They already are. You used to not see a speck of dirt hit those trucks. The other day, one passed me in Tennessee with what looked like a year's worth of road grime on it, and the tarps on that truck were ragged.

I suppose that the driver could be the culprit in that case, but it sure had me wondering if all is well at TMC...

Firstly unless you signed something stating that you would repay $1200 upon quitting, it wil be very illegal for them to garnish your final wages. I do know that they used to make employees sign a form for the employee to pay back $300 for quitting within the first three months or something like that. That $1200 figure seems to be ficticious. I would reccomend contacting an attorney in that regard.

As far as your record is concerned, if you quit by giving them notice and returning their equipment in good order to one of their properties, then they have no reason to give you a bad reference to another company. Once again I would reccomend contacting an attorney before quitting to make sure that they will in no way falsely accuse you of leaving on bad terms.

Now if you want to have an easier time returning your truck and trailer, try your best to do it at the Indy yard. The guys there will not screw you over.

And don't worry too much about future employers thinking twice about hiring you after leaving TMC. As long as you do not have a long history of starting and quitting jobs with only a few months at a time in employment, you should be ok. Just be sure to be completely honest about your reasons for leaving should you decide to do so.


(On a side note, you'll have a great time at Roehl if you're interested.)

Wow this is a shock to me I have always seen and heard good things about TMC..and the equipment seems to be top notch......guess you just never know.......

I don't know how active this thread is anymore, but I just read it, and I felt the need to reply. After reding the original report from Cocky about his experiences at TMC, I must say that I agree 100%. I just turned in my truck and came home last week. I thought that maybe it was just me, I mean it seems like there are a lot of guys there that are perfectly happy, but that system just wasn't working for me. I thought maybe I was a little naive when I started, thinking that I would be able to do my job within the limits of the law. I realize that there an awful lot of truckers in the world who do a lot of shady things to the point that it seems to be the norm, but I don't want to be one of those guys. I want to play by the rules, be safe, honest, and earn a decent living. Is that so far-fetched? Shouldn't be. I have no experience with any company other than TMC, so I don't really know, but I would like tio think that there are ought to be better ways to run. Five lods a week is impossible to do legally. I told my fleet manager that I was running harder than I needed to, and I would like to slow down. If that meant making less money, that was fine, but I needed time to take care of myself, (eating,showering,sleeping, etc.) What I would really like to do is run 100% legally,and I don't mean a legal appearing log book, I mean log it as it happens, accurately and legally. Can you find me loads that will fit into a system, that will allow me to do this? Sure she said, no problem. Things are looking up I thought. This will be just fine. Well, it didn't work. Not more than two days in a row went by that I wasn't backed into a corner, where I was pressured (not forced) to do things that I was not comfortable with. If something goes wrong, it's my ### on the line, why is it so important that these shingles just have to be in Indianapolis first thing in the morning? It is a system of dispatch operation driven by greed. 2500 trucks (roughly) in the fleet, and every one of them has got to get five loads off per week. Why? So the company can make as much money as possible. But at what cost? How many of those trucks/drivers are doing illegal/unsafe things every single day, to get those five loads delivered. If it were changed to deliver as many loads as the law will allow, Mr Annett's bank account would still be just fine. I tried to run legally, and without ever being told that I couldn't the system pressured me to run harder. I f the load didn't get unloaded til afternoon, then all that was left was some crap load going the wrong direction as the weekend approaches. They promise every weekend home. Sure, you get home, but when, and for how long. Getting loaded at 4 PM Friday when you're 600 miles from home and almost out of hours so you get home at 1 PM Saturday, and then have to leave Sunday afternoon, so you can go 450 miles to your bright and early Monday AM delivery appt. 28 hours at home is not a weekend in my book. I don't blame my manager/dispatcher. I blame the system. Like Cocky said, it is impossible t accomplish what they expect of you. So I quit. I never had any intention of driving over the road for very long anyway. All I wanted to do was get a good job with a good company, get a year or so of experience, and go local, make less money, but have alife outide the truck. Well, I made it about four months, now I have no job, and limited experience, which is going to make it difficult to get that good local gig, but I did what I think I had to do. I think I had to stand up for myself to have some integrity, and not break all the rules. At least now I have time to try to find another job. One more thing. That company claims to be so safety oriented, which they are in a way, but safety and operations are clearly not on the same page, and until they are, things will never get any better there. Thay also claim to be the best there is. I think it's almost a little brainwashing. I don't think they're as great as they lead you to believe. They have great equipment, yes. They gave me an '06 Pete to drive. Beautiful truck. It was due for full service at 82,000 miles. At 97,000 miles, it finally got done. (It took 2 days). Couldn't take the time to get it done, because this plywood/drywall/steel whatever just had to get there tomorrow. What's the point of having these beautiful trucks, if they aren't going to take care of them? God forbid that thing gets dirty though. If that truck isn't washed once a week, you lose points toward your pay. I guess the outward appearance of the equipment/company is what matters more than what really goes on. I could keep ranting, but that's probably enough I guess. Just had to get it off my chest. Hope someone reads it. Thanks, and wish me luck in my job hunt.

