Looking for advice regarding my career and possible advancement

To the OP: Look at USF Holland. They have a terminal there in Lexington from what their service map shows. It won't hurt you to put in an application. It took about four months before I got a call, you may have more desirable experience by the time they get to yours. If they do call you and you qualify, ask about their pay and benefits and then make your decisions from there. Be open and honest, and ask as many questions as you can think of so you don't end up in a worse position than you were before. I would definitively go for doing line.

Honestly though, I would wait it out at least a year so your application doesn't show symptoms of a typical "job hopper". Just my two cents. Good luck

 

Usually the City units are the old rusted broken beat up trucks. The road trucks are in better shape. Normally because the city units are old beaten up road units with rebuilt engines.

 

That guy chooses to work like that. Some guys just rush and overload their 2 wheelers. You gotta hustle but some ppl over do it. I've done foodservice and had to unload skids before in P&D. Pallet full of 50lb bags of cement weighing 3k on a lift gate, with a manual jack, and unpaved dirt with gravel where I had to pull this monster wasn't fun. Had to offload it by hand still. Just to me moving heavy pallets with a manual pallet jack is tough on your back, atleast with a 2 wheeler it's at my pace of weight I want to put on their. Just my .02. I'm out of the hand unloading game and I probably won't go back lol.

 

Some of those old dirty trucks are better then the new junk. Don't let these Otr guys with the nice trucks fool you. They live in their trucks I don't. Ups Overnite trucks look worse then our trucks lol. That guy don't care cause he's topped out at 24-27hr sleeping in his bed. Plus if my truck breaks down I'm paid by the hour lol.

 

Yea I agree with you radman. But some of those old beat up trucks we got run and pull better than our new ones. The trucks like mine are really good, most of them are animals.

The thing about UPS though is they don't get rid of any thing. They just refurbish and repaint. A lot of our older tractors were originally Overnite trucks. A few volvos with the Good old Detroit's in them. Volvo hasn't had those in over 10 years and a lot of them look brand new

 

I think it's better to drive a rusty but fast POS with a Detroit in it than to drive one of those new trucks with no balls.

Best truck I ever drove had no A/C, no radio, no power steering, the mirror motors had been dead for years so every day I would have to spend 15 minutes moving the mirrors by hand. There was also a few feet of duct tape holding the dash together. But listen to this lol



You could hear this thing from three blocks away. And it was governed at 78 mph. I loved that thing so much. Yeah it was a POS but it had character. Something this new trucks will never have.

I ended up naming it Old Smokie, because of the clouds of smoke that it shot all the time. It also had a lid on the tip of the exhaust, I don't know what that's called but it looks silly, rarely see a truck with that on the stacks. So when rolling at 5 mph or so I could hear the lid hitting the exhaust as the smoke shot out. I had a blast with it.

 

My current tractor does 75, and is an animal on hills. 25k lead and 15k kite I only downshifted once on a hill. All the senior guys all miss it a lot. I asked one guy who I'm friends with why don't he take it back and he said a new truck is a new truck. Those brown volvos are a lot nicer than mine but I'll blow their doors off. Heck an FXG o/o asked me if I had jet fuel in it... That's impressive. Also those volvos like mine don't have volvo diesels, they are the Cummins engines.

Oi! Is that a freightliner? The new ones I drove at YRC were dogs. And I agree with the older the truck the better. Although I like my 09 volvo I would probly take a newly refurbed old school volvo with the Detroit in it. Those are animals as well. I drove some at YRC, roadway trucks (orange and blue) and they were awesome. Even when I go on the dock at my terminal, I'm always using the oldest forklift we got (only one left when I'm there) and its got the newest tires and doesn't struggle when lifting skids. Except when I go to my hub at night... All forklifts are junk there.