Soo many ltl choices.....

we top at 63cpm. We are paid hourly to do our hooks so howver long it takes us, minimun is a half hour pay. $28 a hour hourly? Yea right we wish lol. No we dont get a hours pay to fuel the truck. No we dont get paid after the 10th hour on break, its after 12. Extra pay for pulling doubles? A penny more is a whole lot. Breakdowns as far as I know all the LTL companies pay. And no we dont get 20$ for that 30 min break thing.

 

I''l tell you one thing, YRC is a different place to work since I left in 2007. When I was there we had all kinds of sweet stuff. Now I'm at Reddaway (part of YRC) and we make 10 cpm less a mile then the YRC guys. Right now we top out at 51 cpm and you YRC guys say you're topping out at 63 cpm. I'm getting ripped off! No wonder Reddaway is so busy down here. They are making a killing off us!

 

Don't forget these are also NY wages in the metro area. Other regions make less

 

I'm told abf makes more. That's what I was referring to. I hear they get $23 for each set. (a break and a hook comes to $46) upsf topped out at .65 cpm a while back. I think they've been bumped up since then along with the hourly rate. I think the package division pays quite a bit more.

 

Im sure we operate differently fro, ABF. And UPSF is the highest paid in LTL but can be difficult to work for. PAckage does make quite a bit more, that the kind of job everyone and their mother wants UPS package feeder.

 

The big problem with the package feeder division. You must be willing to be the bend over Billy guy for a long time until seniority comes into play. Most ltl companies are like that because of the near 0 turnover.

 

With the way YRC is snatching up companies I would stay away from union carriers. Look what happened to CF. The drivers and the union keep pushing higher wages, cheaper benefits etc. They shut the doors over a weekend, drivers went home, returned Monday to a locked gate. In 32 years any company you hired with may not be around. Fed Ex is hurting, keep laying off drivers. Go for Old D, or Con-Way, or stay with Estes. If you are able to pay your bills, save a little and like what you do why change? The grass is not always greener.

 

Fedex isnt hurting that bad, they are outsourcing all their freight because its cheaper that way. YRC was hurting just look at all our road units... a lot of them are hurting. Fedex has nothing but brand new trucks with the exception of city units. CF shut its doors down becuase the company was routing their freight through the conway regionals instead. That was a planned thing to do that.

 

I agree FedEx is getting pretty cheap. They are out sourcing a lot of freight. Sadly UPSF does it too. Supposedly only because they have too much freight. Don't even get me started about Conway and CF! CF was the best job ever, Watkins ltl was right up there too. Both ruined by other companies!

 

Sounds like some of us got started at the tail end of the hay days of LTL. We start our newbs at 36 cpm for the first three months and then bump them up to 40 cpm afterwards. Then you get the 2.5 cpm/year pay raise till you top out at around 51 CPM after three or four years.

I talked to another driver out of Oregon and he said that USF Reddaway wouldn't hold it against you if you had a minor accident as long as the damages didn't exceed $500. For example, we would have guys sideswiping a handrail by the dock, and some welder would have to come out to straighten it out. According to former policy, minor dents and scratches were part of the "whoops, I screwed up" type of deal and you wouldn't even lose your safety bonus. Now if you sideswipe the paint off of a doorway with a forklift tine you are required to fill out an accident report, lose your safety bonus, PLUS potentially get ####canned if the safety office has a bad day. It is complete BS if you ask me. We lost some senior drivers over the past year (many with 15-20 of experience with the company) for minor damages that didn't even equal $100. I think part of the strategy now is to remove the senior guys and hire newbies just to keep labour costs down.