No way in hell I would drive into Mexico, just not worth the risk between the corrupt cops and rateros.
When I quit in November I was at 44cpm base + 3cpm platinum. There was a big difference in pay for a while because the flatbed side got a big raise in june and dry van lagged behind. But now that they brought dry van up too, the difference is not that big. The benefit is lots of miles and long loads. I think my average length of haul over 2 years was 1400 miles. I will always defend Swift flatbed I think we had better trucks, better pay, better loads, better miles than the melton/tmc/roehl companies. The only complaint I ever had was the trailers were old and weren't specced very well (8' spread axle is useless in california).
My son like I stated earlier has been getting great long distance runs. Greensboro to Laredo,.to Gary, and back to.Greensboro. ususlly chassis with engines and drives for schoolbuses to.Laredo, and frames for trucks to.Gary, and coil steel.from Gary to.Greensboro. But his truck does nothing but break down, so his downtime is killing his paycheck. BUT today he was issued a like new 2015 Cascadia Evolution,.enclosed cabinet headache rack, two big side storage boxes. Passenger seat still had the plastic on it, and only 54k miles. He has a great DM. I think hecwas broken down about every 300 miles or so.for something or other. On one 700 mile run he had 31 engine fault codes, and 44 Over Revs while it was on Cruise.Control. Evertime it indicated over rev, his rpms were not high, and then the engine would shut down, then start up and run normally till.next over rev. When he got it out of the shop.after extensive maintence for problems, he got less than 5 miles from Freightliner dealership. But it looks like he should be in good shape now and ready to get the wheels turning
