That is a pretty healthy statement from somebody in orientation............Every company will tell you how seriously they take safety and logs. You'll not know the truth until that hot load shows up.

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Yup, a friend of mine drives for TMC, he told me DOT came in when they had that blitz back in the summer, said they left them with a quarter million in fines for log book violations, they are now on a paperless log system, DOT told them as long as their drivers complied it would be on a vol. basis, but would become mandatory if they did not.

And wait until they punish you for failing to get that hot load clear across the country overnight. Then tell us how you feel. One poster on here stated that when running out of hours becomes a problem, they bring you into the office for a lecture on "time management".

My impression on TMC, from reading posts here, is that they don't care how you get it done, as long as you get it done, and you turn in a legal-looking log for whatever mission you may have just had to break every law in the book to accomplish, as improper logs are severely frowned upon.

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Z-Lady's devoted hubby.

TMC wants you to get that load done legally.
First part of that equation is that you should only accept loads that you have the hours to do legally. That is proper load planning. Your fleet manager does not have any idea how many hours you have left in your 11, 14, and 70 unless you tell them. They assume that you have unloaded within the first hour or two of the day unless you tell them otherwise and will give you a run that fits your profile. If you only have 4 hours left on your 70 they won't know that unless you tell them.
Second part is to communicate so that your delivery time can be adjusted. When you arrive 6 hours late without letting them know you will get docked points. Of course you are going to get in trouble when you are two hours late and TMC gets charged for two extra hours of crane time to unload you. If you had let them know when you took that load that they didn't need the crane until 10:00 am instead of 8:00 am you probably would have been all set.
Third is time management. People who spend all their time in a truckstop playing video games will have problems keeping their schedule. Don't blame someone else for your failure to plan and for taking a load that you couldn't do legally.

Logs at TMC are now strictly audited by an outside company and are matched to all receipts, quallcomm records, and bills of lading. TMC realizes that some drivers in the past have done as you describe and turn in a legal looking log that is not accurate at all. That will get you in very deep hot water now.

I will say again: TMC takes safety very seriously. If you choose to lie and cheat on your logs you may not get caught at first, but when you do get caught you can kiss your job goodbye. They also send home anyone who lies on their application since they can't trust them not to lie later on.

I done 5 loads in one day with Star Transportation out of Nashville, but add all the miles it was nothing. 200 miles here, 150 there and such. Started off in SC, ended up in Tennessee with loads going to and pick up in NC, Ga and Tn.

Better off with a Company who only expects you to do your best and do your best.

I have read this thread with interest, to see how it evolves.

First of all, you are in orientation. In orientation with all companies I have ever attended, safety is stressed to the hilt. Much like a marriage license changes the relationship between two people, so did graduation from orientation. Everything changed from that point on.

TMC may well be starting to take safety serious. If so, then it's about time and I applaud them, but it has not been the case when looking at the reality of the situation. They have had some serious problems. Taking a look at their most recent MCS-150 filing, there are some astounding statistics that indicate that any attention to safety, would have to be a recent development.

Their driver safety evaluation area number is currently running a value of nearly 93, which is way up there. This is derived from a combination of statistics compiled on how many of their drivers have been placed out-of-service for logbook violations, received traffic citations, and where violations were discovered during a field audit in their home office. The statistics?

They have 2,820 drivers on staff.

685 of them have had traffic citations in the past 30 months. That means that 1 out of every 4 of their drivers has been cited for a moving violation.

Out of 5,770 roadside inspections performed across the nation, their drivers were placed out of service 334 times. That means that 1 out of every 17 of their drivers were placed out-of-service for logbook violations.

An audit performed on the company in March of this year, discovered numerous instances of logbook falsification. As was offered, they were severly fined for these discoveries.

Their overall out-of-service rate for the three items of criteria, for the past TWO years, has been running at over 9% of all the vehicles that were pulled around back for a closer look. 902 times, their trucks and/or drivers were placed out-of-service in the past two years. That's a 1 in 3 ratio of all of their vehicles.

Accidents? They have 9 fatals, although not one of them appears to have been determined to be the fault of one of their drivers, and at 195 DOT reportable accidents in the past two years, they are running a 1 in 14 ratio, which is about average.

Their overall assessment, has them currently sitting with an ISS-2 rating of 91. This means that drivers for TMC are going to be pulled around the backside of state scale inspection locations and checked over more often than not.

The bottom line here is, that their basic problem has been related to safety where the driver has been concerned. They have not had a handle on logs, and their drivers have been convicted of too many moving violations.

If they are indeed taking this issue seriously, then all of the above will slowly improve over the next two years.

I hope for their sake, that it does.

Compare that safety rating to Landstar's of 34 or lower. For those that don't know the lower the number the better your safety score is.


TMC's score is around Swift's, Werner's, etc.

The company I work for is currently sitting at 23.

I may really show my lack of knowledge here.. But how do you compare TMC, which is probably more company drivers and less experience, to Landstar which is a broker based owner operator based company.

I am not claiming that TMC is magically all perfect. They have had some problems and are taking steps to correct that. I am also saying that a lot of the responsibility to operate legally sets squarely on the shoulders of the driver. I also think that possibly TMC policy in the past may have attracted (or at least did not eliminate) the billy big riggers who wanted to run two logbooks. I believe that the attention by DOT has turned TMC into a better company. There have also been many changes in upper management lately.

Another thing to note is that for all of this talk about 5 loads per week the actual average is only 3.5 loads per week. That means that for everyone who actually gets 5 loads someone else may only get 2 that week. Most drivers will get 3 or 4 loads per week.