Review of Poly Trucking

Great post triumph.
I have a close friend who's dream job was poly.
He got hired on about 2 months ago.
Talked to him last week and all he did was b@tch and moan
about everything you just said.

The pay issue is a major problem for him,
he can never seem to make the cut off.
also they don't pay to many toll roads.

his biggest complaint is nobody ever answers the phone,
he's spent 2 weeks out of 2 months in the shop already,
free of charge of course. They wouldn't even give him
a motel.he slept in the truck in the shop parking lot.

He says his truck is a piece of junk and the shop
is the worst he's ever seen.

Dreams don't always come true!

 

Crete pays me 45 in January for 1 year experience and 100 dollars a day breakdown, with supposedly guaranteed detention in january. Just seems risky to not make ANYTHING on breakdown, when you've got another driver saying how lousy their equipment is.

 

I know this much , from reading this stuff , guys that like bash tend to speak louder and longer about the cons than the pro's !
I see a company here that yes has this intl fetish , and yes they don't accommodate you with a fancy O/O pkg in these trucks.
I have a new one and built my own shelf , it works for me and see not a word spoken of poly's great home time policy. Here's the real deal for veteran drivers that have not lived way beyond their means and can manage quite well on 50 to 55k a yr , you can do this falling out of bed and working 20 to 24 days a month. You also will never be woken up by a beeping qcom at weeeeeee hrs of the morning. You plan yourself to your needs and this my friends is the biggest issue , if you walk in the door of poly demanding to make 65k your 1st yr and be home 7 to 10 days a month you're wasting everyone's time including your own. Now if you're like some guys, they have a home but it's lonely there and you choose to stay out 6 weeks and 4 days home the 6 weeks out again you'll make over 70k but it's possible it won't be the 1st yr cause the policy is the 1st yr you will not get a new truck and they don't make exceptions to this policy.
If you're young and money hungry as hail and need to live the otr life to it's fullest and make 65k+ yr in and yr out find a company that puts you in big beautiful rigs , and expects you to stay out 5 to 6 weeks then haunts you at home to take a load after 2 days at home.
This is not poly , they send you home and you don't hear from them til the backhaul info is ready. Also if you put yourself to be ready 8am on Wed and they can't get you moving til Thurs , they put in a spread sheet and pay you 250.00 to sit home the extra day. They're good about getting you a backhaul but occasionally something goes wrong.
Their policies are in a sense, nit-picky and in 3 months you don't learn jack squat about how to make poly work for ya, how do you think there are guys that have worked here 10 15 , and 20 yrs , it's simple they gave it enough time to learn the ropes here and got through that initiation period.
What do you think happens you apply and get hired at Ups, YRC or ABF , you spend 8 yrs a casual on a union board and one small screw up and you're done.
Here your initiation period is a yr , suck it up make some friends and listen to Tony cause the man is there to try to help you understand , learn and get thru that period. If by chance you kept the low profile and they look at you as a keeper you'll be in a new one , it does get better , for those who give it the chance.

 

*Triumph , if you don't give yourself a chance to learn the ropes and ins and outs at a company by the time your 2 years in trucking gets to 5 or 6 years the list of job references you have is gonna make you undesirable this day in age. You began with Poly early in July 2014 , and are posting 11 paragraphs of bad on a company you barely know yet, on the 1st or 2nd of Dec. My guess is you're a little too educated with all those degrees to be a Driver , you need to own your own company then as a millionaire , pat a guy on the back that comes along and after 2 yrs in the industry and within 6months working for you sees all your character defects and weaknesses and tells you that your doing it all wrong.

*Poly isn't a bad company man , simply put though , a college guy as yourself likely will never find the company that meets his expectations. You have I think you said 4 different degrees and are confident you're more educated than any of the monkeys at the G.P. shop. My guess is you're only in the beginning of finding out that there's not one company out here that will bend over backward and take it with out lube so you the driver will not have to.
I was with Jevic Trans. Know what, best company job I ever had , home 43 to 45 W/E's out of 52 , and 63k a year. But guess why I no longer work there ?
They're out of business , Trucking companies fold like accordions these days , poly may just offer some stability to those who give em a chance , and I noticed you didn't mention the $ for $ match of up to 6 % 401 k .

*I can't help but to come here and defend them , imo they try to offer those who make it through that initiation period of a year, a decent job in this industry. I'll be at 2 yrs with them Feb 5th. and I'm still learning to adapt and improvise to some of the stuff.
The shop may be quite guilty of looking at us as teenagers or younger , but it's their trademark and until a guy like you comes along at the VP or CEO level and changes that, all "we" the drivers can do is tolerate it or move on.

*Keep this one thing in mind when throwing a company under the bus in the 1st 6months you drive for them , that not every company may work for you and those that do, very much may not work for other drivers. Every one of us have different needs , and some have lived well beyond their means. There are guys out here that will run 5000 miles a week for 20 yrs and drop dead of a heart attack on their 52nd birthday. Others put away toward retirement and live well within their means on a budget , and try to have a life outside the trucking industry. I've been doin this gig since 88 , I once knew a guy did the Casual on-call board for UPS for 8 yrs. He took his lunch one day under a shade tree near Edsal mfg on Packers av in the Chicago stockyards. His feet came off the dash and he started driving 35 minutes into his 30 minute lunch , a UPS spotter happen to be watching him that day and after 8 yrs of Casual he was let go. Another guy I once knew was Casual for Yellow 5 yrs. on-call , had a couple drinks one day on a day that only twice in 5 yrs did he get called in , like a Monday right ? That was it , he was done he told them he had his kids , and his wife was at the DR and had no one to sit , the next day they called him and told him cutbacks have led to his job being eliminated.

***There's a heck of a lot more bad in this industry that what a driver will find at poly. But you haven't yet been around long enough to know this , in time I'm sure you'll understand what I'm saying , even if you take offense to this now***

 

Wow, dollar for dollar for 6% is a great 401k match.

 

i made just above 60k in my first yr, that is with a week to 10 days off a month, in one instance i was home for about 2 wks,im not saying its good or bad its what works for me at the moment, i would say im on the low end of pay as i milk the hometime everytime i can.

 

all i can say is good luck with your short runs, forced dispatch, not gettn paid for all miles and limited hometime.

 

after thinkn about i realized i lied, there were 2 months where i only had a few days off so yes its horrible.

 

as far as equipment ive had the same truck for a lil more than a yr, had egr cooler replaced at dealer over wknd and oil filter clog and truck shut down, but i have to take the blame for pushing it when oil press got low and i kept goin because my lack of knowledge about thes trucks.

 

but it also doesnt include time passing thru the house for a day or a wknd