Old Dominion Freight Line - 3 Year Review

Here's a left field fringe theory: Massive inflow of cdl holders and none of them want to see a sleeper... OTR companies with day cab divisions are the same way...

LTL and other day cab jobs don't really hire based on experience and clean records; it's why they have interviews. A one year CDL holder can be hired over someone who drove for one company for 20 years in day cab

This is why I went to fuel delivery... P&D level home time but experience counts, so there's usually open positions listed...

 

Sounds great, but the "bidding" is peculiar.

 

That's every union AND non-union LTL and some grocery haulers. There's hire-date based seniority factored on bids too.

You might be a dock worker the entire first year if nobody is retiring or quitting..

Higher seniority is only useful for bidding, leaving early, and call outs.

 

It's a big culture shift compared to TL, and for the most part it determines your earning potential.

For example, my terminal has 90+ bid round trip runs consisting of:

Phoenix AZ (624mi, 70mph truck)
Fresno CA (530mi)
Las Vegas NV (476mi)
Kettleman City CA (448mi)
Independence CA (448mi)
Santa Maria CA (446mi)
Vicksburg AZ (442mi)
Shuttle (Short hops to and from other SoCal terminals in LA, Long Beach, Irwindale, Orange, Anaheim, Oxnard, San Diego and Otay Mesa). Paid by the hour, length of shift is unpredictable and varies.

Shuttle exists mostly because my terminal is a giant hub for freight coming into SoCal. Say there's a shipment from Phoenix AZ to San Diego. It'll hop into a trailer bound for Rialto first by a linehaul driver, then gets sent to San Diego from there by a local shuttle driver. Shuttle drivers by nature spend a lot of time hooking, unhooking and driving in the neverending sea of regional traffic, and though they have a dedicated start time, they're dispatched according to need. One day you may visit 4-5 different terminals, the next you could only visit 2 and get sent home early for lack of trailers to move.

These bids pay from $96k-$137k a year (50 weeks a year), more miles is more $. Naturally the most senior drivers choose the longer more lucrative bids with better start times and better days off, leaving the leftovers to everyone else. Occasionally a senior driver will take one of the shorter "retirement" runs as their career winds down.

I've found the best shortcut to the seniority board is going team. From my terminal we have 8 bids consisting of Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Parsons KS, plus 2 wild board teams who go everywhere. Nobody wants to hop into a sleeper so it means drivers on the short end of the board can make good money. And while I may sacrifice 5 days at home on the road, I'm earning nearly as much as a Phoenix bid doing my Tulsa run. But you have to live near a terminal large enough to have a team operation. I'm lucky enough to live within 30mi of the largest terminal in the state, and even when the daycab bids sit for a lack of freight, I'm kept running.

 

Dude, apply NOW.

 

i would but no openings at my local terminal (it’s a small one)

 

is XPO a decent company?

 

another problem i have is that i’m flying to Michigan to visit family in mid September which would require me to have at least a full week off

 

Walmart was advertising a $10,000 sign on bonus out of the Ottowa, KS DC not long ago. There's a job you can retire with and taking time off whenever you want won't be an issue either.

 

Slip-seating in sleepers is absolute hell.