Comments By Bob C.

Errol, I recognize that there are good trainers doing it for the right reasons, competent idealists if you will, and that you very may well be one of them. And those, you, folk deserve a hell of a lot more than a 15 percent tip for their, your, service to your employer and to the industry at large.

Being a trainee anywhere can be an awful experience. Being a trainer anywhere can be an awful experience. I wouldn't train anyone who wasn't family or a friend for much less than double my regular pay, and I tend to question the motives of those who would do it for the paltry incentives I've been offered to do so, or that I've heard other companies offer. At the last major carrier I worked for, my rough estimate was that trainers gained MAYBE 15-20 percent over what they made solo. I don't think companies get too many of their actual brightest and best drivers to take on all that extra responsibility and risk, AND share their tiny cubicle of living space with a pot luck complete stranger, for such little reward. I think it's more likely to attract the guy who barely gets by paycheck to paycheck because his wife is back home spending it all, and who needs the ego boost of being ''the boss'' for a change. And/or, like my trainer years back, likes the idea of getting paid for a few thousand miles a month to watch porn in the sleeper berth.

Hi....I worked at that Walmart DC for 3 and a half months last year. I was an OTR driver for USXpress and was asked to go there to help out temporarily, so I got paid a little differently than the guys who signed up specifically to that account. They worked 5 or 6 days a week for a salary...I worked 100 days straight for miles (paid at my previous OTR rate) plus stop pay of 25 (first stop), 30 (2nd) and 55 (any further stops on the run). Other than that I got the same runs as everyone else..was just another driver. Roughly half the runs went to Metro Detroit for 3 stops and then back to Auburn...a typical day was 10,11 hours from the time I showed up at the DC to pick up my trailer to when I brought it back empty (or, usually, parked at the Loves 10 miles away for the night). Frozen&Dairy runs left DC late afternoon, Meat Produce runs usually left DC roughly between 8 and midnight. The only way you'd ever get stuck in heavy traffic is if you didn't make it past AnnArbor before 7 am on your way back from a Detroit area run...that only happened to me once. One real traffic jam in 3 months. Which of course was a huge plus. The guys assigned to that DC, like you would be, when volume got high they would be grouped into A and B, each group would alternate having to work a Saturday. So you'd have a 5 day work week, a 6 day, a five day, etc. Needless to say you'd get paid for the extra day. I used to kinda laugh at guys who complained about having to work a Saturday every other week but I like long vacations rather than frequent little chunks of 'hometime'. So it comes down to preferences.

As I said, I had a run every day I was there, but they had a policy where if you were available and on call for a day and they didn't dispatch you you'd be paid 160 anyway. Never happened to me, I doubt it happened very often to anyone else. Place was busy. I have since left the company (was with them 3.5 years) so I'm not here to shill for them by any means. But my weekly pay there was more or less exactly what I was told I'd make when I showed up. I averaged about 1450 gross...woulda been 70k + over a year. Again, I worked every day and under a different arrangement..as a temp from OTR basically. Not sure what the exact pay scale is for the actual dedicated drivers there (which was probably 45-50 of the roughly 55 guys there) but if you're being told 65k I see no reason why you wouldn't get it.

U N L E S S . . . . .

they lose the account. Which may have already happened as I type this. I was told about a month ago by a USX employee at Gas City (a safety guy not a driver) that USXpress lost the Gas City WM account (20 miles south of Auburn) and they'll be out of there very soon...I have also heard less reliable information that they have lost other WM accounts as well. So everything I've told you above, accurate as it is, might not mean a damn thing. If I were you I'd really want to make sure that USXpress is even going to still be at the Auburn DC come springtime. How you gonna make sure of something like that....are people going to be straight with you ....beats me.

So, to sum up...if you get there, and IF they keep the account, I'm quite sure you'll get the pay the recruiter promised, give or take a few grand a year. But it's a big if from what I've heard. I might try calling the USX office at the DC direct around 7 pm and asking for a dispatcher named Joe...he was the best of the lot there.