Man i want a LTL job.

A city driver home daily in Charlotte has been on our job board for at least a year. There is always a reason.

 

Man up. Do foodservice.

 

I grew up with all my uncles working LTL. It was the goal of truck drivers to get to LTL and make the big money. Fast forward 25 years and I took an LTL job to be home nightly for my family. I thought this would be the pinnacle of my trucking career. I took a pay cut to be here.

This job sucks ###! I can't wait to get back OTR. Harder work with lazy ####ers who don't want to work, they just want to collect a paycheck. Messed up hours with start times that take up the best part of the day ensuring that even though I took this job to be with the family more, I get to spend even less time with them now than I did when I was OTR (regional). Ungrateful customers who you get to take the brunt of their frustration from when you have to deliver messed up freight that some dockworker 200 miles away destroyed then shipped on to you without even trying to recoup the freight. Supervisors who have never even sat in a truck that micromanage you through the use of gps tracker in handheld computers and drive-cams.

Have I said that I can't wait to go back OTR!?!?!?

 

I loved LTL for the first month. Second month came around I didn't mind it third month came around meeeehh.

A year goes by. Man I miss otr

The traffic of local LTL and early hours getting up for work when most people are just going to sleep,douchebag receivers,

Change is nice but, for a couple months lol.

 

Yea, I'm sure its a grind. Well , now every other week I change shifts. 6am to 3pm . 3 pm to 11 pm 11 pm to 7 am. 6 am to 6 pm , 6 pm to 6am, These ######## don't care either. Right now , Who knows if i have a job next week. Winter outside with 3 pair of long johns, in a steel plant at 3 am is worse then in a heated truck at 3am. I suspect.

 

#### Mack! You been stalking me? How did you know I was at Conway? LOL

I had the option of bidding for a hard start time this past year but it was a 1000 start time at the earliest. Why the #### would I purposely bid for a 1000 start time when I think we should be starting at like 0800, 0830? Out earliest start time is 0930 for P&D. We have a few inbound dock start times at like 0400, 0500, 0700 but the senior guys snap them up. So I bid unassigned (flexboard). I am the second unassigned guy. Now the first unassigned comes in at 0500 everyday so that means when ever one of the early guys is off I get to come in early. The rest of the time I basically come in at 0930-1000.

If we had daytime linehaul I would be all over that but my terminal is too small.

 

I work food service today I got up at 2:15am and usually get up at 3:15am every morning (it's all I've ever known started in beer and graduated up to food that's not to say I love, it but I don't hate it either it's like being in purgatory I guess.)

Any how, this morning I was sitting in a parking lot at 4am waiting for my first stop to come in, I had sometime before I decided I would get out and pull the freezer so I was taking a break you could say.

Anyhow I was flipping through the AM stations trying to find "Red Eye" because I wanted to see what they had to say about the republican debate last night, but while I was flipping through the stations, I heard a song I know I recognized on AM Band 650, well it was a Country Music station out of Nashville, TN (by the way I was in a parking lot waiting to make a delivery at a local high school east of Cleveland, Ohio in Lake County not far from the city of Mentor, Ohio some of you may have heard of that city.

Anyhow I stopped for a minute and listened to the song that was playing and it was the country music song that, was #1 the week that I was born in May of 1988. Which was Kathy Mattea's 18 wheels and a dozen roses. Which was launched into #1 on the country charts on May 21 1988.

I thought, well there's a song I haven't heard in a while (as a rule I don't listen to today's country music I really don't care for it.) However older country music certainly was much smarter then modern country music. I'm not a big country music fan either, just not, but I can appreciate songs like the one in the link:



Anyhow I was listening to the lyrics and my imagination started going and then I as funny as this sounds after the song ended heard the weather report and they were giving a report of weather in Florida and the Gulf Coast and around Mount Rushmore and in my region the great lakes region and I thought yeah it's a whole big wide world out there with lots to see and I just run the same streets same stops day after day week after week month after month sure there's an ad on or take off or a switch up now and then, but by and large it's mostly the same and it's not all bad I have good customers and we get a long.

However, when I was listening to that weather report I thought yeah it sure would be fun I guess to get to go out and find America like Kathy says in stead of sitting here in this parking lot at 4am. However, I don't really think switching from where I work to say Werner would really be a good business decision for me considering last week because I worked on the Holiday and had a fairly heavy week I ended up clearing after taxes, retirement and health insurance over $1,000+ and had none of the OTR expenses of living on the road, so I stay put that's just how it goes. However I feel all you guys and I think I get it.

 

Again Mike, it is all in what a person chooses to do with his life. Local, regional, OTR, TL, LTL? It doesn't matter, none of them are bad choices for everybody, just as none of them are good choices for everybody.

Oh and talking about an old time C & W song with a real message: