Don't make this mistake at US Xpress

I have been telling people that USX went down the tubes almost overnight when they started pulling frt off of drivers and putting frt on the rails.

Unless you are a team, O/O, training truck or have some dedicated account at USX, you can forget about making house payments or feeding your family unless you live in some trailer park in western Wyoming or something where it is real cheap to live.

If you are a Solo regional or 48 driver at USX you WILL drive tired. You WILL have long periods between loads. You WILL be forced to drive illegal or be in the poor house. You WILL find that they could care less unless you are a team or renting one of their trucks.

But I will say in their defense on one issue that it was not their fault you did not have documentation to enter Canada. I knew from day one that they ran loads to Canada and was required to be able to cross the border.

When I worked for them I had to go pu loads at the crossing in Detroit or Buffalo a few time because drivers would run the load to the border then say they could not cross or did not want to cross the border. They wanted the miles to the border but not the hassle of completing the load.

Not saying you did this but your explanation of the events just does not sound right. I ran many Canada loads at USX and their Canada desk would always make sure your ducks were in a row before a border crossing or have you taken off the load. All the driver had to do is call. many would not which is were the problems usually started.

 

Oh man, now I am getting nervos, the company I am going to work for has supposedly been bought by USX or 49% of it, now at first I was like "no biggie" but the more I read the more I am freaking out, I am supposed to go down there this week to interview and do all the other crap and i am assuming start the position, on the other hand if I go by everything I read here, I will have nowhere to work because almost every comapny has been chastised here for the most part. But it is weird that I have read more than once that USX seems to go out of their way to be EVIL if things don't work out.
My god all I want to do is work, I want to work hard, I know no matter where I go it will suck for a while, is there anywhere at all I can get a job, and be treated good, and make a decent living, I am actually scared to make the wrong move and end up being tortured by some company or have my crystal clear DAC (has been that way for 15 years) get spraypainted with B.S... Ok so who is a good company, does anyone here like where they work? or should I just start applying for Manager positions at Jiffy Lube...

 

Let me speak from a company administrator angle here...Hold on, let me put on my HR director's hat....OK got it.

Most reputable companies that aren't named JB Hunt,Werner,US Xpress,Swift, and all the other big companies with bad reputations, either no longer look at DAC/USIS or give the report what little weight it deserves. If you have one blemish on your DAC or one that seems too much out of character for you, they will see right through the BS. When I hire a driver, I do look at DAC but, I am only looking for a trend. If you have had five jobs and have bad DAC reports(abandonment mainly) from four of them, I might find that alarming. There are about five companies that could be found on a DAC report that I will completely ignore their entries regardless of what it says. I consider those companies to be SCUM and thus place no value on ANYTHING they have to say.

So basically my point is, if a company will hire/not hire based on a DAC report, then maybe this isn't the kind of company you want to work for anyway. I just don't understand why drivers seem to recycle through all of the "usual suspect" companies and then complain and wonder why they get treated like dirt. There are several hundred thousand trucking companies operating in the United States today, so why is it that many people on this forum only look at 20 or so of the largest and WORST companies in the country for employment? Even the companies that are considered to be "good" companies are still major corporations with major turnover issues amongst other things. It is just a relative comparison. i.e.; compared to Swift or JB this third company is pretty good. Well, it's not hard to have a better rep. than Swift or JB, so why do drivers settle for mediocre? In my opinion that is ludicrous and is THE major problem in this industry and has been for years.

I'm truly sorry I hijacked this thread for a rant, but when I see this crap about DAC and the fear that imparts in some people, it tends to trip my trigger so to speak.

 

