TransAm Trucking Pushed me to do illegal driving

TransAm Trucking isn't a very efficient trucking company. It is definitely a very horrible decision to work with them.

I just started working with them about three weeks ago. This is my first job ever in the trucking industry. They are completely taking advantage of felons who cannot find a job and people who are just starting their careers.

What I mean by that is they offer a leasing program through a company called one Leasing. They do not accept outside leases. One leasing is not a good company to lease a truck with. They are poorly rated. And ironically based out of the same city and state as the main terminal is for TransAm. I would not be surprised if TransAm owned the leasing company. Or vice versa.

The main part of the orientation is solely focused on trying to get you to lease. I don't know if the trainers or the office staff get a percentage of whatever the lease is but they will lie to you about everything. In order for you to get one.

What happens is that the orientation is only a week-long. So a lot of people are already interested because most companies require at least five weeks and team driving. They accept everybody. Every single Monday, There's a group of about 15 to 25 people. No matter the background or work experience. They do not split you up into groups. There is one trainer that you will be with. Sometimes 2. But only-one truck where you practice on. It's less of practice and more of waiting outside in the sun for 6 hours until your turn. Out of the entire orientation week, I was in the truck for less than 15 minutes.

After you get done with orientation, they put you back in the hotel. The people who decided to go lease, will get their trucks first. If you decide to go company, you might not ever see your truck. They said they have over a thousand trucks with in their service, but then they mentioned that over 600 of them are leased trucks. I would like to say probably around 80% of those walk away from their lease within three months.

 

I waited for almost three weeks in order to try to get a company truck, and decided to go lease as of two days ago. I couldn't sit around at the hotel wasting money. I didn't have a car. Because they flew me out there. And this coronavirus stuff has been really impacting every area. Which limits resources and food.

They do this on purpose. They make you sit around and waste money and make you feel trapped. In order for you to just give in and take the lease. No matter what you do, never take that lease. I'm only two days into it, and I wish I never did.

They say that leased Trucking is where all the money is. And for the most part, they are right. If you go company, you might see 300 or $400 a week. The starting pay for a leased truck is usually pretty good. For that first month or so. But then they start to dwindle your pay. By however means is necessary. This isn't coming for me, but other lease drivers that I have talked to. You start out making good money. Like around $1,200 a week. And then you start paying your lease usually two or three weeks into working. Suddenly, you're always behind. You're always in debt. Your truck starts messing up. Now you have a negative balance in your maintenance fee. From what I know, there has been four federal cases due to underpaid lease drivers against TransAm. But they don't tell you that, and they surely don't like talking about it.

 

Speaking about leases, I kept in contact with some of the people who decided to go leasing earlier then I did. The same group of people that I was in orientation with. He started a week earlier than I did and has only done one load. His truck kept going into maintenance for a transmission failure. They said it was a sensor. Put him in a hotel for a couple days waiting on it. They could not get the part he needed so they ended up taking it off of another truck and putting it on his.

At this point, they sent him bobtailing out to Arkansas to make up for the loss of money and miles. He made it to Atlanta Georgia before the engine blew up. They towed the vehicle and put him in a really run-down Motel for a week. The original issue with the truck, was that somebody, the previous leaser or mechanic who did the initial fueling/inspecting of the truck before it was released for him to lease, had put def in the fuel tank. And fuel in the def tank.

Of course it seized his engine and transmission. The total bill came out to be right around $2,100. I know this because I got a picture of the bill. He has had this truck for less than a week and he's only driven at once for 250 miles. Never fuelled it once. And they said that he has to pay for the repairs of it. Of course they have a maintenance account for that sort of situation. Where they take $0.10 a mile off of what you make until you pay it off. But that just astounds me.

Another guy finally was able to get his company truck. They flew him all the way to Atlanta Georgia, and when he got there, he has to wait even longer. They told him that the keys for the truck would be given to him when he got there. Unfortunately, the keys were not there. The office in Tampa, was supposed to give him the keys before he boarded the flight. So now he has to wait until they can get the keys to him in Atlanta. His total wait time for that company truck was almost a full month.

 

There was a woman that ended up coming back to TransAm, on the promise that all she would have to do with a DOT drug testing and she would get another truck on the spot. That didn't work. They ended up making her do all the backing Maneuvers again. And sit through a four-day orientation class. And then 2 days out on the road, her truck broke down. I don't know the exact reason why. But I do know that when they fixed it, it only lasted another day. And now her truck is down again. She is also a leased driver.

What they do is they split everybody up after orientation. Some people go to this hotel. Other people go to another hotel. And so on and so forth. The reason why is because they don't want you knowing how long you're actually going to wait for a company truck. The lease drivers go one place. The company drivers go another. The lease drivers get a nicer hotel for a week. The company drivers get a hole in the wall Hotel. For the most part. Sometimes you'll get lucky and be able to stay in the hotel where the lease drivers are at if they have enough rooms.

