XPO Logistics

[CarolinaReaper]

Wanted to garner some opinions on the organization regarding employment. Any of you fellas worked there or know someone who has? They are currently hiring at their Kernersville location and the starting pay ain't bad. A little more than I make now and it's very similar work, unloading/loading trucks, operating a forklift,etc. Any info would be appreciated it. Thanks!

 

[Dan Apple]

All the LTL companies are about the same. Whoever hires you will be working for one of the others in 2 years and was working for a different one 2 years ago. If the benefits work for you, and the pay, and that is the work you want to do,,,, go for it.

 

[duckhunterwst]

With the current state of many folks not willing to work you may benefit from just asking for a raise at your current place of employment if pay is the only thing peaking your interest to leave. As one who is in management, if I had a good employee who was leaving for a competitor for the same job I would try to match and then some to keep them. Never know till you ask.

 

[beard&bow]

Looked the company up. If you're seriously considering the move, and don't want to follow @duckhunterwst advice, I'd suggest applying for their student driver position.

Same starting pay, but you get more once you become a driver. AND they pay you during your 7 week driver training course.

Sounds like you've gained some confidence in your absence! That's good to hear. Keep pushing @CarolinaReaper . You've got this!

 

[YanceyGreenhorn]

With the current state of many folks not willing to work you may benefit from just asking for a raise at your current place of employment if pay is the only thing peaking your interest to leave. As one who is in management, if I had a good employee who was leaving for a competitor for the same job I would try to match and then some to keep them. Never know till you ask.

Great point. This happened at my work last month and paid off for quite a few of us.

 

[YanceyGreenhorn]

Also, you said “I wanted to garner your opinions on the organization regarding employment.”Keep that professionalism going in your next venture. Being articulate is good for getting their attention long enough to show them your work ethic. I got faith you can go wherever you want as long as you stay determined. Being well spoken helps first impressions. You sound pro as a MF, homie.

 

[CarolinaReaper]

Thanks for the advice everyone.

@duckhunterwst
I suppose I could try that, but in all honesty, and this isn't to sound melancholy. I give that a slim chance of survival. Based of my day-to-day manager. Not to go into detail too deeply, the place I work at isn't bad. Work isn't overly hard, well most days aren't. But the place is mismanaged badly. We regularly run out of supplies, order is a mess. What really prompted me looking around was last week my boss went on vacation for the whole week, after denying me a day off a week or 2 back. Then asks me to work on one of my days off while he's on vacation. I did. No questions asked. Then while he's gone, the boss just above him was in charge an noticed we narrowly missed running out of a certain type of envelope that would have halted production all together. Well, $hit rolls down hill, so I assume he spoke out against my boss, who then in turn tried laying that entire issue at MY feet. As if I'm a warehouse manager and he's not the one in charge of ordering supplies. Yeah, that's a hill I'll die on buddy. I won't take the wrap for someone else's screw up. He told me just me and him needed to have a one on one meeting the next morning to discuss me being "properly" trained. Whatever the hell that means. Guess what? Next morning came and went and he never spoke to me... clown.

Ont top of that, I know I don't really matter, Point and case. We had ONE electric pallet jack. It broke down and quit working LAST OCTOBER. Since then, I'v been using a manual pallet jack every day all day to do my job. They refuse to fix it, based off the $1800 repair bill. BUT! About a month back the a/c in the offices went out and holy hell, they were all over that! Had it fixed in 3 days.

Here's another little tidbit that is slowly irritating me. 2 employees on my shift smoke. They each both take and I'm not exaggerating, probably 10-12 smoke breaks each shift. Averaging from 5-15 minutes a pop. He says nothing to them. But let me disappear for a minute or use the damn bathroom and my phone starts getting texts from him wanting to know where I am. I thought about bringing a pack of smokes with me and going out there with therm even though I don't and have never smoked!

Just to sum it up and that ain't all. I'm just slowly getting tired of the bull$hit.

 

[BarSinister]

I looked into the paid to earn a CDL thing once and one thing to keep in mind is that they often ask you to sign a contract to drive for them for 1-2 years at least or you have to pay the training back.

 

[CarolinaReaper]

Looked the company up. If you're seriously considering the move, and don't want to follow @duckhunterwst advice, I'd suggest applying for their student driver position.

Same starting pay, but you get more once you become a driver. AND they pay you during your 7 week driver training course.

Sounds like you've gained some confidence in your absence! That's good to hear. Keep pushing @CarolinaReaper . You've got this!