Eskimo,
You know Your right, and the fact of the matter is I found the company I am going to drive at before I found this board, Also before I found this board I never had much worry about DAC, I also had no intention on ever applying to any of the "big" companies out there, I come from a small company,l as a matter of fact my family owned it, (small mostly flatbed operation here in Mass.) We had to shut the doors, A big part of the reason I coose the company I am going too is due to their size amongst other things, They do not have the highest pay package but it is competitive, I do see other things I like though, one and the major one is the way I have been treated thus far bu the gentleman I have been communicating with about the Job, he is an owner and has been more than fair and honest with me, like I have said on other posts if it dosen't work out then it dosen,t the gentleman I am dealing with also said the same thing,. Unfortunately and I really don't mean to bad mouth anyone here at all, I think alot of the problem we see is lazyness, I also think alot don,t know what they are getting into to, I know from first hand experience that it is hard if not impossible to find good help, as a matter of fact the best guys we ever got to drive for us were retired guys that would come to work part time, I'll tell ya they are a different breed and we aint breedin like that anymore, guys that love to work, they would very rarely ##### and to get them to do so You would have to be really unfair, they are loyal and on top of it all they can drive, backwards too, I am so thankful for the way I had to drive and had to learn to do so through the company my inlaws had, I got hammered and hard, if there was something crappy and dangerous or just plain scary then I was always the #1 pick, I had to cover for all vacations which meant 16 to 17 hour days for weeks at a time, (I was salary). So what did I get from it? A good work ethic, and the ability to do anything in the industrie and do it well,having said that I would never put myself in the same league as the old timers.
Thanks again Eskimo, I like this board but Your right, I am going to stick with the verbal agreement that I have with the folks at abilene, fill out the official app tonite and fax it over in the morning, and hopefully have a job by the end of the week, I will give them honest hard work, do what I am asked, and I bet it will work out good for me and them, it's easy for me though and I feel I have an advantage over some others my age (37) in the industrie, that is, I love to work, I love the work, I have always since small childhood wanted to drive trucks and operate equiptment, it all came through, now I am excited to do yet another aspect of the Job, I have no doubt I will excell at it, I am going to have the privilage to drive nice equiptment again which I just adore doing always have, and get have the opp to get away from what I am doing now (which is local) I do not enjoy local. So see You on the road and thanks for at least setting me straight.
SAFETY FIRST!!!!!

 

There are companies that are far worse than USX, but there are companies that are far better, too.

Sounds like your second thoughts are dragging you down. You need to go in with a good attitude if you are going in. If you can't get over this anxiety about USX, you need to go put in those applications at Jiffy Lube. It's fine you'd become a manager, as chances are you won't like OTR truck driving anyway. You need a great attitude going in if you're going to like it. Those with doubts are gonna quickly find fault and be miserable. And it's all downhill from there, unless you like being miserable.

 

I've been with US Xpress for almost 3 years, and what you described is just about every company in the industry, what you should do is try and find a dedicated account, depending on where you run out of there are plenty available, General Freight Sucks especialy when last year the VP of operations predicted heavy freight from the north west (2006) and moved a sizable majority of the fleet to that area and he got it wrong it hurt the company pretty good, I've been very successful with this company but i was on the brink of quiting 3 months in because of the same reasons u cited but i found walmart and they have taken care of me ever since, i just consider myself a walmart employee with a red truck who makes a lot less lol

As far as not being paid for your trips... thats odd i have yet to run into that problem except in june of this year, the company was switching to a new computer program and it rejected all my dead head miles for a entire month but they just cut me a 1,000 check as with most of the other drivers i know...

you should try and meet your dispatcher not just here but where ever you work at and attempt to build a repore with them, you will find that it makes your job go smoother, talk to them on the phone once a day tell them your plan for the load your on and work with them, never run anything illegal here you wont stay for very long

one of the perks to being on a dedicated account here is you will be given the option to get all your work done at T/A's and dealerships those are not always the fastest but it blows most of the terminals out of the water, including getting pm's done at TA it only takes like 45 minutes

I enjoy this company also for the creature comforts they provide to thier drivers, they have nice trucks and nice terminals, free laundry and nice shower facilities at just about every terminal...

As far as the Driver Tech unit you talked about with the GPS i ran into bad routing as well so i just relied on the old way calling the shipper writing down the directions and just using the GPS to give me a general ideal where my next turn may be but never rely on it 100%, just do what u did before with out the gps and use it to aid you instead of relying on it

home time i have never ran into a issue with them, i have always been home when i asked and for as many days up to 6 if i ask for them

IF you rear end someone, then yeah they should fire you, because you were following way too closely, if someone rear ended you i know they go nuts but i haven't ran into anyone who has been fired for that


i'm not forcing you to stay but i am telling you its not a good ideal to job hop everywhere you should try and work out your problems here or where ever your new company is that u may work for and try building a relationship with your dispatcher so they can learn how u work and dispatch you as needed

 

ALMOST always. In some cases, like someone cutting in front of you then slamming on the brakes, the one who got hit will be found at fault. BUT, the burden of proof will fall on you to prove it, like finding some witnesses who saw what happened.