I worked as a delivery driver and we were on a 4-10 schedule, but were often scheduled for 5-10's because we didn't have enough drivers. We were also scheduled to be “on call” at least 2 out of every 3 weeks and had to be ready to come in if somebody called in sick. Which really sucks when your work day starts at 4am, because even on your day off you had to go to bed early.
We asked repeatedly for them to hire a backup driver so that we could at least get rid of the “on call” bit, but they said we didn't have money for it. Plus, we were really busy 9 months of the year and a little slow the other 3, so they didn't want to pay a guy to just stand around for 3 months when there wasn't enough work for him. During the winter we averaged 8 hours per day, while in the summer we averaged 12. Finally, they said that they would start looking for another guy to be a backup driver/work in the warehouse. We discovered they lied to us and they weren't even looking because one of my co-workers had a nephew who applied and never got a call back at all. He was qualified, even doing a similar job for another company.
During my last year there we had a company meeting at our branch (a satellite warehouse, ours was kind of the redheaded stepchild location about 150 miles north of the main warehouse and corp offices) and bragged that they were making money hand over fist and made over 150 million that year. I switched careers a few months later and decided not to renew my CDL so that I would never be tempted to drive a truck again, knowing that most jobs start at ungodly hours of the morning and the hours are unpredictable.
I ended up going into a much better job with more money, but the boss was a bit of a jerk. I ended up working at the new place for about 5 years, got all trained up on their dime and decided to go off and start my own company. I'm still getting started, but I heard a few months ago that the jerkboss decided to close up shop when my co-worker quit, leaving him without any trained employees. I started emailing all his old contacts about a month ago, so I'm hoping to get them as clients. My old co-worker is doing the same, lol.
It's been a long time coming, but I'm excited to finally be my own boss and run my business, rather than have a business run me.