in northeast out of port of newark,nj. you run local and up to canada and some to mass.
last month they took away ezpass so you have to do reimbursement thing which makes toll areas much harder.

fuel at pilot and flyin j. whichever ones you want. take whatever route you want. most appt times are flexible by 4-8 hours, which i like.

new trucks coming in are set at 70. if you keep idle below 25 percent they automatically adjust themselves up to 75. if you go above 40 percent they will automatically cut back to 65.

trucks have fridge and gps built in dash. peterbilt 389, 386 but they will be mostly 386 with chrome package now. they are well maintained and when you go to shop, they usually get it in that day. and if they need to keep it you can borrow an empty truck to keep running or go to a motel. It is fairly easy to get a newer truck. just ask op manager if there are any empty trucks , he tells you what is avail and you go check and see if there are any you like and switch. they are pretty easygoing about that. right now with 250 new petes in this month. there are many 09 and 2010 low mile petes you could switch into easily. also, you could ask for a new truck your first month and if one is there you can have it. no seniority issues with that.

cert clean idle and noone will ever say anything about idling. i really like that they leave you alone. no messages over qcomm except loaded empty calls and next preplan. noone bothers you. you do have to call if you want to ask for a different load. they dont really read qcomm.

hope this outline helps. if there are more specific ? give a shout

i came from 2 yrs at crete and like it much better here. it is nice to have nice well maintained equip where they dont try and freeze you to death by not being able to idle. real people you can talk to. you can walk into the operations manager office and talk about issues or any ? you may have. it is more like a small co atmosphere.

sincerely
me

 

if your out of the winter haven terminal, is there regional runs? im out of miami fl but im looking to stay in the SE area. how is your home time scheduled? thanks for your help.

 

there is not an official regional run in he southeast, but is not difficult to work it out to stay in the southeast. There are a lot of dairy loads out of georgia and a lot of them come back down to florida. So you could run some local in fla and then ask the southeast dispatcher if you could run up to georgia and bring a load back to fla. You can talk with the dispatchers like this and work stuff out . I find them very reasonable. Even if you take a load out of the region you can ask to get a load back down to fla and that is fairly easy also.