I’m a Berry Bro captain.
It’s looking like the average pilot here flew somewhere around 700 hours this year. The guys who like to volunteer their weekends got over 900 though. Berry is a solid company to work for. The firefighter comparison is good though as we are completely on-call Monday thru Friday and have to go at a moments notice. You’re required to live within 30 minutes of your base. HYI, CAK, and DTO are the current bases. The schedule sucks but we are well compensated because of it. It is a great group of pilots here and we want to keep it that way. Upgrades aren’t seniority based, they’re based on ability and judgment as recognized by the captains you fly with. We’ve had FOs upgrade right at 135 mins and FOs who may take 5+ years to upgrade if ever.
The flying we do is interesting work and it’s hard work. Often days go 14 hours plus and we’re pushing the cargo ourselves at the stops. We have lots of Mexico and Canada trips but we hardly ever overnight there. If it’s legal to fly, we fly. We see plenty of ice this time of year and not much daylight. It’s an old school freight dog gig. I love it.