Lancor Logistics - No dog eat dog job

I've spent my career hauling oversized loads. Pay was always salary or hourly, because we didn't haul at night, when it rained or snowed. Then I tried working with a different type of carrier (commodity) for 18 months. Worked at Schneider National and found out how the big boys do it. Provide new tractors and trailers.... then pay really low. Thirty nine cpm seemed like it was okay until I read between the lines. Sure, all the companies that pay commission tell you that 0.39 cpm @ 60 mph is $23.40 an hour. What they don't tell you is all the things you have to do for free.

1) Wait to get loaded and unloaded (Schneider was first two hours for free than $5 an hour)
2) Waiting behind a hundred or so other drivers to get checked in at a distribution center
3) Wait when your tractor breaks down or during PM's
4) Pre-trip and post trip inspections
5) Fueling your tractor
6) Scaling your load and reweighing (sometimes multiple times)
7) Driving in traffic (0.39 cpm @ 2 MPH is 78 cents per hour)
8) Paperwork
9) Training
10) Planning your trip

Figure out your true pay. Take what you earned for the week and divide it by the number of hours you drove and all the time spent doing the above and you'll get your true dollar per hour. Schneider was paying me $8.33 an hour based on this.

After making just $26,000 a year at Schneider I left them and looked for a different type of company. Took me awhile. Got a lot of companies promising me all the same things with the above problems and refused them all.

Then I found Lancor Logistics. Due to my experience they hired me at $18.50 an hour to start (yes, hourly), with time and a half after 40 hours a week ($27.75 / hour) which I get 25 to 30 hours of overtime a week. This equates to about $1,500 a week or $75,000 annually (three times what Schneider gave me). So when we are all side by side in heavy traffic, all the commission based drivers get a few cents per hour and I get my high hourly pay.

Lancor hauls mostly agriculture products (lots of horse feed by the bag). It's all on pallets, but about 10% of the time I may have to wheel a few pallets of feed to the back of the trailer so the farmer can pick it up with a forklift from the ground or use the customer's forklift and unload the truck (when they aren't there). We haul to farms and small stores. No big Walmart's, P&G, etc. (Rarely see another driver so I am loaded or offloaded in usually 20 minutes). Trips are usually 300 to 615 miles. Sometimes we get multiple stops which helps to break up the trip (I love these). About half is drop and hook, half live load. Since I get paid per hour I don't care how many miles I get or how long I wait between trips, but we always stay busy. Sometimes we will have me backhaul another product to get to where the feed is. I have deadheaded up to 600 miles just to get a load of feed. I still get paid the same and just enjoy the fast travel (all our tractors are governed @ 76 mph or higher).

NOW HERE'S THE PART I REALLY LIKE! I get off every weekend. I either get a load that delivers near my house or a load that goes by it. I've even been told told to deadhead hundreds of miles to get home. We can work weekends too if we want. Like this Friday I was done after only a few hours so I went home (20 minutes away). They called and asked me if I wanted to work Sunday, but I didn't have to. I accepted this because I still got to reset my hours (most of Friday and all day Saturday at home).

To get $75k a year and only have to work 5 days a week to get it with no dog-eat-dog and speeding. I'll take it. I'll be with Lancor until I retire in ten years or so.