You wish you had it this good :) Watkins & Shepard

It's still warm and fuzzy. Try not to read too much into it. W&S is still a very good company in my book.

Nothing I said is unbearable for the average driver. Sitting over the weekend with W&S happens from time to time. It depends on where you wind up, and your ability to communicate with dispatch in advance.

Also keep in mind, almost everyone is having freight issues at the moment.

More often than not, you'll be ready to sit, if you're a hard worker to begin with. I seen more times than I cared, when I just wanted to sit in one place for 48 hours.

LTL requires a lot of fingerprinting. But W&S isn't all about LTL. The OTR drivers rarely touch the freight, and they rarely get asked to pull LTL. It usually falls on the regional and local drivers.

The comments he made about the pay. Pure BS. I took off almost a complete month, not including the weekends I had at home while LTL. And still made $48k last year.

Dispatch doesn't "leave" you hanging, unless you fail to communicate.

Note that could have been worded different. But the bold type was the point I was stressing.

And as Msmspilot pointed out...the disgruntled posters numbers DO NOT ring true at W&S. For solo or team. If you can't make $45k a year as a solo, you're just plain lazy. Or you're a casual driver.

 

Not sure how you were directing that question. But I'll take a shot.

OTR is kept moving rather well, better than most of the "big" companies IMHO. W&S will make every attempt to move a driver who wants to move. And I generally averaged well over 3k miles a week while OTR.

Occasionally, you will hit one of the depressed areas. Then it's a waiting game. Santa Fe Springs, CA is the biggest offender.

To give you an example of how bad it can be.

I hit SFS on saturday morning and had to wait for several hours while my trailer finished out. Another driver, had gotten there before me. He had driven in with a load from Modesto, this was his only trip for the week.

I left several hours later. The other driver sat until monday to live unload. This was a simple failure to communicate on the other drivers part. Although he was communicating his dissatisfaction rather well with the other drivers.

New Jersey terminal, the same way. Fail to communicate, and you will sit.

It all boils down to your communication skills, and your working relationship with your dispatcher. If either of you slack, you're going to sit.

In all fairness, the driver was a new guy. And his dispatcher should have contacted him for a status check. I had been in contact with mine, and the SFS terminal since Thursday evening, with updates on my status and ETA.

And while I'm sure the dispatchers thought I was an royal pain in the ###. If they failed to acknowledge my QC check. I would call them, to confirm. I never left anything to chance/doubt.

I even contacted load planners. Although I was sternly reminded more than once, they weren't who I was supposed to contact.

 

It's good to hear she's back.

Yes SFS was a total cluster #### at times after she left. She kept things running much smoother than most people thought.

 

I actually took a lot of time off last year and had weekends at home most of the time, so I doubt I was one of the top earners. My past experience in furniture hauling/loading/unloading, probably helped me a lot. That point I will concide. I can tailgate a full load by myself in just over an hour, without a dolly.

As for the $40k team, you find those at every company. They're usually husband and wife teams, who are team in name only. I've met teams who only drove in the daytime. I've met teams who do not drive on Sundays, for religous reasons. I've met teams who whine about having to run more than 4k miles a week.

I've actually made that $10-15k a year more at some companies. Those days are gone for me. I simply refuse to stay gone for weeks on end. I'm trying to enjoy my latter years with dignity.

This week, sucked by most drivers definition of "good" week. I sat and listened to several drivers piss and moan about how bad things were this week at my current company, freight out of OK was crap this week. I even saw a few really sad checks.

Matter of fact, I got a zero sum check this week myself. Dumb### me forgot to drop my trip packs off.

Truthfully, I am not your average driver. I do not need to make big bucks. I have no debt. So I can step back and take a differant prospective of a company. I can demand more from a company I work for.

Not money...more respect and home time.

It really takes a long time to come off the "average" trucker mentality. The mentality of having to run hard, run lots of miles, and make lots of money. I still find myself running numbers through my head, wondering what I can get tomoroow. Even though I've made enough by the 10th of the month, to take off the rest of the month.

And that has nothing to do with how much I make. It has more to do, with how much I don't owe. Even though I am at this point in my life, I find myself struggling with the same issues most drivers deal with every day. My fuse is a lot shorter though. I do not mind telling the owner or the CEO of a company to go #### himself.

And there is at least one individual in W&S management, who knows this.