Thanks for the vote of confidence B&B. I appreciate it brother!!

 

[CarolinaReaper]

Also, you said “I wanted to garner your opinions on the organization regarding employment.”Keep that professionalism going in your next venture. Being articulate is good for getting their attention long enough to show them your work ethic. I got faith you can go wherever you want as long as you stay determined. Being well spoken helps first impressions. You sound pro as a MF, homie.
View attachment 70628

Thanks man. That means a lot. Hope you're doing well my friend.

 

[YanceyGreenhorn]

Thanks for the advice everyone.

@duckhunterwst
I suppose I could try that, but in all honesty, and this isn't to sound melancholy. I give that a slim chance of survival. Based of my day-to-day manager. Not to go into detail too deeply, the place I work at isn't bad. Work isn't overly hard, well most days aren't. But the place is mismanaged badly. We regularly run out of supplies, order is a mess. What really prompted me looking around was last week my boss went on vacation for the whole week, after denying me a day off a week or 2 back. Then asks me to work on one of my days off while he's on vacation. I did. No questions asked. Then while he's gone, the boss just above him was in charge an noticed we narrowly missed running out of a certain type of envelope that would have halted production all together. Well, $hit rolls down hill, so I assume he spoke out against my boss, who then in turn tried laying that entire issue at MY feet. As if I'm a warehouse manager and he's not the one in charge of ordering supplies. Yeah, that's a hill I'll die on buddy. I won't take the wrap for someone else's screw up. He told me just me and him needed to have a one on one meeting the next morning to discuss me being "properly" trained. Whatever the hell that means. Guess what? Next morning came and went and he never spoke to me... clown.

Ont top of that, I know I don't really matter, Point and case. We had ONE electric pallet jack. It broke down and quit working LAST OCTOBER. Since then, I'v been using a manual pallet jack every day all day to do my job. They refuse to fix it, based off the $1800 repair bill. BUT! About a month back the a/c in the offices went out and holy hell, they were all over that! Had it fixed in 3 days.

Here's another little tidbit that is slowly irritating me. 2 employees on my shift smoke. They each both take and I'm not exaggerating, probably 10-12 smoke breaks each shift. Averaging from 5-15 minutes a pop. He says nothing to them. But let me disappear for a minute or use the damn bathroom and my phone starts getting texts from him wanting to know where I am. I thought about bringing a pack of smokes with me and going out there with therm even though I don't and have never smoked!

Just to sum it up and that ain't all. I'm just slowly getting tired of the bull$hit.

Buy your own pallet jack and start smoking....

Jk. The ball is in your court right now with the amount of places hiring like wildfire. Try not to go out in a blaze of glory. If you interview somewhere new, the bs you’re dealing with now may provide some good answers for questions about how you deal with issues in the work place/a time when you were frustrated and how you handled it/the importance of being a team player , etc. Keep us in the loop. Don’t be afraid to branch out and apply at a few places so you have options

 

[CarolinaReaper]

Buy your own pallet jack and start smoking....

Jk. The ball is in your court right now with the amount of places hiring like wildfire. Try not to go out in a blaze of glory. If you interview somewhere new, the bs you’re dealing with now may provide some good answers for questions about how you deal with issues in the work place/a time when you were frustrated and how you handled it/the importance of being a team player , etc. Keep us in the loop. Don’t be afraid to branch out and apply at a few places so you have options

Thanks. I don't plan on going out badly if I do. It takes twice as long to build back bridges that you burn. I would just like a little more mutual respect. And for the rules to be applied evenly across the board. If there's one thing that gets under my skin, it's favoritism among employers. IMO, ain't no place for them.

I ain't a perfect employee, but I'm far from the worst. We did have 2 people handling the warehouse duties up until about 2 months back. Myself and a guy who had been there for 7 years. He quit one day after not saying a word to me. I was left now basically handling both our responsibilities. I stuck it out, thinking things would smooth out, but it just ain't shaking out that way.

 

[YanceyGreenhorn]

Thanks. I don't plan on going out badly if I do. It takes twice as long to build back bridges that you burn. I would just like a little more mutual respect. And for the rules to be applied evenly across the board. If there's one thing that gets under my skin, it's favoritism among employers. IMO, ain't no place for them.

I ain't a perfect employee, but I'm far from the worst. We did have 2 people handling the warehouse duties up until about 2 months back. Myself and a guy who had been there for 7 years. He quit one day after not saying a word to me. I was left now basically handling both our responsibilities. I stuck it out, thinking things would smooth out, but it just ain't shaking out that way.

