what's Set-Jet Team mean please

LTL is less than truckload.

If you ordered say... a whole 53 foot trailer full of ... 24 pallets of... *Considers product... soda in cans it's going to be close to 49000 pounds more or less in that whole trailer. More than likely stacked double in 48 pallets because soda by the case in cans are heavy and can only stack so high before they reach 2000 pounds per pallet weight limit each.

All that soda going to ... Kmart in Chester PA. That's a full truckload.

Now...

If I ordered a load of soda in that trailer but have 10 stops with 10 different stores with different counts, different brands, different rates for each of the stops, different appt times, different days of delivery etc. You might be working on that load for a week to 10 days getting it all off into all the customers that ordered the stuff.

Another idea of LTL would be three pallets of product going to a Red Lobster in Jersey, a second red Lobster in Connecticut will take 5 pallets with a totally different custom order and a third red lobster up in NY State near Albany would get the last of what is left on your trailer. Due to travel times, delivery time and labor for delivering product and so on, this load might have you out three days and then return to Maryland with a empty trailer. And there you are, refilled 3 Red Lobster resturants with a bunch of food products ranging from the famous cheese biscuts all the way to market rate lobsters, king crab and a number of other really cool and exotic seafood etc. In addition to your boring plates, trays, glasses, silverware etc.

If you were a team in LTL you can do what we did as a husband wife team. Loaded at a Nursery in Delaware not far from Lewes along route one. This will be about 29 stops. ALL in Iowa. Once loaded Sunday afternoon, you are due in Iowa monday afternoon for your first stop. That is where the team part comes in. Iowa is about roughly 24 hours driving time from Delaware. I recall Chicago being 18 hours But you gotta be in Iowa which is past Chicago in the NE corner where there is a major regional chain store that bought all those nice annuals and prenniels for the entire Iowa based store chain, all 29 of them with nurseries. You gotta have a team to get into Iowa really fast, like next day to start your LTL work.

First store might take two carts of plants. The little flowery and green plants you see in every single Big Box and walmart nursery as you walk past their fencing and plants to the store's doorways on the sidewalk. Those are what we delivered.

I would be in the back of the reefer wrestling the correct cart, while my spouse is going with the Store Manager with all the bills for the product. By the time I get the two carts off at the first forklift waiting at my trailer floor we will know that every plant this particular chain store ordered for that exact location has been counted, inventoried and examined for Overage, Shortage and Damaged (OSD if any... preferable not to have any damage)

Manager signs the bills for that specific group of plants, I put the empty carts secured, close the trailer doors, seal same and we hop into the tractor to go to stop number two about 40 miles down a large divided highway. We have to be there tomorrow morning Tuesday at 8 am sharp when they open and it's already 6PM monday. Spouse gets dinner started on the floor of the cab for both of us,. A nice hearty big dinner, Hams, onions, taters, gravy, some brocclli and hot tea from the coffee pot which takes a couple of hours to cook everything by the time We reached the tuesday AM stop later that night on Monday evening at about 8PM, it's time to snuggle in that sleeper, catch the evening news on the television and get some sleep together until morning.

7 AM alarm rings. Breakfast is begun on the cab floor as coffee brews. (Remember we are a self sufficient team, no need for truckstops and we bought our food every 5 weeks give or take in Wyoming at the walmart there in Laramie which comes out to be about a thousand pounds all together for us and food, fluids, paper towels etc everything)

8 AM, wife goes to find the manager, I open up the trailer after checking seal and get the one cart they will be due to day at that 8AM store location. Forklift shows up, cart is empty and returned to trailer, I secure it. Wife brings signed paperwork for that stop. And we are off. 10 am appt at stop number three 20 miles down the road. 26 more stops to go. This day tuesday will be a 6 store stop with everything off the trailer by Friday night and delivery of carts into Souix City.

That week's 29 stops and return of carts were a flawless series of LTL work. You probably got a little bit tired reading this simple beginning, the loading in Delaware, the fast one day trip to Iowa and beginning to deliver the first of the 29 stores with all of their plants ordered down to the last correct plant. They cannot have mistakes in this kind of order.

After our carts were delivered to Sioux City, 5 days later we received our payroll for the Iowa trip from Delaware loading. Net pay for both wife and I was standing right about 1215 dollars after taxes.

Not a bad week of LTL delivery in 5 days with 29 stops with a high speed dash from Delaware and a errand to Sioux City to finish. Total days used was 6. With every night since monday evening through friday evening a proper sleep time between 10PM to 6 am for both of us due to the stores chain being closed by 6PM in the nursery side every work day. M through F. We were usually at the next day's appt store the prior evening. Filling up on food, drinks and absolutely decompressing and resting with a proper sleep together. And getting up with fresh coffee and good hot cooked breakfast food just prior to getting to work when that forklift pulled up looking for his cart or carts.

