Why I went with LTL

Good luck. At U.S. foods you had to be 15+ yrs to get a shuttle run at the yard I was at. These food service companies want you to wear yourself out before giving you one. Rather just take a linehaul gig and be doing shuttle runs starting day 1. I see these old foodservice guys on the shuttle runs and they can barely walk straight.

 

I flat out said to the boss I recognize this is a long long long shot. GFS is the same way they want all the transit people to have been route drivers for 14-15 years. I'd never make it that long.

 

Yeah, they treat it like a reward or something like there's nothing out there. Line up a linehaul gig. Then go back to your manager tell him "hey I got a job offer to run shuttle day 1 at so & so for this amount of pay I'll stay if you give me the shuttle job" at least your trying to work it out and stay. Always try to work it out with your current company. Sometimes you got to show them there's other competition out there. Be sure you are lined up from the other job though and your for sure you want to do it. Be respectful when you do it though.

 

Well sure OTR drivers are a slave to truck and get paid peanuts while LTL drivers sleep at home or at hotels and get paid more.
I almost went into LTL, I was real close. No longer a company OTR driver though, screw that. Got my experience and left that low pay no life lifestyle behind.

 

I have the Kuhns grocery store on Highwood St as my majority on Mondays. They threw Mt Washington on my truck (with Kuhns) the other day, general consensus at the yard was that it couldn't get much worse than that. I pulled the load and then ran a 22 mile shuttle when I got back to the yard. Guess what? My opinion tells me that it couldn't get much BETTER.

Everyone has a choice. And I'm glad some folks choose OTR, they can have it.

 

hey hey hey delete that post now before the food service monkeys see that they are going to come in here and tell you how they are 35 and only been hurt on the job twice and still going strong

 

I'm siding with Mike on this one. Although I spent the majority of my Beer career doing bulk deliveries when I was a spare driver I was pretty much always in a side loader. You definitely get a lot of stupid looks, I had a couple guys come up to me and tell me their company was hiring if I wanted to get out of beer, one guy even said a "real job"! Too bad I was making more doing that ($45k) than they were starting OTR drivers at and I was home by 4 most days and only worked M-F. Now im doing P&D for an LTL, awesome benefits and all the perks but the hours suck. Has me rethinking possibly food service. I know that job can be hell but the paycheck isn't.

PS: I'm aware not all OTR drivers have that attitude.

 

That is not always true. I was regional running monday thru friday and home some during the week depending on runs and I took a pay cut to go LTL and be home every night. You can make more money LTL but the hours you work you might as well be OTR. I don't run linehaul, I work during the day 8-9 hours a day. I make around $23/hour (not topped out in pay yet). I figured out my pay by the hour when I was regional and I was close to $30/hour. It all depends on the area and companies you choose to work for.

 

You know we've got more injuries at my yard now then you can shake a stick at just last week a guy my age mid-late 20's broke his foot. I saw him at the yard Friday before last at the end of the day and he was telling me during the day he came down on his foot the wrong way and hurt it and now he's out on light duty. The doctors had a good look at it and I guess his foots broke from what I heard.

He shows, up to work, but someone else has to come and drive the truck while he rides in the passenger seat and works the scanner.

We've got 3 other guys on permanent out until further notice Workers Comp. One guy I don't think will ever see again. The other two are out for the long haul.

 

Yeah that's true the truck I drive doesn't have a million miles on it, but it's high for our fleet and it's getting a tad older, now eventually it will just age it's self out of the system. Plus it's a brand that the company doesn't buy anymore and is not a real popular brand with our mechanical staff so that's how that goes ha-ha!

It's not great, but I don't really care to be honest with you it runs okay and I don't need a new truck. Our trucks for the most part are maintained fairly well the DOT was getting on my company a little bit about that some years ago and the company really stepped up there game on maintenance and I guess the companies CSA score started going down and now it's to the point where were not even targets for DOT crack downs or anything not saying we couldn't be, but were not #1 on the radar. The company also runs the newer trucks on the long distance runs or the transit runs. The older stuff stays in the cities.