Use that to your advantage...whether that be negotiating with current job, or explaining what you’re capable of to new possible job. You’ll get it figured out. Best time to find a job is when ya got one!

 

[CarolinaReaper]

Use that to your advantage...whether that be negotiating with current job, or explaining what you’re capable of to new possible job. You’ll get it figured out. Best time to find a job is when ya got one!

Crazy part is, when I'm not there which only one day a week, he has to do my job. So the other day I asked him, point blank, "since we aren't going to hire anymore warehouse help, what are the plans for when I take my week off around my birthday in October?" He leaned back in his chair and smugly said "How about you let me worry about that huh?"

I just walked away laughing to myself. Like Okay buddy, you got it! Won't be my ass out there sweating all day, it'll be you because y'all are too cheap to hire help. LMAO

He still hasn't approved my PTO for that week either. What a surprise LOL

 

[ellwoodjake]

Sad thing is, once you turn in your notice, you'll find out what you're really worth to the company. It always pissed me off when I left a job, to find out what they were willing to pay me all this time. I actually asked once, "How long have I been worth that much?" I guess "back pay" was out of the question

 

[UpATree]

I read an article once that encouraged managers not to make a counter offer when an employee reveals he’s taking a new job. And discouraged employees from accepting counter offers.

Most of the time, according to this article, the employee is gone anyway within a year. The incident often damages the relationship and can brand the employee as disloyal. They advocated making a clean break.

I was fortunate my last 15 years working because every time I thought I’d had enough of a difficult manager, his manager seemed to come to the same conclusion and solved my problem for me.

 

[beard&bow]

Thanks for the vote of confidence B&B. I appreciate it brother!!

As I've said before, I was you. Angry, didn't know where to turn. Then, I got out of my own way.

Different train* of thought. There are a few rail lines hiring conductors. A young man such as yourself could make a substantial income on the second year. *see what I did there.

Going off what @ellwoodjake said, get your job offer from the company before you leave your current.

 

[pattersonj11]

If you have a clean record and decent driving record, start applying for positions in local government. Public utilities is a good learning environment for a bunch of skills. You will have your certifications and a CDL within a year. You will know the ins and outs of utility lines. Benefits are good. Pay isn’t terrible but it’s public work. Private almost always pays better. That being said, pretty much every PU department pays better than other departments because no one wants to deal with poop.

check into it. Get outta the warehouse/forklift environment.

 

[UpATree]

Going off what @ellwoodjake said, get your job offer from the company before you leave your current.

In writing. On company letterhead. Signed by somebody important.

 

[pattersonj11]

And if you stick out t l

I read an article once that encouraged managers not to make a counter offer when an employee reveals he’s taking a new job. And discouraged employees from accepting counter offers.

Most of the time, according to this article, the employee is gone anyway within a year. The incident often damages the relationship and can brand the employee as disloyal. They advocated making a clean break.

I was fortunate my last 15 years working because every time I thought I’d had enough of a difficult manager, his manager seemed to come to the same conclusion and solved my problem for me.

I think I’ve met some of the same people that read that article. I’m all good with a clean break for some....but others I would really like to see an attempt. In some instances, $1/hour is the breaking point. On the lower end of the pay scale and with wives/kids to take care of, sometimes $2000 dollars a year is all it takes.

 

[duckhunterwst]

Also, use this experience at your current place of employment to ask probing questions in your future interviews of how things work.

 

[pattersonj11]

I would not go to an interview and spout off about problems. Just tell them you are ready for a change. You feel there may be an opportunity to make more money and you would like to progress your career.

 

[pattersonj11]

But I’m dead serious on looking into something in local government. You can look into public works or parks and rec. plenty of room to grow and you will learn different aspects of different jobs/equipment. Public Utilities is where I would look. That really seems to be the ticket on learning the most skills. You could change to any other department after that. You will most likely learn a lot about other stuff. We work on water/sewer, but that also encompasses fixing equipment. That includes trucks, small engines, and heavy equipment. This info transfers over in life to saving you money at home. I showed a younger employee how to change some electrical receptacles at work. I did two and made him do the next four with me watching. The same week he went and bought a new fan for his living room. He installed it and wired it up. Seems simple for many of us, but he had never been around any of it.

 

[perfectroadglide]

Thanks for the advice everyone.

