Is LTL the best area of trucking? What's the catch?

I did Local Food Service for 7 yrs. in a Straight Truck. Went to LTL, in a T/T, and felt like I’d gone to heaven. Local work was busy. 12 hr. days flew by. Made twice as much money. Back then, I couldn’t get hired full time. Casual only. So many Seniority Guys had first bid on available Jobs. Today, I’d be looking at retirement with 30 yrs. had I gotten hired. Now they’re all gone. Non Union pay has increased. If you’re young enough and physically fit enough to do Food Service, you’ll enjoy LTL.. You can do linehaul when you’re older, if wanted. Usually City jobs are more scarce than linehaul. Linehaul can be boring. Like food service though, you get to know the routine of the route. If You decide You don’t like it, other Jobs are much easier to get. Go for the money. The real money. Not the empty promises and BS spewed by other Companies and Drivers. Good Luck. Nothing to Lose.

 

It will require quite a bit of luck for someone to have just gotten their CDL and to immediately get a linehaul job paying $100,000+.

That being said, we(ups freight, now T-force freight) have hired new CDL drivers as their first job driving linehaul AND p+d. We start off at .50 cpm, so you're looking at 65,000-ish your first year. And it takes four years to get to top scale which is .72 cpm, although you may be able to break $100,000 at third year scale which is .60cpm.

However, CURRENTLY we are hiring drivers AT top scale (because we are desperate, apparently?) at certain terminals, so a new CDL driver may very well start off at .72cpm and $28/hr hourly. In that case, yes, a new CDL COULD make $100,000 their first year, but it would require quite a bit of luck. It's not going to happen just falling out of a tree-----or it might.

 

Just a few other tidbits:

Someone mentioned hooking up dollys in messed up weather. Having done both linehaul and P+D, as far as strictly from a work perspective, i think hooking a dolly in heavy rain, with messed up yards, and some of these terminals have potholes, and in the middle of the night is better than a good day doing P+D and dealing with certain customers. The only thing that cancels this out is that it is night work.

2) When linehaul gets hot and heavy, then my house felt like a truckstop-----because i only had time to eat, sleep, and go right back to driving.

 

I’ve only hooked a dolly once. It hit a pothole, and smashed my finger like a grape on the pintle hook. Showed up at Customer still bleeding. He was angry I was late. I explained I did my best to hurry. Changed his tune and gave Me a band aid. Good Times. Moral is don’t be in a hurry.

 

The thing is. NEVER handle or hold the dolly by the pintle ring. (i guess lunette ring is the correct term, but you know what i'm talking about----the RING). Use the handles on the side of the dolly.

i know most dollys these days don't have a pilot wheel, which i think is stupid, but whatever...... But another thing you can do is let the dolly down on the front "nose pad" (where the pilot wheel would normally be) and turn each individual wheel to move the dolly. Of course, the best way is to use the tractor....

 

That's all changed. OD will hire with little to no experience depending on your location.

 

that is sad to hear. per usual, the almighty dollar will trump most any pre existing standard.

 

i'm almost at the point where I'll move to a place that is hiring someone with limited experience. SO Frustrating trying to get a non-foodservice local truck driving job in FL. I can't get one other than Sysco but I don't think I can hack that physically.

 

Yeah, no kidding. Most jacks are rated at 3000+ lbs, so it's not like you are being tasked to do more than what is reasonably expected. So if you find yourself pushing a 2k pallet 50 feet uphill in your trailer because you parked pointing downhill, that's your own fault for not tailgating it at your last stop. And yes, sometimes you get four or five them and you can't just tailgate all of them, but that's part of draw sometimes.

Again, if you plan things right, you can use straps to drag the freight back, or simply ask your previous customer if they could use their forklift to tailgate it for you.

I work for a company that doesn't even provide us with any pallet jacks. We have to buy, build, or barter with retiring employees to get access to our own jacks. Electric jacks probably cost as much as 6-10 manual jacks. Most companies with more than 25 drivers would probably be constraint to allocate that much money just for the occasional convenience.

 

I'll disagree with that. We all had to start somewhere

No that's true. We can't find drivers who want to work so these companies have to do what they have to do. Just because a driver is new doesn't mean he can't be a good safe driver. I've seen guys who have been driving for years that can't back to save their lives. On the other hand I've also seen guys who have less than a year drive the hell out of a truck. We all had to start somewhere and if a driver can safely do the job then he should have the opportunity.