Morrice Transportation, Windsor ON

I'll title this, "know what you're getting".

Morrice is an outfit out of Windsor, ON. They mostly specialize in LTL and OTR these days. From the outside they look like any mid size carrier and put a decent amount into advertising which gives the impression they are a sound company. The equipment is decent and they have a garage on site. But what you see from outside can be misleading.

I'll start off by saying I can only give a review on local LTL driving. I can't fully speak to their OTR driving. They preach it's great but a few employees who have been there a decade say they run you into the ground and have a really high turnover rate.

They start you off with a 2 day unpaid orientation claiming it is to make sure you and them are going to be a good fit. The dolt doing the orientation is a suit who's never touched a truck a day in his life. The best way to describe it is as if they think it's your first day driving and they think you've never been behind the wheel before. You spend 2 hours covering their paperwork and e-log system and the rest is like being in driving school again. Aside from that they give you a ######## rundown about how going over hours will never be asked of you. How being too tired will never be held against you because safety is their priority. How they will always keep you on the same schedule they start you on Monday give or take an hour or two. Here is what to actually expect.

Expect 14 hour days. They would rather run you to your limit 4 days a week and give you the 5th day off so they don't have to pay you overtime than to balance it out.

Be ready to go in violation. Dispatch will ignore you before they give you a solution to get you out of a jam. Then they'll give you #### if you make your own solution.

Don't bother hoping for sleep. One day you'll be on at 8am then the next 4am then the next 3pm. You'll get your 10 hours off but unless you can just drop where you sit and sleep you'll always be exhausted. I personally have a family and trying to get them to be quiet 24/7 because I might be sleeping at 7 am or 8pm is impossible. Be single and black out your bedroom or forget it!

Their dispatch is fairly nice in the sense of personality but unfortunately their head dispatcher is a #### from hell. You'll have fun keeping her happy.

The owner used to be a great guy but now his brat son took over it. You know how that goes. I can head the sputtering of the engine now as the ground approaches quickly.

Watch when drop and hooking. I'm not sure if it was one idiot or a dozen idiots but do your pre trips! And don't just glide under that kingpin, stop and check your contact or you'll find yourself out there cranking it. Dropping trailers
a foot higher than the fifth wheel is common practice here.

You're unionized after 90 days if you can make it. Good luck.

After that not much changed but you can say no a little more often and you get a slightly higher job security but only slightly. The union is only on a 3 year contract so don't get too comfortable. The pay is good for LTL work but the negatives far outweigh it being worth it.; and I'm being nice in this review so as not to slander them at all.

Just know what you're signing up for before you waste your time.

 

I found another job with a smaller outfit but they are not forced dispatch so that is really nice. The pay is about the same with a mix of local hourly and highway miles. Also have some flatbed work which pays higher. Overall fairly pleased with them so far. They are a bit fuzzy at times when it comes to setting appointments or getting loads but that is typical with small companies. But I'll take that any day over a b.s. LTL company that is going to dick you around.

I should have said in the post more clearly. The company in my opinion is garbage but if you want a lot of hours and you don't care about your sleep schedule then they might work for you. They have guys that have been there 10 years or more so obviously some people like it. But then you have to also think any time a company has to bring in a union at the drivers demand they must be doing some things very very wrong.