I started at conway last month. My previous experience as a professional driver has been seven years of food and beverage, similar to what you've been doing. My previous employer shut down my shuttle yard and theyre currently running all of their loads out of the warehouse which is about 100 miles away. I wasnt willing to follow the work, so I got into conway.
The hiring process was relatively swift. I started training less than 2 weeks after I filled out my application. Training was a 2 week course, 40 hrs pay per week but you'll probably be training a little more than 40hrs each week. First week was mostly sitting around in a room watching videos. It was boring, and a lot of the videos were out-dated and irrelavant, but hell, I was getting paid for it. The next week was city/linehaul training. Two days shadowing a city driver, three days shadowing a linehaul driver. I learned a lot more this week because it was all hands-on, in the field, etc. My first two weeks after training were on linehaul flex. Basically you call in at 4pm for a start time and you start sometime between 6pm and 8pm. There were no runs for me to do for the entire two weeks so I'd work the dock til about midnight and get sent home, about 30 hrs per week. These past two weeks, I've been on city flex. I call in for a start time at 830am and start sometime between 2pm and 6pm, and work until sometime between midnight and 4am depending if I run anywhere. It's kind of ironic that I did no linehaul driving on linehaul but I would get linehaul turns while on the city flex. I also get some night-appointment city runs on the city flex.
I would say that this place pays very well and has good benefits. Starting pay as of april 1 is $19/hr and topping out at 24/hr after 5 years. Overtime after 8 hrs, but it may be different for your region ie overtime after 40. Mileage pay starts at .45 cpm and tops out at .55cpm in 5 years (not 100% sure but around there).Health insurance is great for a non-union co. First year health insurance is decent good. $10 or $0 per week for single depending on if you smoke and if you take some online health assesment, although this plan will cost you a hefty amount if you have to see the doctor. After the first year, you get a four different options of coverage with different premium and benefit levels, all of which are a relatively good deal. I would say the only caveat is that there's no employer 401k contribution. They had an employer match before but it was cut during the recession and they haven't got it back yet. Maybe it's in the works but I haven't heard anything concrete. Equipment here is good as theyre replacing the older sterlings with new freightliner cascadias.
As for coming from a bev company, you just have to learn to cope with working on call. Kind of hard to have a social/family life that way, but with the rampant turnover, you'll climb up the ladder pretty quick (at least in the bigger terminals). As far as I know, all linehaul runs are 1-shift turns so you wouln't be spending days away from home. Whether you choose to go city or linehaul, you could probably get a regular start time within a year.
btw a subservice carrier is an over the road carrier that takes conway's LTL freight from one conway terminal to another terminal in some of the longer lanes. It saves the company money by having cheap labor move the frieght.
edit: con-f-trucker's explanation of subservice may be better than mine.. I think he posted while I was typing my post
The hiring process was relatively swift. I started training less than 2 weeks after I filled out my application. Training was a 2 week course, 40 hrs pay per week but you'll probably be training a little more than 40hrs each week. First week was mostly sitting around in a room watching videos. It was boring, and a lot of the videos were out-dated and irrelavant, but hell, I was getting paid for it. The next week was city/linehaul training. Two days shadowing a city driver, three days shadowing a linehaul driver. I learned a lot more this week because it was all hands-on, in the field, etc. My first two weeks after training were on linehaul flex. Basically you call in at 4pm for a start time and you start sometime between 6pm and 8pm. There were no runs for me to do for the entire two weeks so I'd work the dock til about midnight and get sent home, about 30 hrs per week. These past two weeks, I've been on city flex. I call in for a start time at 830am and start sometime between 2pm and 6pm, and work until sometime between midnight and 4am depending if I run anywhere. It's kind of ironic that I did no linehaul driving on linehaul but I would get linehaul turns while on the city flex. I also get some night-appointment city runs on the city flex.
I would say that this place pays very well and has good benefits. Starting pay as of april 1 is $19/hr and topping out at 24/hr after 5 years. Overtime after 8 hrs, but it may be different for your region ie overtime after 40. Mileage pay starts at .45 cpm and tops out at .55cpm in 5 years (not 100% sure but around there).Health insurance is great for a non-union co. First year health insurance is decent good. $10 or $0 per week for single depending on if you smoke and if you take some online health assesment, although this plan will cost you a hefty amount if you have to see the doctor. After the first year, you get a four different options of coverage with different premium and benefit levels, all of which are a relatively good deal. I would say the only caveat is that there's no employer 401k contribution. They had an employer match before but it was cut during the recession and they haven't got it back yet. Maybe it's in the works but I haven't heard anything concrete. Equipment here is good as theyre replacing the older sterlings with new freightliner cascadias.
As for coming from a bev company, you just have to learn to cope with working on call. Kind of hard to have a social/family life that way, but with the rampant turnover, you'll climb up the ladder pretty quick (at least in the bigger terminals). As far as I know, all linehaul runs are 1-shift turns so you wouln't be spending days away from home. Whether you choose to go city or linehaul, you could probably get a regular start time within a year.
btw a subservice carrier is an over the road carrier that takes conway's LTL freight from one conway terminal to another terminal in some of the longer lanes. It saves the company money by having cheap labor move the frieght.
edit: con-f-trucker's explanation of subservice may be better than mine.. I think he posted while I was typing my post
