How long did it take to win your first "bid route"

[IVE GOTTA PACKAGE 4U]

I peed myself.

Again?
Is that what happens when you retire?

 

[cosmo1]

Again?
Is that what happens when you retire?

!


No. I just go out on my deck now. Easy, peasy.

 

[Dub]

7 months

 

[Travwise]

1 month as a seasonal no one bid on open satellite route so I applied and got the job.

13 months later I bid on a route in the center.

Life's good.

 

[Cementups]

It was about 8 years till I had my own bid route. Not sure about excited but I was glad to not have to bump around all over the place.

 

[ZQXC]

22 years

 

[jumpman23]

Almost 10 years now without a route. I had a route for a few years and got bumped.

No reason to bid a crap route just to have a route. At least not for me.

Ditto Slaveman lol.

 

[Jackburton]

Never heard of this. Around here, once you have a route it's yours to keep. Unless you knew it was a designated training route in advance of the bid. Sounds like a real moral buster what your living with.

In the Southern Supplement we rebid all routes every two years, in the case of this last contract, 2 then 3, which we are in now. It's actually not to bad as companies come and go, roads and traffic changes. As routes change over the years the reason you bid on them might also.

If you're high in the senority table you generally can stay where you are, middle guys like myself can really make out. For example I run around 170ish stops per day, pick up 300ish pieces, work 11ish hours a day in a 1000. Some 25yr driver for whatever reason bid me off recently and is leaving a 700 with 120 stops, no pickups, and in a 700. The dominoes fell and I didn't get that route but I'm still going to a route right next door to me that I already halfway know, does 130stops, 20ish buisnesses, one pickup of about 70pieces, and is in a 700.

I say I made out ok.

 

[Overpaid Union Thug]

I just bid my first route. It took 7 years of being full-time but I passed on another route twice before. I was pretty excited because the route I just bid was more or less created once our center got EDD and I was usually the one running it even before I was full-time. I always wished it would have been bid because I knew I'd probably get it. For a very long time I was the only driver (full-tme or part-time) that was willing to run it. Maybe because it was in an old 800 with no power steering for the first 5 or 6 years. It ended up getting a brand new automatic recently. I'm not even sure what size it is. It looks like its somewhere between an 800 and a 1000 but turns like its much smaller. I wasn't so sure I'd win the bid because once that nice automatic was put in every once in a while more senior drivers started to run it. But it ended up being mine. For the next three years anyway.

 

[upsman68]

Never heard of this. Around here, once you have a route it's yours to keep. Unless you knew it was a designated training route in advance of the bid. Sounds like a real moral buster what your living with.

We bid every two years in my center.

 

[Grey]

We have drivers that get a permanent route when they go full time.

How does that work?

 

[1pocket73]

I don't mind swing driving.It is something different everyday and keeps me on my toes.I enjoy learning new areas as well.

The route I do now is half feeder/half package car.I run trailers back and forth for about 3-4 hours first thing in the morning.Then for the rest of my day I am doing excess dump stops and residential areas.No day is the same except for the feeder part.I got fortunate to land this route because the guy who did it before me got into some serious trouble with a DUI and 2 other serious charges which caused him to lose his CDL for a year.I am wondering now if after a year is up he will get this position back and I will go back to being a high seniority swing driver?