Started with J Rayl Transport one year ago today.

Today is the five year anniversary of my getting my Class A CDL (after 20 years of driving buses on a Class B). A week later, I was hired by J Rayl. As I said above a couple of years ago, I really expected to drive for them for a year. Well, here it is five years later and I’m still with them, still driving dedicated regional for Georgia Pacific. The salary went up a couple of years ago to $1400/week, plus quarterly safety bonuses. There were some very nice retention bonuses during the pandemic as well (hey, I was delivering truckloads of toilet paper!).

They have treated me very well personally, too. I figure I have something like ten more years until I retire, and I’m pretty sure that, barring unforeseen circumstances, I’ll be with them until the end.

 

Had same intentions & did exactly the same with my first job.

Congratulations!

 

Feel good story of the day. Congratulations and continue doing what you’re doing.

 

I worked for JRayl out of the Columbus yard early in my career (2018), they were great and I really liked how everyone knew my name whenever I was in Akron. Every driver I talked to was always nice, too. Even had one of the owner ops buy me breakfast in New Jersey at a food truck one morning while we were at a customer delivering an Arhaus load lol.

I still recommend Jrayl to new CDL holders all the time on Reddit whenever I see they live in the companies hiring area so I’m glad to hear they are still treating their drivers well. If UPS ever manages to fire me and JRayl has a local position open I’d certainly consider going back.

 

Well, it’s the sixth anniversary of my hiring on with J Rayl. I’m sitting in my new truck, a 2025 International LT that I moved into a week ago from my previous truck, a 2019 LT that had 518k on the odometer. Internationals get some scorn around here, but my experience has been very good. This truck is mostly like my old truck, same engine (Cummins X-15) and same layout inside so all my stuff went into the same spaces.

One difference is that instead of the 10 speed manual transmission, it has a 12-speed automatic. After shifting gears myself for the last six years, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself digging it after a relatively short time familiarizing myself with it.

Anyway, I’m still at J Rayl and expect to be for ten more years until I retire.

Here are my old truck on the left and my new truck on the right.

 

Glad things are working out for you. They seem to run a lot of Help Wanted ads around here.