So... old CFI rolled out a new pay package yesterday. Mass hysteria ensued, predictably. Have you ever seen those football mid-season pages in the sports section, breaking down each element of a team and assigning a grade? Well, the New York Times approached me (I'm completely making this up.) and asked me to do one of those breakdowns on CFI's new pay package. I said no way. I told them I have a juggernaut of a weblog, getting literally dozens of hits a day. I'm in more households than A Diary of seed germination. I owe it to the loyal masses of readers to provide a breakdown here. Enjoy:
Pay Scale: C
The pay for drivers with pets will be unchanged, while drivers without pets will get a penny raise. Those with pets can earn what is being called a raise, but I see as more of a fuel bonus, by maintaining a set mpg standard on a three-month rolling basis. In addition, we'll continue to be paid at the time of dispatch, but will be paid weekly instead of semi-monthly.
My Take: Whatever. The pay scale was so-so before, and it will be so-so after. Plenty of companies pay more cpm than CFI. We get practical miles, which accounts for some of the difference, and we get pretty consistent miles month-to-month, which accounts for some more of the difference. If I earn a decent living now, I'm not going to join the masses who are crying about the fact that they'll be earning another hundred bucks or so every month. The reason I graded this relatively low is that CFI had an opportunity to create a point of distinction from the larger carriers here by implementing an aggressive pay scale. They failed miserably. The explanations reek of bullshit, as far as I'm concerned. We're being told that drivers overwhelmingly preferred bigger sleepers in lieu of higher pay. In my opinion, that's a lie. The news for prospective new drivers is much better though, as the bulk of wage increases are being directed to new CDL holders who go through the training process. The first-year pay scale has been hiked up significantly from its current schedule.
Ancillary Pay: C-
Layover pay - unchanged. Stop pay - a flat $35 in place of the graduating scale (starting with $22.50) that we currently receive. New York pay - still $50 for delivering in the five boroughs, but nothing for picking up in the five boroughs. Holiday pay - unchanged. Border pay - unchanged. Driver unload/assist pay - unchanged. Detention - $12 per hour after three consecutive hours, replacing the mysterious "you get a quarter of what we collect" plan. Northeast pay - unchanged. Hazmat pay - unchanged. (Priority teams get a reimbursement for the cost of the hazmat endorsement, while others get 1/2 reimbursement.) Safety bonus - unchanged. Fuel bonus - gone.
My take: Where's the beef? We've been told, on a consistent basis, that we would be getting "the best of both worlds" when it came to this "blended" pay package. The stuff that was good at ConWay would be adopted, while the stuff that was better at CFI would be maintained. It looks to me like a few of CFI's scales have been tweaked, and the ConWay pay structure was discarded completely. Our layover pay is a pathetic program. Big swing and a miss on that one. ConWay's was perhaps a little too generous, but this was an opportunity to update the scale and find some middle ground. Big failure there. Our stop pay, based on my own experience, will be an improvement over the current system. Most multi-stop loads only have one or two extra stops, so the pay will be higher on those. New York pay is something that I've never received, so I have no idea how often it's paid. On the face of it though, this policy is asinine. If it's a pain in the ass to take a load into NYC, and thus worthy of extra compensation, why in the hell would going in to pick up a load be any different? Dumb. Holidays, border pay, unload pay - whatever. They're good enough I guess. Detention is one that I'll have to wait and see about. I'm not sure if that means that three hours at a dock is worth $36 or it's just $12 after the third hour and the first three are free. Further to that, the current system would occasionally pay a bunch of money for no particular reason, while often paying nothing for the longest delays. If it is actually a matter of just getting paid, without jumping through hoops, I think that will be an improvement. The half reimbursement for hazmat came with another dumbass explanation, so again I say whatever. Maybe we only have to haul the loads halfway, then someone else will finish the run for us. Dumb. The safety bonus is fine. The fuel bonus was a joke, and they have confirmed as much by eliminating it. They missed the boat in a huge way by failing to adopt an aggressive program here. Fuel costs are rising and, if they would step up to the plate and split cost savings with the drivers, the drivers would be a lot more inclined to cut back fuel consumption aggressively. This shit is learned in freshman business classes or the first year or two of actually running a business in the real world. I wonder what these guys are thinking sometimes. Much like the pay scale, this stuff is all well enough as far as I'm concerned, but it represents another missed opportunity to stand out as a great place for drivers to work.
