Jb Hunt Home Depot Or Intermodal?

Aloha Y’all! I’m about to dive off the deep end… What’s your pros and cons on accepting a Local JB Hunt Home Depot account or Local JB Hunt Intermodal position? Thank you in advance!

Hi Leah. It will be interesting to see what advice you get on your two choices. My guess is that the intermodal would be more difficult for a new driver. But I could very well be wrong.

My impression is that intermodal can be dog eat dog, but I’ve never done it myself.

My brother did intermodal with JB Hunt out of Corinth, up near Chicago and then they had him go to Cedar Rapids IA when that one opened. He drove 3.5 years with them. The pay was really good... He made over $70,000 in 2015, 2016 and 2017. He had to come off the road because his wife started having seizures and they took her license away. He did regional intermodal, running Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota and occasionally Kentucky. He was out 5 or 5.5 days then home to do a reset.

The only hard thing about intermodal, is the airlines and electrical plug-in is in the center of the chassis. If you're short and don't have steps to climb up on a catwalk, it will be a struggle. Otherwise, you just have to keep track of your container and chassis numbers whenever you pick up a new one and drop the old one. My brother liked it.

I run containers now to the Port of Oakland and I do okay for my age. The hardest part for me is the container doors, which being a reefer container, are heavier and they get corroded from the ocean.

If those two were the only choices I had, I would do the intermodal.

Laura

On the intermodal side, from what I've seen, JB Hunt uses their own chassis's which is good and bad. Good because they're probably well maintained and bad because if you need any kind of repair, no matter how minor, the rail yard won't touch it and you'll have to have the chassis swapped. How long that takes, depends on that particular yard.

Home depot is a toss up. I've had some home depot and Lowe's deliveries that make me want to bang my face into the steering wheel. They're located in these shopping plazas that make getting in and out pretty difficult and shoppers aren't the most patient bunch.

This. I just did a plant load with 9 deliveries in IL. The store setups often made me scratch my head.

I personally would hate delivering to the stores regularly for that reason.

On the intermodal side, from what I've seen, JB Hunt uses their own chassis's which is good and bad. Good because they're probably well maintained and bad because if you need any kind of repair, no matter how minor, the rail yard won't touch it and you'll have to have the chassis swapped. How long that takes, depends on that particular yard.

Home depot is a toss up. I've had some home depot and Lowe's deliveries that make me want to bang my face into the steering wheel. They're located in these shopping plazas that make getting in and out pretty difficult and shoppers aren't the most patient bunch.

I do plenty of home despots and lowes. Lowes are laid out better most of the time but have tighter windows. Depots can be very difficult access and egress at times.

I appreciate the input you guys!

I agree with the others. I used to deliver to Home Depot’s and Lowes all the time and they can be a pain to get in and out of. I don’t know anything about intermodal but I have hauled some containers and I will say if you take that position be careful going around corners. Maybe it was just a fluke but there was one time when I was yard hostling I went around a corner and I was taking it slow and I distinctly remember seeing my trailer tires come off the ground on one side. Scared the crap out of me

I work for a different dedicated carrier that has an account with Home Depot. You don't deliver to the stores - you deliver to local construction sites. It's flatbed so there's load securement and driver load/unload with a Moffett (a small forklift that winches onto the back of the flatbed). Your location may vary but in the PNW you're often backing into a muddy lot. Depending on the time of day it may be dark and raining so there's more ways to get stuck or hit something.

The intermodal drivers tend to drive very aggressively- second only to log truck drivers. I asked an intermodal driver about that while we were fueling our trucks. He claimed they had to drive that way because that could be the difference between delivering two or three containers in a day. A driver may have to go home early if they didn't have enough hours left to make the next delivery.

I work for a different dedicated carrier that has an account with Home Depot. You don't deliver to the stores - you deliver to local construction sites. It's flatbed so there's load securement and driver load/unload with a Moffett (a small forklift that winches onto the back of the flatbed). Your location may vary but in the PNW you're often backing into a muddy lot. Depending on the time of day it may be dark and raining so there's more ways to get stuck or hit something.

The intermodal drivers tend to drive very aggressively- second only to log truck drivers. I asked an intermodal driver about that while we were fueling our trucks. He claimed they had to drive that way because that could be the difference between delivering two or three containers in a day. A driver may have to go home early if they didn't have enough hours left to make the next delivery.

Thanks for the info! I realized the same thing you mentioned about intermodal recently as I observed them zipping past me on the freeway. That the timeframe can quickly make a big difference between fitting in one more load, going home early or getting stranded when your hours are up, somewhere not close enough to home! 😅