Schneider Bulk

Yes, I told my DBL that the recruiter told me that I would get 2300 miles per week and I have a print out in my email to prove to my DBL that the recruiter told me 2300 miles a week average. I keep asking him for more miles and keep on bugging them to give me miles. He said that everybody has to take whatever the computerized dispatch tells you to take and sometimes you get long runs and sometimes you get the short runs. He said the recruiter lied to me. I do talk to Schneider tanker drivers that claim they get more miles than me. I talk to Schneider over the road drivers and they bring home $1,000 a week all the time. I talk to other drivers and they do not make the miles as promised and they leave the company. Some drivers just seem to have more luck and get more miles. If you drive teams, you will make a lot more money, more like 3,000 miles a week driving team across country. Those guys are happy with their pay checks too. I was disappointed in my recruiter. My DBL said that Schneider is making sure the recruiters tell the truth. They said I would get $20 for tank wash pay and I asked how come I do not get the $20 for going to tank wash? The $20 Tank Wash pay is only if you have to sit inside your truck while they clean your tank for two hours. That rarely happens. It only happened to me one time in six months. I thought they would pay me $20 every time I dropped a trailer at the tank wash. You do not get any money for dropping trailers at the tank wash. You don't get any pay for standing in line waiting for them to wash your dirty hoses, no pay for the time it takes and it's a dirty job and a lot of times those tank washes are crowded. On the positive side, you do get paid short haul pay if you pick up a loaded trailer at the tank wash and take it within 100 miles, you get $40. But that doesn't happen every day. For me, it doesn't happen very much because I'm OTR driver and don't get very much local work. Local drivers get those kind of hauls and one local driver told me that he makes about $230 a day average and he is every night. He made 55K last year. Schneider will tell you OTR drivers make more money than local drivers, but he said Schneider told him he would make average of 700 a week as a local driver but he made so much money and showed me his record keeping books to show me all the money he is making and making more like twice as much as 700, making more like 1000-1400 a week and is very happy in Chicago doing local hauling because he gets more offloading pay and onloading pay and therefore more pay than OTR drivers. They give local drivers higher offloading and onloading pay schedule, different than OTR pay. I believe Chicago drivers make more pay because there are more companies here. If things don't improve with my miles soon, I will switch to regional or local driving to see if my pay checks increase. I have to make more than 800 a week to be happy with this job. My first six months, average pay was about 550-700 take home pay after insurance and taxes. I'm on per diem pay, and so my take home pay avoids paying so much in taxes. These pay checks were 7 full days on the road. If I took two days off, then it was more like $350 for take home pay. I know some drivers who make about the same and some OTR drivers who make about the same as me and they are looking to find another company. Some guys get very long runs for OTR, and get lucky and get more miles than other drivers. They say all the dispatch is computer generated and you cannot just pick where you want to go. I asked if I could get all the long runs out West. They told me, "no", that was not going to happen. I wanted the long runs. I always got my loads there on time. I don't think they give poor performance guys lower miles. I'm not that bad. I've always got my load to the customer "on time". I've always done the best of my ability to get the job done right. I did notice that ever since they changed my DBL, I've never been given 1,000 mile runs. I seem to always get shorter runs 400-700 miles. I don't believe my DBL is punishing me and giving me crappy runs. I believe it's all luck. Some guys are luckier than others and get longer runs and make big money. I'm going to switch to local driving for Schneider tanker soon or regional Schneider tanker since the OTR just isn't giving me the miles like I was told by my recruiter. I'm going to give it another couple months and see if my miles improve. My DBL says you have to average it out over a whole year to get the true average. I've been OTR driver and getting 1800 miles a week average in 7 days averaged over six months. The last two weeks have been less than that for sitting in a parking lot for a day or two waiting for dispatch to get me a load to pick up. Some drivers never complain. Other's quit tanker or get fired within their first few months. 70% of the OTR drivers seem to be new guys. That's not me making up that figure, but that is a former dispatcher working behind a desk at Schneider told me this.

 

Dude again!!?!?! How is it a bait and switch, he can idle all he wants and still get a bonus. It's not part of your standard pay, that's why it's called a bonus and not all drivers make their performance bonus. Geez Rob, you pay way too much attention to Schneider.

 

I talked to another dispatcher today about my miles. He said that some drivers get more miles because they are more certified than other drivers. He looked at my certifications in the data base and said, you have Canadian Passport, TWIC Card, Nalco, Exxon, CDL class A, Hazmat, Tankers. I already have all the certifications. He then started saying negative things about driving out West. Since I have so many of these certifications, I should get more miles. The dispatcher said that the operating center you are out of has nothing to do with miles. I think that is BS. I've seen guys from Houston and Keasby get a lot more miles than guys from the Mid West. The dispatcher said that is not true.

 

First off brother and I'm not being mean here, please use paragraphs. Second if your DBL isn't helping go to the terminal manager.

 

Schneider gives the Performance Bonus, as long as you report all your idle times and have explanation why you idled the truck for so long. If you don't report your idle times, you are in danger of losing your performance bonus. They give 2 cents per mile for the quarter as a bonus. New drivers that receive the recruiting bonus are not eligible for those performance bonuses while he is receiving his quarterly recruitment bonuses. Some drivers get $3700-5000 recruiting sign on bonus but it is split up in 4 parts over a year.

 

If that was directed at me i know, I just left Schneider Bulk.
A lot of companies split sign on bonuses.

 

Then state your feelings, don't throw out one of the most loaded terms in our industry, bait and switch. You seemed like one of those guys on here always complaining about the "megas". I always thought of the sign on bonus as a good thing, guess it just strikes me that you find it unfair.