Benefits: Incomplete
I've heard that a flex spending plan is being implemented, and that we'll be moving to T. Rowe Price, ConWay's 401(k) administrator. Vacation is the same, hometime is the same, and the rider policy is the same. I don't know enough about the differing health plans to really delve much deeper.
My Take: That stuff is 100% irrelevant to me. I happen to be bulletproof. As such, I have no need to put aside money for doctor's visits or stuff like that. I won't be surprised at all if my premiums go up again, so I can provide healthcare for someone's kid or an overweight smoker with heart problems. In terms of retirement, I invest on my own since it seems unlikely I would ever be around long enough to see any benefit from the company's 401(k) plan. Even if I were in CFI's plan, the name on the mutual fund is just a name. Pick three large cap funds out of a hat and get back to me in twenty years. As long as their expense ratios are in the same ballpark, they'll be worth roughly the same amount, regardless of the company that sold them. About the only thing that certainly sounds good here is that we can still bank our hometime indefinitely. It is my understanding that ConWay Truckload did not allow this practice. I enjoy knowing that, if I chose to do so, I could go home tomorrow for a month and nobody would have a thing to say about it.
Operational Changes: D+
Trucks governed at 65mph. Freightliner Cascadias, Kenworth T-660's, and Kenworth T-2000's, all with condo sleepers.
My Take: People will be quick to spout a bunch of bullshit numbers regarding how much pay we'll lose by driving slower trucks. They are way off base with the fantastical claims they make. In reality, we will occasionally lose a few bucks here and there. On long stretches of highway where the speed limit is between 65mph and 70mph, it might take us an extra few hours to reach a destination. That doesn't mean you lose a certain percentage of your pay every day, regardless of what the Chicken Littles would have you believe. It means that, eight days later, you might have five hours left on your 70 hour clock when it could have been eight or nine hours. Again though, there can't be a supposition that you automatically lose money. Perhaps you miss out on a 450 mile load because you don't have the hours, and you've lost money as a result of the slower truck. Or perhaps the only load available is 200 miles and you're not affected at all. Nobody can really say for sure, even if they did figure out how to work a calculator this week. The real problem is much like the problems with every other part of this analysis - CFI is slowly but surely eliminating any reason for people to think they're any different from any other company out there. It's a competitive market and being just another face in the crowd can be a problem. Apparently they've cast their lot with the new student program (which is quite good for people interested in getting started), so maybe they don't care whether or not the more experienced (read: expensive) drivers start leaving. The bigger sleeper apparently means that fat people will be happy. I climb in the bunk to sleep. I have no idea what other people are doing back there, but the fact that this is even given as an excuse for the small pay raise is annoying to me. Furthermore, the trucks will be heavier and fuel mileage will suffer, so any hope of seeing the 65mph thing go by the wayside is probably gone.
Overall: D
Since this merger was announced, we've been told that "a great driving job just got better." We have seen exactly zero improvements in operational efficiency as we go about our daily lives, so many of us looked forward to this new pay package (with its "best of both worlds" promises) as the first sign of how our jobs would be improved. A penny a mile, with a slower truck, might mean another thousand bucks a year or so. That's fine, but nobody will be doing any cartwheels over it. A few stops here and there, with some detention pay here and there, could mean another few hundred bucks a year. That's fine too. For that, we're being relegated to 65mph roadblock status, with no extra horsepower for hills and merging and traffic jams and all the rest of it. I'll personally give it some time and see how my life is affected, but it sounds like many of my colleagues don't intend to wait and see.
So I guess I'll try to get some rest and then get cracking after midnight. That way, even if I do somehow feel motivated to drive all the way through, I'll be done before the football games get into full swing. So, it looks like Greg wins this week's fan poll by a whopping 1-0 margin. I did my due diligence and searched for a couple of corroborating reasons to root for Texas this week. Looks like I found them:
HOOK 'EM HORNS!
So who do we play this week, anyway? I should warn you fellow Texas fans though, I'm bad luck as a fan this year.
I hope you were the lucky dog who snapped this picture!
ReplyDeleteI wish.
ReplyDelete