My new adventure with Gordon Trucking

rbrtwbstr · Sep 13, 2013

How dare I is right..sheesh. Ya know they are good anytime, but they are REALLY good after they lay behind the seat for a week or two....

joseph1135 said: ↑

TastyKakes!!! How dare you!!!!
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GreyHound · Sep 17, 2013

Any thing new going on ?

Victor_V · Sep 17, 2013

So Joseph won't have to come all the way over to chime in further. He can comment right here...

Terre Haute to Nashville, TN (Continued)

The 'plate' for the Bloomington, IN/Cincy run gave us 8.25 hrs for the night run, despite that it was 3 hours over and 3 hours back. There was some extra in addition to the run itself. At the end of my night run, I would drag an MT (empty) over to the now defunct main post office downtown Bloomington, spot it and park the truck there. In the winter we let it run all night, unlocked, on an open unfenced, downtown parking lot. Otherwise, it wouldn't start.

When the day driver bobtailed in at the end of his run, he had only the truck because he had already dropped his trailer from Cincy over at the Annex on the west side of Bloomington. At the main post office downtown Bloomington, he would back under a waiting trailer, the one I brought over empty early that morning from the Annex at the end of the night run, while I would assist cranking the landing gear up. I would drag that now-loaded trailer to the Annex, drop and hook there and head to Cincy.

The day driver had been with the company some 23 or 26 years and pulled his own trigger by calling the post office one holiday and canceled his own run. In doing so, he canceled his own job, too. Naughty, naughty. We had a little routine. I would ask, "Does the truck need anything? How's the truck?" He'd answer, "Just needs a new driver."

He was from the 'suck it up' school of trucking; it didn't matter if the truck was falling apart; he never wrote anything up and never complained. I could leave him notes to pull into the Cincy shop to have the mechanic look at this or that and he'd ignore them. Lights, brakes, air and exhaust leaks. All in all, I wasn't too sorry when he punched his own ticket. Surprised, not too sorry.

Sometimes my outbound-to-Cincy trailer was ready at the Annex, sometimes it wasn't. It added to the pay if they weren't ready to go. Sometimes they were ready early and would let me leave early. A real treat. I got paid the same and that extra time took the pressure off the run. Way off.

So all this extra between the old downtown post office and the new, modern Annex is what turned a 6.50 hour run into an 8.25 hour 'plate'. The run paid $195.28 ($23.67 x 8.25) plus any extra for delays or breakdown time. A job I had gotten off CraigsList, by the way. And oddly, when the post office completed it's substantial equipment and physical upgrades and moved their ASV (All Service Vehicle) fleet to the Annex, we stopped going downtown yet the 'plate' remained the same: $195.28.

I still got that same $195.28 for the run despite that all I had to do in Bloomington was bump the dock with my return trailer and move the truck over to the outbound for the morning (day run) driver. That change bumped my 'effective' hourly rate up to $27.90/hour. Not too bad for trucking.

Had I been running that 244 miles for Gordon, I would have received $75.64 for the same miles and that's about it. Okay, fine. $75.64 flat vs $195.28 plus. Sure. I'll do the math and see if I can figure it out--$195.28 vs $75.64, which is better?? Eenie...

USPS finally dropped the day run, so my buddy who had the day run and I both got laid off. A driver with more seniority took over the Bloomington night run that I had. I took a year-and-half off including 5 months tooting around the country with 3 dogs in the car, interviewing trucking companies. My buddy went over to Landstar.

Shortly after, USPS halted sorting at the Annex (the just finished expensive physical plant and equipment upgrades had been to move the sort from downtown Bloomington to the Annex--and I mean very, very expensive upgrades, building addition, state of the art sort equipment, extended parking lot, landscaping, etc.), and all but local sorts went up to Indy. Go figure.

It's just money. And besides, I still haven't left Terre Haute yet for the 260 or so mile run to Nashville, TN. Let's see, that's $80.60 Gordon-wise (260 x .31) plus there would be a few more miles to the second drop and some extra for the two drops. Less than $115.00...

A run for USPS like that would pay, what, $195.28 for the first 8.25 hours plus... Oh, never mind. Who cares, right? It's not about money after all--some here will tell you OTR's a lifestyle, more akin to commission sales than hourly anything. That if you count all the hours you put in, your head's guaranteed to explode... as it should.

Written Sept 16, 2013 at home, six miles north of Spencer, IN. All rights reserved by author.
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/Just got back from the vet. Left with three; came back with two. In 2007, I adopted three, including an 11-12 year-old Shih-tzu, deaf and blind. Never expected her to last a month short of 6 more years.
/More at: http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tr...culture-one-drivers-experience-gordon-27.html

joseph1135 · Sep 18, 2013

Have at it victor. You're not an enemy. Just as tow said, a formidable opponent for sparring. I have no enemies here.

tow614 · Sep 18, 2013

And meanwhile..back at the hall of justice....don't know why I felt like saying that...
After I deliver this load tomorrow I will have been out 4 weeks. 12, 391 miles. I also have 2 seperate days of layover pay at $74 each plus $105 in detention pay for the month. Will have about 8 hrs left on my 70 after I deliver with nothing coming off until sunday. So another reset this month. I hate resets but the loads I have had have been long loads but had to push on them and burn up my hours.

GreyHound · Sep 18, 2013

over 5 k for the month. Not a bad month tow .

joseph1135 · Sep 27, 2013

What a week, or two. Still running strong. I called a few companies out in the NW. Just to see what they had to offer. GTI has the best package hands down when it came to pay and benefits and miles. Glad I'm here. And doing well. I know I've said it before, but they are a ###### good company.

DenaliDad · Sep 27, 2013

A friend of mine at Roehl said this: 'I was treated well as a company driver and I'm treated even better now that I'm a L/O.' I'm trying to make long-term plans for finding The Last Trucking Company and GTI is on the short list. I like the sound of what my buddy said, so...Does GTI treat their L/O's better than their company drivers?

joseph1135 · Sep 27, 2013

I don't know about them. I'm a company driver. But I will do a comparison right now.

I called TWT today, and asked what they could offer me as a driver. Lets run down the list.

Pay: Gordon- .40 + .02 for reefer. TWT: .33
Miles: average Gordon miles 2500/ week and better, usually better. TWT- 2,000-2500
benefits are better at Gordon with more options.

There was more, but of course I forgot. I just wanted to see the difference. Gordon pays more than Jim Palmer, TWT, Haney, May, Spokane Produce, Perione, etc.

joseph1135 · Sep 27, 2013

When it comes to pay, equipment, driver services, driver treatment, Gordon wins in all categories. I have 12 years. All the companies I have contacted or know someone, when you run everything, Gordon comes out on top. These companies, within Gordon's hiring areas and competitors for freight and drivers, don't hold a candle. Western Express, TWT, Jim Palmer, Western Star, Calex, Lessors, Inc, etc. you can go down the list and compare terminals, freight, pay and insurance. GTI comes out on top in every category.

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