Hunt Transportation DAC

OK, so you wanna know about Hunt Transportation, eh? First, you need to know that Hunt is NOT a division of Crete Carrier Corporation (both are owned by Acklie, and they have different DOT numbers, and they can NOT pull each other’s trailers). However, a lot of the policies that Crete comes up with get pushed on Hunt also, so sometimes it feels like Hunt is a division of Crete…

Having said that, some of the below might apply to Crete Carrier Corporation, but this is my review of Hunt Transportation:

Two reasons you might not want to work at Hunt Transportation:
1)Hometime (what hometime?)
2)Medical Insurance (what medical insurance?)

There are several others, but those are the biggies.

There is no formal hometime policy at Hunt Transportation (in spite of what you might read on a web site somewhere). The informal hometime policy is as follows:
5 days or more at home is considered vacation, and vacation is only available after a year of employment. There is NO “banking” of hometime. That is, you can’t request extra days of hometime because you’ve been on the road for several months (if you were). You’ll be lucky to get 4 days of hometime after being on the road for 6-8 weeks. (and they’ll give you the attitude that they are doing you a huge favor, by giving you four days)

Now on Medical Insurance:
Blue Cross/Blue Shield is a GREAT insurance company. Unfortunately, there are an infinite number of plans available from BCBS, and the one that is offered through Hunt Transportation is truly terrible. A family would have to pay roughly $7,000 to $9,000 a year in out-of-pocket medical expenses before BCBS (Hunt’s version of it) started covering a significant portion of medical claims. Don’t forget the $245 a month in premiums (that’s JUST the health portion of it) before you ever make even ONE doctor’s appointment!!! Then the family deductible (here’s the “gotcha”) runs from 4,000 to 6,000 a year. If you are working as a truck driver, can you afford to pay SEVEN GRAND (or more) a year in medical expenses? While prescription drug coverage is offered, you are forced to fill all prescriptions by mail order. I’m still trying to figure out how to get prescriptions mailed to my tractor at (random address that changes daily). (!) Having prescriptions mailed to your home is not helpful, when you are almost never home.

I have other complaints about Hunt Transportation, but these probably apply to many companies, so I’m not so sure they are significant, but I’ll list them anyway.

Safety. Hunt Transportation goes to both extremes, here. On the one hand, you will frequently be pressured by dispatch to run illegal. On the other hand, the safety department will nit-pick your logs like crazy.
Routing. I’d really like to get a look at the program that figures their routes for them. It is seriously flawed (to be nice). Hunt obviously tries to avoid toll roads where possible, and you can’t blame them for that. Unfortunately, many of the roads suggested (to bypass tolls) are not fit for commercial traffic (even if they were LEGAL for commercial traffic, which they often aren’t). I’m lucky I didn’t rack up some HUGE fines (and maybe points) on my license before I got wise to this situation.

Lies. I caught dispatch in blatant lies, several times. Not sure this is worse than any other trucking company, but my favorite example…
I had one load where dispatch told me it absolutely had to be delivered on Monday morning no later than 10 AM. So I busted my (behind) trying to get the load delivered by early Monday morning. (legally, but I still busted by butt). Halfway there, I call ahead to Consignee to verify directions. Consignee asks me when I’ll be there. Then he informs me that Monday morning won’t work, as they are closed on Mondays. (?!?) But wait! There’s more… So then the consignee asks me what I’m hauling. When I tell him what the load is, the consignee remarks, “Wow, we weren’t expecting THAT until a week from Thursday”. This was the ultra-hot load that had to be delivered by 10AM on Monday, remember?

Timetables truly screwy. Good example… I was once scheduled to drop in Baltimore (shipping ports) starting at 8AM and pick up at Tobyhanna (Pennsylvania) at 11AM the same day. Needless to say, I didn’t make my pickup.

Another problem if you go into Hunt as a rookie…
The training program is extremely challenging, more than it should be. We were working in the hot sun all day (no shade, infrequent breaks), 7 days a week (in training, you will not get Saturday or Sunday off…I barely had time to sleep, eat and keep up with my laundry). I wasn’t used to this, and complained that the over-exposure to the sun was making me ill (because it was). I was almost kicked out of training for complaining about what any reasonable person would consider to be very brutal working conditions. On the subject of training (for inexperienced drivers anyway), it is eight weeks straight, without a break. I heard rumors of a possible break after four weeks, but this was JUST a rumor, unfortunately.

OK, so far I’ve said mostly bad stuff about Hunt Transportation. But they aren’t all bad. If you don’t need medical benefits, then the pay is decent, compared to many companies (especially the ones that will hire rookies!). Miles are good. Not as good as the recruiters say. But if you are willing to work hard, 2800 miles a week on average (some weeks more, some weeks less) is a realistically attainable goal at Hunt. From what I can tell, most of the good loads go to owner/operators, and they seem to have many happy O/Os, so this might be a good company to consider if you want to lease on with someone. On the subject of pay, they seem to be reasonably prompt in processing trip settlements. I got shorted some miles here and there, but nothing terrible. For the most part, miles dispatched are pretty close to what you drive, and pretty close to what you get paid. From what I’ve read anyway, that seems to be better than some companies.

