Profile For Delco Dave

That Dayton ABF terminal is a regional mothership terminal, all road drivers, no local P&D. We send them direct loads through the Carlisle PA terminal, our mothership via the road drivers and our few utility guys. Once you get some seniority and off the Xtra board, you can choose a bid for specific runs. Our main road guy does 2 runs a night, 6 nights a week to our terminal. If we don’t have a 6th night worth of freight on Saturday, he runs to Virginia and back instead.

He says he does very well, paid a cpm rate then 15 min per drop and hook so 2 sets of doubles, 1 in and 1 out, is worth 2 hrs of pay for 45 mins time. They also get paid for placards per trailer and anything extra they may have to do to complete the dispatch.

I run LTL as a local city driver at ABF Freight. I’m still a rookie driver and haven’t completed my 1st full year yet. I ended up at $58,668.55 for 2022. That includes 9 weeks of training pay at $17 an hour. I did not start making full rate until the 2nd week of May. We use the Samsara ELD and I don’t know how or if we can access our total milage and hours. I run roughly a 1000 miles a week so that puts me somewhere around 35,000. My road time varies daily depending on my dispatches so I wont even try to guess an average for hours plus we also work the dock and yard jockey.

A full year should land me in the 75-85k range at our current rate. 2023 is a union contract negotiating year for us and we are currently paid quite a bit less then the non union LTL drivers. A rather large hourly raise is in the proposal and is likely to go through so that yearly number should jump by another 10k or more.

Not too much has changed at ABF. Things have calmed down a little bit at my terminal. We have gone from crazy amounts of freight to just plain busy. Still getting OT every week.

I too always run with them on for same reason as Turtle. As much vision to others as possible.

Always on here as well!

As an ABF local city driver, I work Mon-Fri, roughly 50 hours a week, off every weekend. I live 20-25 minutes from my terminal. My shift starts at noon and wraps up around 9:30-10:30pm. As guys retire and I gain seniority, I could choose an earlier start time but I like this shift as of now and plan on running with it for awhile. We are Teamsters and paid hourly, all OT after 8 hours is time and a half. 100% company paid pension and 100% company paid medical, dental and eye for myself, wife and kids up to 26 years old. 8 paid holidays, 5 sick and 4 personal days. 1 week paid vacation after 1st year then up to 6 weeks at I think the 10 or 12 year mark. A yearly percentage bonus based on the terminal’s operating ratio from previous year. Company supplied and cleaned uniforms through Cintas so not much out of pocket expense for work clothes.

Most guys average 75-90k a year. Some of the senior guys do their 8 and skate but most of us run 9-11 hours everyday. If you were to factor in the pension and insurance we are over 100k a year

Only downside for me on this shift is I do miss a decent amount of my kids sports on weeknights and can’t volunteer as a coach which I enjoyed doing but I’m always there on weekends to watch or run them to travel tournaments

Study the pre trip inspection here at TT and know it before going to training. You’ll be glad you did!!! You may need to tweak it a little bit depending on what truck your training/testing in but for most of it, it will be the same as the study guide here. I was the only one in my training class who came in pre studied, the other students were on information overload and stressed learning to shift, drive and get the maneuvers down while still memorizing the pre trip. I almost nailed the entire pre trip on my 1st run at it so that allowed me to put all my focus into learning to drive and back during training.

I’m gonna be around 55K for my 1st year. Our pay is 2 weeks behind so I wont know my final number till 2nd Friday in Jan. Thats 8 months full rate driving and 2 months of training at $17 an hr

Merry Christmas!!!

The snow and ice ended up being a non issue here in the Philly area. Rain turned to snow for about an hour, it all melted on contact then the sun came out. Between the sun, salt crews and increase in wind, everything dried up pretty quickly preventing the flash freeze. I had a 40 footer out today, I did feel the wind pushing on the trailer after my 1st 12 skids were delivered and I lost most of my weight but other then that it was just another day on the road.

Now the dock work after driving was a whole other story. It was brutal…. 9 degrees with 40-50 mph winds, real feel was -19. Thankfully we only had a couple hours worth of freight to strip and load.