@duckhunterwst
I suppose I could try that, but in all honesty, and this isn't to sound melancholy. I give that a slim chance of survival. Based of my day-to-day manager. Not to go into detail too deeply, the place I work at isn't bad. Work isn't overly hard, well most days aren't. But the place is mismanaged badly. We regularly run out of supplies, order is a mess. What really prompted me looking around was last week my boss went on vacation for the whole week, after denying me a day off a week or 2 back. Then asks me to work on one of my days off while he's on vacation. I did. No questions asked. Then while he's gone, the boss just above him was in charge an noticed we narrowly missed running out of a certain type of envelope that would have halted production all together. Well, $hit rolls down hill, so I assume he spoke out against my boss, who then in turn tried laying that entire issue at MY feet. As if I'm a warehouse manager and he's not the one in charge of ordering supplies. Yeah, that's a hill I'll die on buddy. I won't take the wrap for someone else's screw up. He told me just me and him needed to have a one on one meeting the next morning to discuss me being "properly" trained. Whatever the hell that means. Guess what? Next morning came and went and he never spoke to me... clown.

Ont top of that, I know I don't really matter, Point and case. We had ONE electric pallet jack. It broke down and quit working LAST OCTOBER. Since then, I'v been using a manual pallet jack every day all day to do my job. They refuse to fix it, based off the $1800 repair bill. BUT! About a month back the a/c in the offices went out and holy hell, they were all over that! Had it fixed in 3 days.

Here's another little tidbit that is slowly irritating me. 2 employees on my shift smoke. They each both take and I'm not exaggerating, probably 10-12 smoke breaks each shift. Averaging from 5-15 minutes a pop. He says nothing to them. But let me disappear for a minute or use the damn bathroom and my phone starts getting texts from him wanting to know where I am. I thought about bringing a pack of smokes with me and going out there with therm even though I don't and have never smoked!

Just to sum it up and that ain't all. I'm just slowly getting tired of the bull$hit.

I had a boss that was that way. He threw me under the bus once, so I started keeping documentation of everything, plus I gave him enough rope to hang himself. Didn't take long until he tried it again. He was gone.

 

[pcbuckhunter]

But I’m dead serious on looking into something in local government. You can look into public works or parks and rec. plenty of room to grow and you will learn different aspects of different jobs/equipment. Public Utilities is where I would look. That really seems to be the ticket on learning the most skills. You could change to any other department after that. You will most likely learn a lot about other stuff. We work on water/sewer, but that also encompasses fixing equipment. That includes trucks, small engines, and heavy equipment. This info transfers over in life to saving you money at home. I showed a younger employee how to change some electrical receptacles at work. I did two and made him do the next four with me watching. The same week he went and bought a new fan for his living room. He installed it and wired it up. Seems simple for many of us, but he had never been around any of it.

This is spot on.

If you have a clean record and decent driving record, start applying for positions in local government. Public utilities is a good learning environment for a bunch of skills. You will have your certifications and a CDL within a year. You will know the ins and outs of utility lines. Benefits are good. Pay isn’t terrible but it’s public work. Private almost always pays better. That being said, pretty much every PU department pays better than other departments because no one wants to deal with poop.

check into it. Get outta the warehouse/forklift environment.

Public is catching up to the private sector in a lot of places pay wise. I lost one of my top employees to a Public utility last month.

I usually don’t throw money numbers out there, but I’ll make an exception here to illustrate my point. He has 4 years experience with water systems. He was making $19/hr here. The Utility cold called him and offered him $22/hr for his probation period and $23/hr after his probation period. He can potentially get another $1/hr at each annual evaluation. Couple that with the fact the employee insurance is paid for by the utility, where as here it’s not. There’s no travel and the extra cost that goes with it. So he’s sitting pretty good compared to where he was.

 

[shaggy]

Thanks for the advice everyone.

@duckhunterwst
I suppose I could try that, but in all honesty, and this isn't to sound melancholy. I give that a slim chance of survival. Based of my day-to-day manager. Not to go into detail too deeply, the place I work at isn't bad. Work isn't overly hard, well most days aren't. But the place is mismanaged badly. We regularly run out of supplies, order is a mess. What really prompted me looking around was last week my boss went on vacation for the whole week, after denying me a day off a week or 2 back. Then asks me to work on one of my days off while he's on vacation. I did. No questions asked. Then while he's gone, the boss just above him was in charge an noticed we narrowly missed running out of a certain type of envelope that would have halted production all together. Well, $hit rolls down hill, so I assume he spoke out against my boss, who then in turn tried laying that entire issue at MY feet. As if I'm a warehouse manager and he's not the one in charge of ordering supplies. Yeah, that's a hill I'll die on buddy. I won't take the wrap for someone else's screw up. He told me just me and him needed to have a one on one meeting the next morning to discuss me being "properly" trained. Whatever the hell that means. Guess what? Next morning came and went and he never spoke to me... clown.

