Hello all I have been OTR for 6 years really have been wanting to go home every night. I have 4 LTL operations relatively close to me.
My options are FedEx in Zion,Il Conway saia and ABF. I'm leaning towards FedEx but kinda have cold feet have been with the same company my entire trucking career.
Is it true I will do alot of sitting at home on call first starting out? Do they hire on with no experience working with fork lifts? I also have no doubles experience.
Are layoffs frequent? Is there a fairly long slow season? Thank you for any help
I cant speak for the Zion location specifically, but if/when you do get that road driver position, you will start out as low man on the board. Typically, depending on how busy the location is, you will be running the extra board, i.e. you will be given any run that is additional to the established bid runs. If the center is seriously slow, you may sit home occasionally. I know if our center is slow and don't need all the bid drivers, they will start at the top of the seniority and ask if they want the night off, and then that run will be filled by the people at the bottom of the board.
Low spot from Zion is most likely to our Chicago Heights hub, dont know the mileage, but you will work the dock for the majority of your shift.
No experience with forklifts is normally not an issue, as part of your orientation you will be certified for the forklift.
The biggest issue with pulling doubles is the hook/drop process. Driving them down the road is a little more tricky than a van, but you will get the hang of it quickly being an experienced driver.
They claim we have a slow season, maybe this is true in the bigger markets, our location seems to stay steady all year round. In my 8 years with the company, outside of merging with another opco, I have not seen any layoffs, or even heard of any. I dont think we have any more opco's to merge with, so that's probably not an issue either.
If you come off OTR, and get used to the being home every night, most likely you will never even consider going back OTR with their horrible hours/pay/dispatch/shippers/receivers, etc, etc.