It was 55 when my shift started at noon, 9 degrees when I finished 7-1/2 hrs later.

I track the weather on the highways I'm expecting to travel on

We don’t really travel outside a 50-60 mile radius for the P&D and most of it is south of Philly into Delaware/north Maryland so the weather at my house is basically the same as our area. We do run west out into Lancaster county, there its more likely that you could run into a sudden change with the rain/snow line

Thanks for the heads up, I’ll keep that in mind but it might not be an option. We only have 1 twin screw at my terminal and thats used by a senior driver to haul our heavy vans to down to KeHe. A lot of our pups have to be pulled by a single screw due to landing gear placement so 2 stars would have to line up for that to work.

I plan on being extra cautious by slowing it down even more then rainy conditions and at least doubling my following distance. Really hoping the area state salt crews are on their game on the majors and the landscapers get the salt down at the shippers/receivers in a timely manner

We are running a skeleton crew today due to most of our customers being closed. Being towards the bottom of seniority list, I’m in today. Its currently still just rain here in the Philly area but as the storm pulls away the temps are dropping below freezing and winds are gonna really pick up. Having a little anxiety about the flash freezing thats gonna happen this afternoon during my shift. I have many years of experience driving in snow/ice from my landscaping days but I have zero so far with these tractors in snow/ice.

Talked to my dispatch last night about the projected conditions, he said we dont have too much road work today, mostly dock. If the roads get bad, he will reschedule the road work and we will just stay in.

I use these JBL bluetooth headphones. I put the right side one in my ear in case I need to take a call or call my dispatch. I have the phone set up for voice command through siri for hands free dialing. You just tap the headphone to answer or end a call. Could probably send a text as well but never bothered to try. They run $20-30 bucks.

it tried to send me down truck-restricted roads

Running local P&D, and still learning all our customer locations, I’m short trip planning multiple times a day. I bounce around the same town/area one day, the next day I’m in a different area. After I’ve run an area once or twice, I’ll remember how to get around to our main customers but other random stops always pop up. Hammer has failed me as well! Now I mainly use it to check for the low clearances, there are many in the Philly/south Jersey, Delaware area we service. Like I said above, I compare the suggested routes from Hammer and Google, then study the surrounding map and usually create my my own route to stay on the major roads. I exit the Hammer app and leave google on, it reroutes me as I ignore turns until it finally lines up with my predetermined route. Sometimes they both give the same route and I’ll agree it is the safest, best way but not to often

Just to be clear, I do not follow the GPS blindly. I use the combination of maps and suggested routes to find my way by staying on the major arteries as much as possible and limiting the amount of turns that need to be made.

The Hammer app is good for avoiding low clearances but not all truck restricted roads show up on it so as always, keep your eye on the road signs. Here is a screen shot for anyone not familiar with the Hammer GPS app showing both clearance heights and restricted roads.

Driving local, I use google satellite maps and the Hammer truck gps app all the time to trip plan since I’m going to new places and peoples houses quite often. I have an atlas but it doesn’t scale down/zoom in enough for most of where I need to go. I search the address, look at the suggested routes and then create my own truck friendly trip plan off of them. As you all know google likes to cut you through neighborhoods and back roads for the quickest route. I drive down the road telling the gps no for the majority of the turns it wants me to take.

Life gets better once you have a assigned truck.

All the senior morning shift guys and the night line haul guys have or share assigned tractors. The rest of us just get whatever truck is there due to someone having off or one of the night shifts that will be back close to our start time so its a crap shoot most of the time. I’m currently 25 of 29 on the list. We have about 20 tractors, I’ve never took an accurate count. 4 guys don’t drive very often if at all anymore by choice, they just work the dock and keep everything in order at the terminal

ProTip: Find a duffel or backpack with plenty of compartments and pack your supplies where you can find them.

I do carry a backpack with all my stuff, would just be nice to slip seat the same truck so I could leave a few things in there. I also seem to get stuck fueling the trucks, I hit the truck stop a few times a week. Clean a lot of windows and mirrors as well, I can’t stand the glare from a hazy windshield, I like em crystal clear.

The accountants out in Arkansas must think I’m the dedicated terminal fuel guy when my corporate card statement hits their desk