Southern Refrigerated Transport (SRT) reviews

In October of last year, I won a 5K+ labor board dispute with SRT over withholding my last paycheck. It was a year long process.

I had put my notice in, gave them the appropriate two week notice, and they kept sending me everywhere but home or close to the yard, two weeks more AFTER my two week notice should have been up, I deadheaded home, put their truck in the secured yard they have here, an employee signed off that I left the truck, I videotaped it showing it it great condition and everything inside and intact...right down to the cheap disposable accident camera. 

They withheld my last (measly maybe $200 check) and on top of that tried to charge me $3k to get the truck back to Texarkana. Citing I abandoned it. Um....no. 

The labor board agreed it was an illegal practice. On the date of the hearing, SRT faxed a letter over to the board asking if they could just attend by phone - they didn't feel like sending someone out to California. The judge refused, letting them know that people come from all over to argue claims and they would be treated no differently. They lost the case, and never appealed it. 

Now they are ignoring all attempts to collect it, which is somewhat dumb, since all it is doing is collecting interest they have to pay and any further action I must take to collect it they are liable for. 

remember SRT is the same company where that driver died in the truck and told the family if they wanted his body & his belongings they had to pay SRT first that right there just shows what a low level piece of trash SRT is.

My hubs started working for them about 4 or 5 months ago. BAD IDEA!!! He's in the National Guard so he has to report for duty once a month. His idiot dispatcher seems to think he personally trumps a government issued schedule & made him miss a drill, regardless of his CO's phone call. He then got hell bc he had to come home a few weeks ago to prepare for a month long military school in ND. His dispatch was always telling him he was using his schedule just to get time off & that he wasn't a real trucker bc he "didn't want to work". He was promised to make a certain CPM before he was, hired and after training was told he would make another certain CPM. He has yet to see anything but training CPM. He's lucky if he brings home $300/wk. Had his Peterbilt drop dead on him and was blamed even for it sitting for a week even though the company's own mechanics said it wasn't his fault and the water pump had to have been a manufactured recalled part bc of how bad it was. The high ups in the company found out what his dispatch did about his drill and basically slapped dispatch on the wrist and gave him a "I'm sorry". and nothing more. Little to say, SRT is the worse company he has worked for & hubs is speaking with his JAG. DO NOT hire onto this ridiculous company that is worthless and could care less bout their drivers & obviously the National Guard. Funny how he has heard from other drivers that hubs is the ONLY military personal that works for them & that SRT treats their drivers like their a number and that SRT is doing the drivers a service. Seriously?! Good way to stay in business.

Happy drivers are generally quiet drivers. The loudest ones are the unhappy ones. A lot of the unhappy comes from driver failures of various natures. Not all of it is untrue but I'm sure you can make money/exp at SRT as long as you have realistic expectations.

Covenant owns SRT. *Edited, got my companies mixed up.

Ok. Went through orientation on the 28th/29th of March. Things seemed to be going great. Orientation finished out Friday morning, and guys were getting loads. Evidently they picked two of us out of the 18 in class and said we couldn't do anything until we completed the "SMITH" system program. I'm fine with that, but the fact that I had to wait until Saturday to do it was a bit annoying. 

Issued my truck on Friday, wrote it up to have inverter installed (CPAP machine requires one), and fix the AC (which was blowing hot air). They said no problem and got right on top of it. Monday afternoon rolls around and they finally put the truck in the shop. 5pm they told me it would be finished tomorrow (tues). Tuesday rolls around about 1pm and they said it's done. I start the truck, still blowing hot, so I went back into the shop and they told me they installed a new compressor, condenser and a few other things. 

When I informed them that the a/c still didn't work, they sent the truck over to the International dealer, which held it for 2 days as well and still didn't fix it. It's now Thursday, of the next week, they are only giving me $70 to eat on for the weekend, and I may now be looking at getting a different truck, writing it up to have my inverter installed, and hopefully this one wont take all weekend.

I'm rather disappointed in these guys, and I feel I've been so very patient about everything. This isn't happening to everyone, just a couple guys every couple weeks from what I'm gathering from other people.

So it's a hit and miss program I think, not bad for everyone, but who wants to gamble?

Hope this post is helpful to those interested in coming on with SRT. I'm considering a flatbed company out of Alabama (WTI) and saying to hell with refers for the rest of my career.