LTL company change advice, what do you all think

I would go for it. Right now it will suck but the top out there is great. Jumping straight into a bid and having a schedule right off the bat, you can't beat that. Plus you haven't invested years and years yet in YRC. Now if you were topped out at YRC then I would say stay. If I had no bills I'd be at UPS parcel loading docks part time trying to be a van then feeder driver. When you are with a LTL for over a year to two you start going to a point of no return, it's now or never IMO. I've got 2 1/2 yrs of extra board this company and my last company so I don't want to start over again. I've got a bid which might not last well see and I'm comfortable so I'm basically screwed lol.

 

Not sure what a scab branch is... But I am guessing its because we are not organized in our labour pool. I will say this: we had a lot of seniour guys quit since I've been there. Our benefits and pay have received a lot of cuts over the past few years. I got the luxury of not knowing what it used to be like, but the changes seemed to be bad enough to drive a lot of people out. Let's see where it goes, I may end up in the Balkan oilfields at some point too if they keep chopping away...

 

I am gonna ride this out for another year or two. At least until I get enough driving experience to where I meet most oil company standards. Maybe then I will run water trucks out east. Or maybe they will bump our vacation and other benefits back up. My pay is good, but hell... Losing a 401k plan and an extra week of vacation I would have been eligible for next year? Not sure if I am too impressed about that.

I think they are just probing the waters to see who will still be left before they try another rounds of cuts in benefits. Sad thing is, they still advertise their top notch benefits they used to have when they go on a recruitment phase.

 

Well Bestway was always bad from what I heard and those are most of the union Reddaway yards. Once YRC took over they all became Reddaway. Reddaway was a really good place to work at one time. Before YRC bought them, I tried to get a job there and they wouldn't hire me because they wanted no tickets in the last 10 years! Now they take anyone. Even Yellow and Roadway were good places to work. I worked on the dock at Roadway in 1997 and started out at 15 an hour. Really good job. It was all Bill Zollars. He tried to suck them all dry. I can't believe Reddaway starts drivers at 39 cpm. That is sad for southern California. You need to make 100k to be comfortable where I live.

 

Yeah that's what a older employee told me about Reddaway. They used to be hard to get into and the equipment was prestine like old D now. They were really great for non union used to keep the wages up so nobody would want to go union. Now it's hard to keep drivers at cpm now compared to other LTL's. Very surprised they don't account for cost of living in your area.

 

Well out here ODFL, FedEx Freight and UPSF are the only ones to my knowledge that are in descent shape. YRC was good up till 2007. Same with Saia, R&L and Estes. The drivers at Reddaway told me they were making more money in 2006 than now. Don't know if that's true but I did hear it was a really good company before YRC got a hold of them. Seems like there were a lot of good companies before FedEx, UPS and Yellow started buying them all up. When Watkins had their ltl company, they were the best. That was hands down the best otr job I ever had. We never hooked a set or unhooked sets, if we did we got paid. Got paid for everything. Starting pay was 44 cpm in 1999 and they ran us out of hours every week. Good pay, good people and just a great job. They belong to FedEx now. I have watched trucking go way down. It's a shame what they have done to this industry.

 

I have to mention that Consolidated Freight was the second best ltl otr job I ever had, only because they were on there last breath when I started there.