I recall that week very well. It was one of our best LTL situations we ever had and there would be no problem continuing the pace by returning to Delaware at high speed to reload the saturday or sunday for another week in Iowa or some other state with a bunch of stops for a chain customer with more plants.

One of the few times we engaged in what was definately a profitable series of LTL work all around. The pay checks were in 4 figures after tax and FFE made a bunch of money as did the Nursery who shipped the plants. We would have no problems doing the whole spring time period of this season delivering plants while the money was flowing and there was plenty to eat, drink and lots of sleep. A bit more sleep than we needed actually so we burned off the excess time in videos from either VHS or DVD and engaged in disinfecting, cleaning the cab and doing a little bit of bug removal (Remember this is IOWA, the BUG Fluid capital of the USA) and small tasks. Fuel was not a problem that week. We had her idling the whole week every night, during the stops and the total mileage was not that difficult once we made the final fueling just west of Chicago of all places before penetrating IOWA. And not planning to fuel again until Sioux city. Those 340 gallons came in handy plus the 100 for the reefer. Careful nursing the temperature on those plants made sure that 100 gallons lasted the week. (Usually two days or three max when in high range continious at -25 or so. and slurp, it'd dry again... thirsty little trailer. I could have drained a 200 gallon reefer fuel. I don't know why companies refused to put 200 gallons under the trailer. Make a total of 550 gallons of fuel all together. Plenty for a week's worth of work.

That's LTL. Done perfectly. Our way. Dispatch? Not a peep.

 

Less Than a truckLoad
Basically like estes, saia, old dominion, etc. that make final deliveries (and pickups) of freight to customers who don't typically have a full truck load to ship

 

I picked up delivered one quarter pallet of a product wrapped in plastic, secured to the front wall on a 53, Doors were sealed and locked doesn't count as ltl

 

Team if you can do it. ESPECIALLY if you are nice. As in thank you sir, yessir, no sir that sort of thing. Two is always better than one. And you will have more time to do the work with the truck where otherwise as a single you might be sitting 34 hours once a week.

We used to get going when winter quit and kept rolling until October and hibernated during the holidays and winters. One dump truck paving job I had for three years paid us full unemployment from October to March every winter. All we had to do was stay fit and ready to work late Feb early March when that phone rang.

It was a wonderful time in life. All that money and no way to spend it all relatively speaking. I could probably go back to maryland tomorrow and hop into that old mack and get going for another 18 hour day of working until we cannot see anymore building a parking lot or something, if the old man has not yet retired already. But Arkansas is good to me where I am so I'm staying put. besides I have not yet gotten the non res carry for Maryland approved yet. Working on that. I wont go back to the east coast without my arms, that much is certain. (And somewhat off topic.)

The morale of the story is simple. You worked and saved the money unspent. Winter came, you hibernated spending very little. Eventually in about 5 to 10 years you should have enough money to pay cash for your first tractor. I actually signed a 41,000 dollar FLD midroof tractor in the mid 90's one summer day, and it was such a huge life changing step forward for me. No more being a company chump driver. I was a owner operator with my first problem, how to give her a drink of 300 gallons of fuel this week?And where do I find my first load? And tires.. I need 10 of them in few months and so on. No more company chump being yelled at thinking for me. no sirree...

That got stopped due to discrimination, but that's off topic here. The morale is that if I can make the change from Company chump being kicked around at 300 dollars a week net pay to a owner operator potentially making 5K a week... That's quite a oppertunity in America. Land of Oppertunity.

If I ever get back into it it will probably be a 30K pete with someone hired to drive it for percentage of revenue. And maybe two petes. Then three. Then four. and so on. Maybe some land to keep them corraled when not running etc during the winter.I already know who the shipper will be (McKesson of Memphis) its a matter of figuring out the revenue minus expenses and so on. plus insurance, authroity etc.

Anyone can become a company in America. if I can do it, you can too. Just need to work hard a while. No more SNAP or anything ever again in your life. (I myself depend on a variety of programs unfortunately, but I would be off them in a heart beat once the money stops being so tiny each month... it takes money in the USA to make good... always does) But you gotta make it first as if you don't know.

 

I could put that into the back of my Tahoe and delivered the same.

I don't understand to this day why they order up a monster 18 wheeler to deliver such a pittance of freight.

 

I've done what I can to turn off the debate i had going with myself on this subject, The pay is the same no matter what's in that box, occasionally there's s specialty, regardless, a customer has ordered and paid for it. Doesn't matter what I think about it.

 

Schneider is for the "jet set" elite society.