Seeing if Estes is a good fit for me in ft.wayne

I understand that. Companies such as Saia, Estes, Old Dominion, are good if you don't want OTR any more.

 

Hey man I'm an Estes driver out of St. Louis. I'll try to answer any and all of your questions you have. I may not be able to give you down to the nut soecifics but I can for sure ballpark for ya. Starting from the top I THINK starting pay is just shy of 22 an hour. After 3 years you top out. I'm at 26.45. Now I don't know if that's set across the company or if that's a "cost of living in the region thing" i.e. It costs more to live in Los Angeles than it does St. Louis sk they might get paid more? I'm not sure. Linehaul j think starts at .57 cpm and I think they too at .62.5. And you get paid every time you make and break a set.
We do have E-logs we run PeopleNet. Even city drivers. It's a pain at first but it's like anything. After awhile it's whatever.
We do have some automatic trucks in St. Louis. Our autos are Volvo's but we did have an automatic International. And it was a PITA. I think we passed that along to the Springfield terminal.
Almost everyone shares a truck. I run the city during the day and at night it's used for an Indianapolis turn. You share but it is assigned. So you do drive the same one every day. And so does the night guys. At least that's how we do it. The Extra-board and combo guys don't share as they are either gone or about to be gone. And don't keep a solid enough schedule to try to get someone else in with them.
Personally I have never been to the Fort Wayne terminal so unfortunately I cannot answer on if they have a shop or not. Sorry.
I'm home every night. I start at 8 and I'm usually clocked out around 6, 6:30. Linehaul guys leave anywhere from 7-11 p.m. And we do have daytime runs too. Most of them are home everyday. We have Dallas runs that lay down and same with West Middlesex. And I think a few go to Pittsburgh as well. So for instance Monday they leave go to Dallas, go to the hotel, come back Tuesday go home. Same thing Wednesday and Thursday and then Friday they meet 1/2 way. Now xtra board I think is 5 days out and you just go wherever central tells you. And same with teams. Some of our teams are dedicated but most run "wild" as they call it.
We get weekends off but we can always volunteer to run a linehaul run in a Saturday or Sunday. And sometimes there's extra Amazon work to be had and that's just goin there, dropping a loaded trailer and bringing back an MT. No big deal. We have never been forced to work a weekend but I know some terminals get swamped. I was doin an Indy run on a Saturday for some extra money and they had a sign saying "any drivers with available hours will be doing a linehaul turn this weekend" so I guess it's all just how busy your terminal is.
If you're looking for P&D I'd say a good estimate on daily hours is about 10. Actually that probably goes same for linehaul also.
We have a scale in St. Louis and I hardly ever use it. Most my city loads are under 15k. But I know they can stack and pack some pretty heavy sets for the linehaul guys. And with a lot of single axle trucks it's better safe than sorry. Or fined.
I've heard rumors they were dickin around with cameras at some of the terminals on the east coast (as usually when something new is implemented those poor souls are the guinea pigs) but they are not driver facing. Like I said. This is all "though the grapevine".
And forced dispatch yes. During foul weather they leave it up to drivers discretion. Which I think is great. But other than that man yea, if your scheduled to work, and they got a load going, so are you.
Hope that at least shed a little light. Anymore questions just fire em, I'll do my best.

 

Yea I think they'd be more than willin to accommodate getting you a non smoking truck. We have drivers that request them and it's a no problem sort of thing. Some of them have asthma and one of them is actually allergic to smoke so he has to be in a smoke free truck.
If you're going for P&D they'll probably ask you what areas you know or are comfortable with. Or they might kinda bounce you around from area to area and see where you do good. That's what our terminal kinda does, but Ft. Wayne might be a different animal. All Estes terminals imho are ran completely different. When St Louis went break-bulk I teamed for 6 months, and we hit ALOT of terminals. Some have policies in place I've never heard of. I mean there's the staples that are the same, but just like how St. Louis might give you a chance in different areas, Kansas City might say "nope you're a new hire you're doin all stops no one else wants" (residentials and mall deliveries for instance). Now linehaul is different whatever they have open that's what they have open. As everything is terminal to terminal they kinda fluctuate throughout the year. We've had runs to meet Appleton, WI and then the freight drops off for that particular lane and can't support it so then that guys bids on something else. But for the most part everything they have setup is pretty solid. They know how to keep freight moving.
And yea I don't think they'd have a problem with you picking a truck out of whatever they have open. When I started they gave me a list of like 6 or 7 trucks by #, said to go find em and pick one. And they'll go by hours too. Say for instance you are a late P&D start and start at 10 am and don't usually get back til 8sh, they gotta be careful not to put you in with a guy who's cut time is 7. Just stuff like that.
As I've said every terminal is different in how they do things, but for the most part, across the board,all of them have a pretty laid back atmosphere. And they really push an "open door policy" so for instance if you tell them you don't smoke and would rather not share with a smoker, they're not gonna crap kittens, they'll work with ya.