[FONT=&quot]OK, any questions on Hunt, feel free to e-mail me if you need to. I won’t pull any punches. I will tell it like it is. (Good, bad or indifferent.) [/FONT]

 

I've been full-time, OTR for nine months. I really wanted to stay with Hunt, but needed SOME hometime (as opposed to almost none), and medical bills were piling up to the point where I couldn't afford to work for Hunt anymore. I'm now pulling reefers regional, earning more money for a lot fewer miles. I'm also home -most- nights, and two full days a week as well. I'm averaging 5 nights a week sleeping in my own bed, which is awesome. Please don't ask who I'm working for now as first, I'd prefer not to say. Also, they aren't listed on this board anyway.

As you mentioned crete, I checked crete benefits, and realized that I mis-read the health insurance deductibles that I listed earlier for Hunt (they are lower than I stated). But it appears Crete has the same benefits package. So I can tell you from experience that if you need medical insurance, Crete is not the way to go. Or, you can look at it this way . . . if you need health insurance for your family, you might drive roughly 18,000 miles at Crete each year just to pay for health insurance. Ouch. I figure that at 245/month, plus 3000/year, or almost six thousand, at about 33 cents per mile.

WATCH YOUR ROUTING. I've talked to several Crete (not Hunt) drivers who have the same complaint. The suggested route sent to you by Qualcomm with your load assignment (the route that you are not allowed to vary from) often includes roads clearly signed in some manner to prohibit commercial traffic. You can risk your license or get in trouble with your employer. Some choice, eh? Some drivers I talked to just choose their own route. I eventually started doing that myself. That seems the wiser choice, as Crete isn't going to clean up your DAC for you if you follow Crete's suggested route through areas where you shouldn't be. The DRIVER bears the ultimate responsibility for choosing a safe, LEGAL route. So do so.

 

To the guy thinking of flatbed to get around hazmat, I'd say this:

1) Forget about trucking. That's not personal, so don't take it personally. I've been an OTR driver now for three years, pulled just about every load you can think of in open deck, van, reefer and liquid tanker. I've concluded trucking sux. At best, you make a little more than minimum wage for the hours that you work. At best. And the hours suck.

2) If you insist on staying in trucking (see 1) definitely go get your hazmat endorsement. Even if you don't want to haul hazmat, many companies require it to apply. Even if you will NEVER pull a hazmat load at that particular company. Not having hazmat is a real handicap in a job search for a truck driving job.

3) (might conflict slightly with number 2...and see number 1) Open deck is definitely the way to go, if you want to be a truck driver. If nothing else, the hours are better. You are usually loaded with fork trucks or cranes. Operators of loading/unloading equipment generally work daylight hours. No 2AM appointments at Wally World Distribution centers!!! For those that say, "but what about tarps?" What about them? You don't have to tarp every load, and it's not a big deal even when you do need to tarp a load. Beats the HELL out of sitting at a distribution center for 24 hours waiting to be loaded. Pulling open deck, you rarely wait more than an hour to be loaded or unloaded. Typically, your loading/unloading starts immediately on arrival.

But if you are going to pull open deck, stay away from Hunt. Try Roehl or TMC, in that order.

 

My training was 8 weeks straight without a break. And while it's true that the office is closed on weekends, that doesn't mean that training is Monday through Friday. I was in training every day, including Saturdays and Sundays. It was my experience that their medical insurance didn't cover anything, and cost me many thousands of dollars a year just for the privilege of having all claims rejected. And I would have been thrilled with one day off for every week out. That would have meant that I'd be home for 8 or 10 days straight, as opposed to 3 or 4 days at most. With arriving after midnight and leaving before dawn. I'm glad you haven't had any problems getting home, but that was certainly not my experience. When I had a real family emergency, I was deliberately left sitting for over 24 hours MT. And then when I finally was moving in the right direction, they asked me to park for 14 hours because they were too lazy to gather the equipment I needed for my load. And then the fleet manager got pissed at me when I left short on equipment, in spite of the fact that i had everything I needed for my current load. But as I told my dispatcher, the only choice they left me was to run as is, or park it at the yard and FLY home. (at my own expense, of course) I wasn't trying to go home because I was homesick...my wife was experiencing a medical emergency and wanted me home like, YESTERDAY. So after 36 hours of deliberate delays, I was in no mood to hear someone tell me that I would have to sit all fricking night because they were too lazy to spend 10 minutes gathering equipment I would need to get home. Oh, and you think flatbed is hard work? Having worked both flatbed and reefer...flatbed is easy compared to reefer. I can't imagine why someone would think that reefer is easy, unless they have never had to fingerprint a load (which is highly unlikely). Not to mention, while I was working flatbed, I never sat for 36 hours at a fricking distribution center. (which was an all too common occurrence when I was working reefer). Given a choice, I'd choose flatbed over reefer anyday. I switched to reefer because I couldn't find any flatbed jobs that would get me decent hometime.

You're entitled to your opinion, but your experience greatly differs from mine. Unless Hunt has improved drastically since I was there, I wouldn't recommend anybody work there.