Ways trucking companies steal your money.

This is how I lost the most money. My first company advertised a tuition reimbursement to sign on with them. We get there and half way through orientation they tell us there's a problem. It turns out paying cash to go to trucking school at Community College was not reimbursable. I went to the registrar and got every record, every receipt but still wasn't good enough. Between me and my co-driver we lost $7800. If a company is promising you anything you better get it in writing. Please post the most ingenious and egregious ways you have been screwed over by a trucking company. Truckers need to know what they're up against.

 

The company we signed on with promised us a tuition reimbursement that was supposed to be paid out in installments over a one-year span. We went to Community College which is a more strict CDL program than any of these private schools. The reason they gave us for stealing our money was because we had paid for truck driving school ourselves rather than borrow money to pay for truck driving school.

 

I don't think I explained the situation good enough. Before we signed on with them we told them what school we had gone to and they said no problem we will reimburse you for that. They advertised a tuition reimbursement program. We got there went through orientation provided all of the documents that they said they required for that program. We got in the truck and a month later we get something over the peoplenet telling us that they would not hold up their end of the bargain. There is no way I could have been more thorough unless I brought my own attorney in and drawn up a document and the CEO of the company sign it. All of your arguments are basically saying these companies can change policy/rip us off whenever they want to regardless of their promises. The fact is from all the other horror stories I have read from other starter companies ours was far from the worst in fact I put a post up for them in the favorite trucking company category promoting them. But the fact remains that they pulled a bait-and-switch on us and we are poorer by $7,800 because of it. We are six months into driving for our second company and they have honored all of their promises.

 

Changing a company policy after you have signed on is a breach of contract. The fact was it was the only company we knew of that did not require us to go out with separate Trainers for 8 weeks so we could stay together. That meant more to us than the $8,000 so we put up with their bad behavior and put in our year, got our experience and moved on. The purpose of this thread is to alert other drivers on how they might get scammed by their company. I'm not asking for sympathy from anybody.

 

And if you read the whole post you'll know that somebody replied to it and had the same thing happen to them. This is a pattern. I heard recently they're offering a $20,000 sign on bonus to teams. Any team going there better bring their own lawyer.