The reason they do this is because they don't want the old and new company driver sitting around together. They don't want you to know how long it's really going to take. I was told a maximum of a week for a company driving. I sat around for a longer time than that. And then I was told that it could be three to four weeks. That is why I decided to do lease. I know people that were from my orientation, that are still sitting at a hotel. Waiting for their truck.

The recruiters and the trainers and the drive managers and safety and risk management are all on different pages. The three terminals that they have, do not communicate with each other. They don't know what each other are doing. In two days, I have talked to about seven different Drive managers. None of them knew what the other person was saying. I had a discrepancy with my hours, and within three hours or so, I got three different answers. From three different people. On the Garmin unit that we use. They will do everything they can not to call you. If they do by chance call you, it's usually followed up by two or three more phone calls from different people who want to say the same thing or something contradictory and way opposite from the first person you spoke with.

 

Like I said, this is my second day. I was blessed with the experience of having a service failure. At some point during today, I dropped my wallet somewhere. Everything that I had on me was in that wallet. My social security. My EFS fuel card. My bank card. Cash. And most importantly, my CDL. I told them that I would take full responsibility for that service failure because that is part of me being irresponsible to lose something that important.

The icing on the cake is that they told me I could legally drive my vehicle, fully loaded, without my CDL. In fact, they pushed it on me. I wasn't too sure about the laws and regulations about it. I got a message from safety department explaining that as long as I had a copy of my CDL, I could drive the vehicle. With the exception that I was only going home. And that if I was to be pulled over, to tell the cop that I was going home.

The issue with that? They want me to finish my low drop off. I live in Conway South Carolina. My load drop off was in Statesville North Carolina. That's not even the relevant direction of where I live. So I made note of that. I asked them if they wanted me to pull the load to my home or what was going on with that. Because by what they said, that would not be good for me if I were to get pulled over. Or God forbid, I had a random inspection going through the weight scale when crossing the lines into North Carolina. They would obviously see my address in Conway South Carolina and put two and two together.

At this point, I didn't even feel comfortable talking to them about it. I'm currently in South Carolina. I called South Carolina DMV CDL Department. I asked them specifically about the situation that I am in. They told me that even if I had a copy of the CDL, that it is entirely illegal for me to operate and drive a CMV anywhere. They said it was just like driving a car without your license. The only difference is, there are more repercussions if you get pulled over in a CMV without your CDL.

At this point I contacted the driver manager agent. And spoke with him briefly. We had an argument. I told him this information, and he said that I was good to drive. I said that it was illegal for me to drive in the current circumstances. That is coming from a state government agency. But you just wouldn't listen to me. I got about six more calls after talking to him, telling me I needed to take this load to where it was supposed to be going. That I was completely legal to drive.

So I call SC DMV CDL Department one more time. I explained to the woman I spoke with exactly what was going on. The way she explained it was that even if I had a copy of the CDL, which was a photograph I screenshotted off of Facebook, I could not legally drive the vehicle on the road. You have to have your physical CDL card with you at all times. If I were to be pulled over or go through a weight station or do any sort of DOT inspection, I would be fined up to a temporary suspension of my license. She said that I was more likely to face the temporary suspension due to the fact that I was currently hauling a load with the intentions of gaining Revenue.

At this time, I went ahead and took pictures of everything on my Garmin unit. All the messages that I got saying that you are good to drive. Go for it. You are legal to drive. Coming from safety and my driver managers. I message them on the Garmin telling them that I was not legally able to drive. I told him I took responsibility for it because I was irresponsible enough to lose my wallet in the first place. But I wasn't moving my truck. Within the last 2 hours, I have received about 12 phone calls from TransAm, about five different people, telling me that I needed to drive. That I was legal to drive. They couldn't understand why I wouldn't move the truck. Threatening me about my service failure. All sorts of things.

They were lying about certain restrictions have been lifted. Because of certain DMV branches not be opened. Unfortunately for them, the DMV in Conway is still open until the 6th. Which is the one I would go to. I could literally get it by tomorrow. They told me I shouldn't listen to whoever it was that I spoke with over at the DMV. They don't know what they're talking about. Just all sorts of trash. All because they want to cut Corners. Because they know that the ticket or the fine or the suspension isn't going to fall on the company. It's going to fall on the driver to take that risk. If I get pulled over, and say well my company told me I could, they're going to look at me and tell me I should know better. Not go fine the company.

I told him to go ahead and write me up for service failure. So here I sit, in my truck, waiting for my T call to come through. So I can go back home and get my CDL. At this point though, I don't even feel like I'm comfortable working with the company anymore. 2 days into it, and they're already pressuring me to do something extremely unlawful because it's not going to fall back on them. It'll fall back on me. All because they're chasing money. They will do anything in order to save a penny or earn a penny.

 

Built up frustrations