It sound like they haul a lot of building materials, which would explain why they were pushing you. Building materials don't pay much, although why I don't know. There is always a need for the stuff somewhere.

The problem is that you cannot do them any favors in this regard, as far as cheating your hours a little to make a pick-up or delivery. Once you do this, then they will want it ALL the time.

Theoretically, 5 a week is doable, but it depends on how far you're running. That's the governing factor. They probably figure that you can simply deliver a load, and then pick up your next load to deliver the next day, and so on. One of the problems with building materials, is that it's usually first-come, first-served, which means a fair amount of waiting.

When I did that back in my less experienced days, what I was having to do was not come off of line 1 on the log until I after I delivered the load. This way I logged the amount of time I spent waiting to be unloaded as less. This may be what TMC is expecting of you. Problem is, when you do that, your log has to match your toll records, fuel receipts, and such. If it doesn't, you're asking for trouble, not to mention all the concerns about covering your rear in an accident.

This may be because part of your load is needed on a jobsite, therefore they need your load at the supplier so they can make one of their deliveries.

My suggestion would be to try to get with a construction co. that uses dump trailers or something. Then you'd be working hourly, and be home every day. And, chances are you'd get some heavy equip. exp.

What's this about?

Not to worry. We all have to vent sometimes. I'm not trying to justify the way you were treated, just trying to put it in perspective for you if I could.

__________________
Z-Lady's devoted hubby.

They give pay increases based upon a points system. The points are gained via on-time deliveries, low out of route miles, no accidents, no tickets, etc etc etc. Should you have a bad month, your pay could decrease based upon your performance.



Really though I believe that every company is going to tell a few lies to get you into their trucks. I have even caught Roehl in a few since I've been with them. (Don't blindly believe that "Take home more, be home more" motto)

I just try to keep my sights set on the future. Either I will stay with this company and eventually work my way up through a different department. Or I will drive long enough to get the experience needed to go work for a local company. Either way I know in advance that OTR is not the way I plan on living my entire life. I will do it only as long as is necessary so that I can move on to bigger and better things.


Oh and skully, should you wish to try Roehl out, let me know.

hi,my hubby's pretty new to trucking so i don't want to say too much and be known as a "know it all" lol...the first company he worked for was werner and they sucked...nothing they promised ever happened.they were legal but did not like to pay up.after hubby sticking with them for several months ,we had fallen so far behind financially that right now we're still trying to get out of our rut! he recently dropped werner and started at TMC.now obviously we don't want to rave about the company being great just yet but i will say ,they do pay up! even their training pay is awesome! as far as the illegal stuff goes,well my hubby is a legal eagle,he will never do anything illegal so i hope they don't start that crap.they did admit to having some problems and drilled my hubby about not cheating his logbook.they told everyone that they will be fired immediately if they cheat it and it's not just dot but even tmc themselves do checks.they also said that if they do a spot check and your truck is a mess you will be fired immediately.we have a great respect for that rule as we are neat freaks anyway but apparently it's because the owner is a military guy.he's very picky.can't say i blame him....those trucks are very expensive and i've seen some drivers out there that appear to be riding in dumpsters instead of trucks!

Well, Most of you have read my post about tmc, i did go to des moines and geta truck, a brand new 379 with 350 miles on it and new trailer, at orientation, they kept telling us our 1st load would get us through the house so we could get our belongings, stuff needed to live in truck, after 3 weeks on the road , still not gotten home , my son got sick, they would not let me take the truck to the house i had to drop truck at indy yard and get my brother in law to come and get me, i was at the house for 3 weeks, got back into a another truck, on 18 june, out for another 3 weeks, without going through the house, had an doc's appt on 30 june, to reup some meds, in which they had 3 weeks notice of appt, dispatcher would forget this on a daily basis, i had to remind him everyday last week about my appt, and he got "VERY MAD" because i would not cancell it and reschedule for after the 4th of july, i had family coming in from NC, for the 4th, then they wanted me to pickup on friday the 30th and deliver in AL on the 2nd of july, i called my dispatcher and ask him about the 1 day off per week of being out, he said thats how they normally would do it, so what about my 3 days off? he stated that i was on the training program and it i was going to get the 650 per week i needed to deliver loads, well i am all done with tmc, by the way, i got a 97 on their driving test to get your own truck, i got 100 on the securement test, my trainer kicked me out of his truck a week early with less than 9000 miles, i am a good safe new driver, but will not continue to bust my butt for these folks, i love driving the truck, and doing the job, and these folks have given me a bad taste of truck driving. I also had no late deliveries, no load claims.

Thanks for the warning. TMC is a company I won't be working for anytime soon.

Truckinbiker, I'm real sorry to hear that this is the way things turned out. It seems that TMC has some problems, and based on what you write, they are not getting any better.

It's easy to see from what you describe, that hometime considerations for their drivers are not high on the list, and when a driver has a family emergency, and the best they can do is to get you within 500 miles of the house? Im' sorry, but screw that demonstration of kindness. Just hit me with a two by four instead.

Let us know if we can help you get relocated someplace...