Ont top of that, I know I don't really matter, Point and case. We had ONE electric pallet jack. It broke down and quit working LAST OCTOBER. Since then, I'v been using a manual pallet jack every day all day to do my job. They refuse to fix it, based off the $1800 repair bill. BUT! About a month back the a/c in the offices went out and holy hell, they were all over that! Had it fixed in 3 days.

Here's another little tidbit that is slowly irritating me. 2 employees on my shift smoke. They each both take and I'm not exaggerating, probably 10-12 smoke breaks each shift. Averaging from 5-15 minutes a pop. He says nothing to them. But let me disappear for a minute or use the damn bathroom and my phone starts getting texts from him wanting to know where I am. I thought about bringing a pack of smokes with me and going out there with therm even though I don't and have never smoked!

Just to sum it up and that ain't all. I'm just slowly getting tired of the bull$hit.

I think you'll find this type of stuff occurs at every place you go.

 

[ellwoodjake]

I read an article once that encouraged managers not to make a counter offer when an employee reveals he’s taking a new job. And discouraged employees from accepting counter offers.

Most of the time, according to this article, the employee is gone anyway within a year. The incident often damages the relationship and can brand the employee as disloyal. They advocated making a clean break.

I was fortunate my last 15 years working because every time I thought I’d had enough of a difficult manager, his manager seemed to come to the same conclusion and solved my problem for me.

This might be true in most places, but not everywhere. Common sense and logic can get lost in bureaucracy. For example, with the place I work, the previous administration had a "no raise" policy in place for years. No matter how well you did or how much money you made for the company, raises were out. The only way to get a raise was to get an offer with another company. But you couldn't bluff, you had to be ready to go. If you were truly outstanding, management would give you a new job title (even though you did the same thing) and try to slip it through corporate. Sometimes they were successful, sometimes not. A lot of times they let a good employee slip away, only to have to pay more to a lesser qualified applicant. No one had any hard feelings, it was just the way it was. Kind of like the old cartoon with the coyote and the sheep dog walking to work together, but after they clocked in; it was on. After work every thing was cool again. "See you tomorrow Sam, see you tomorrow Ralph"

 

[YanceyGreenhorn]

I think you'll find this type of stuff occurs at every place you go.

Yeah that’s true. It’s not a matter of if stupid crap happens, it just depends on what type of stupid crap you’re able to tolerate for what pay scale.

 

[CarolinaReaper]

Exactly. I ain't asking for the moon. Just mutual respect and rules to be applied evenly across the board. Simple stuff. And I wouldn't mind them fixing some of the equipment that would make my job extensively easier. The thing that kills me is we had a working pallet jack when there was 2 of us. Now there's just me and we don't have it. Makes no sense. We just had a lady start, then quit 3 days later, Hell they can't keep ppl. But that's a problem everywhere too I suppose.

 

[YanceyGreenhorn]

Exactly. I ain't asking for the moon. Just mutual respect and rules to be applied evenly across the board. Simple stuff. And I wouldn't mind them fixing some of the equipment that would make my job extensively easier. The thing that kills me is we had a working pallet jack when there was 2 of us. Now there's just me and we don't have it. Makes no sense. We just had a lady start, then quit 3 days later, Hell they can't keep ppl. But that's a problem everywhere too I suppose.

We had similar issues with equipment at work. In the eyes of the shot callers, it seemed reasonable to them that they pay more cost in man hours for us to limp along with beat up gear than to drop the money on repairs or replacement stuff. Granted, if the math worked out, it would make sense. But they were just hemorrhaging money . My issue was I was taking it personal and letting myself get too frustrated. I finally had to say “if they wanna pay me the same amount of money to do less work, produce less, and tinkering with stuff just to get thru a shift, that’s their decision. As long as I’m giving the same 100% every day, it’s not my responsibility to come in to and leave work pissed every day.” But once their bosses, and their bosses’ bosses showed up at the plant to witness the epic clusterfk of daily operations , stuff was repaired and upgraded ASAP.