It's all coming back to me why people quit pulling reefers

while i hate to wait being on salary helps deal with it.

 

I think the long wait times really depend on what company you drive for, or if you're an Owner Op what customers you service. I drive for Magnum (HQ in Fargo) and the vast majority of my loads are loaded in 2 hours or less. I'll just use that as either a split sleeper or, in the very least it will pause my HOS so it's not like I'll lose time there. I use that time to get something to eat, surf the internet, take a little nap. It usually works out alright.

I do aknowledge that the problems people mentioned in this thread are legitimate concerns within the reefer sector of the industry though.

 

Try delivering to any Smithfield plant. Or sitting at Johnsonville for 8 hours. Or delivering to Laredo and you have to wait 10 hours for the Mexican truck. Not fun.

 

Maybe it's time to let it go.
Can you let it go?

 

Does the name Versacold rings a bell?
Lineage or any other unionized cooler or frozen storage?
The reality of reefer work. It ain't pretty at all.
You need to have the patience of an angel.
You need to know your equipment dimensions
to be able to back in places just inches wider that it.
You need to be courteous and helpful under a lot of stress.
Knows and obeys all the industry rules and regulations
second only to nuclear energy sector. There are that many of them.
You think you got what it takes?
Welcome to the reefer world.

 

A few years ago I drove dry van. The only time I had to wait was delivering to grocery warehouses. The Loblaws warehouse in Regina is horrible

 

I've never heard of Versacold before. Yeah we go some Lineage Logistics somewhat frequently across the US. Not all of them are bad.

Backing a reefer is the same exact thing as backing a dry van. Yes you have to be a bit more mindful of the compartment that holds all the reefer's mechanical equipment as that adds some extra space to the trailer, but that is pretty negligible in my opinion. But yes you do need be aware of that extra space on the trailer so you don't crunch it.

Reefer wait times are longer than dry van waiting times, that is true. At Magnum we actually do pull dry loads sometimes and in fact I'm on one now. As I said most places here at Magnum they're finished loading you in 2 hours or less after your scheduled appointment time and we get paid detention after 2 hours, up to the minute, at $18 per hour. I've only had 1 really bad wait time and every once in a while it'll take 3 - 4 hours. My detention pay is only a couple hundred bucks for 2022, maybe even a bit less, to put it into perspective.

But everything else you listed, every other type of truck driving has to deal with the same stuff. None of what you wrote is unique to reefer.

Reefer has it's cons for sure but so far I'm liking it at Magnum and in my experience I've found that I get long runs and many times I'm getting those long runs soley because I have a reefer unit. For example picking up at farms in Washington State, like apples or other kinds of fruits and bringing them back to the East Coast. I would have to look at the average but off the top of my head I would say I've averaged 1,000 miles per trip. I just looked and in the 7 months I've been here I've only had 3 runs under 500 miles. I've gotten two different 3000+ mile runs, two 2500+ mile runs and two 2000+ mile runs. Not bad in my opinion.

 

That joint sounds HORRIBLE!!! I wouldn't wait, I'd jump ship now for another company or find another career path, ASAP. Make sure to tell everyone here the name of the company so they can avoid that like the plague.

THIS!!! I'm not at Magnum, I'm at a small- to mid- sized reefer company a few hours from them. Our drivers tell us who they like and who they don't, and we avoid freight going to customers the driver doesn't like. Sure, there's a Walmart DC in the rotation a lot (its only an hour from our HQ), but we have local drivers that relay those loads and get paid by the hour to sit and wait forever on Wally's time. Why waste a mileage-paid driver's day up there, when we can have them drop here in our yard, head over to Hormel a mile away and pick up a loaded trailer waiting to roll out?

As for the other locations, when a company has a lot of freight contracts with a place, they are generally taken care of more by the customer. If they don't care for our drivers, they won't be the loads we select from our contracted customers in the future, they can just sit on Cheap and Heavy Rob-u-some's load board... where inevitably the flip-flop express will arrive to grab it. Have fun dealing with them in your facility in the future. We'll keep hauling for those who respect our guys' time.