Fox Run Transport

Discussion in 'Report A BAD Trucking Company Here' started by Fatman, Mar 4, 2012.

  1. Fatman

    Fatman Bobtail Member

    1
    1
    Mar 4, 2012
    Las Vegas, Nv
    0
    Fox Run Transport of Berthold, ND is a company that will starve you out! As a new driver, they will work you good for two weeks so your first check is good. The rest of the time you will sit and starve.
    It's the people that work in the office that plays this game, they have no knowledge of what they are doing.
    They make up policies to set their needs as they go along. They don't care about the drivers or their families, they lie right to your face.
    Their ad states "$20 to $30 an hour and 20% to 25% DOE" all lies! They start you out at 19% and you make from $8/hr to $27/ hr depending on the job that you go on! They offer no incentives, no health insurance, no perdiem, no housing and what they do have are campers that they charge $500/month for and want two to three people per trailer.
    Most of the time you sit at the truck stop living out of a truck! STAY AWAY!
     
    mje Thanks this.
  2. Truckers Report Jobs

    Trucking Jobs in 30 seconds

    Every month 400 people find a job with the help of TruckersReport.

  3. itsMeFred

    itsMeFred Bobtail Member

    44
    18
    Jan 12, 2012
    NW Kansas
    0
    The month of February was slow for EVERYONE, Fatman, not just Fox Run. There's a reason sand and water trucks were sitting everywhere.
    What did the long-term guys tell you? Had they been mostly sitting the entire time they've been with that outfit? In which case, why have they remained with the company for however many months?

    My husband just started with FR too. A cowboy from Nebraska.
    His first couple of weeks, at the end of Feb, early March were indeed slow. I repeat: EVERYONE was sitting. Didn't you notice all the sand/water trucks that were parked everywhere up there?? (When my husband first got up there he said something about it. Along the lines of "hmmm...this isn't good...")
    But he's been running like crazy for the last couple weeks. The oil co.s are getting geared back up for spring/summer. He's headed up to Marathon even as I type. I can't wait to see this next paycheck. :D

    So far as pay, he's getting exactly what they promised him. 19% to start, which comes up to about $22-28, depending upon load. So their advertised rate of $20-30 seems pretty honest to me...
    (And $8??? You're counting the two-day ride-along wage? lol You're digging kind of deep here, ain't ya?)
    To benefits, did they tell you otherwise? Because again, that's exactly what my husband was told. Straight wages, no benefits. Just like any other job he's ever had, really. Same with housing. He wanted a company that would let him use the sleeper for housing and that's exactly what he's gotten.

    Though at the same time, he also said many times during those first couple of weeks (when it was still slow) that he'd be a danged fool to camp out at Minot in the truck stop.
    There's a shower at the shop, he gets his morning coffee and smokes at Cenex, and he doesn't have to get caught up in all the b%&*^ing and moaning at Behm's. (That kind of thing is contagious ya know);)

    But then again, when it was slow, he went to the shop and helped pack things up to move to the new one. He shuttled trucks back to Berthold from Minot. He did whatever he could to keep himself occupied and useful...

    He's been quite happy with them, so far.
     
    mje Thanks this.
  4. kdc1899

    kdc1899 Light Load Member

    100
    33
    Feb 23, 2012
    0
    any updates?
     
    mje Thanks this.
  5. j3411

    j3411 Medium Load Member

    358
    421
    Jul 31, 2010
    Buckner, Il
    0
    Seems most people fail to look at the big picture. They look at today and forget what they are after in the long run. MONEY. It's posted on other threads here that it's been slow in the patch up North.

    I've got people that just relocated from Fl. up there. The husband does construction and the wife's an office manager. They took a camper with them and are surprised by all the work that is up there.

    "Its Me Fred"... sounds like your husband is doing all the right things, others should take his lead.
     
    mje Thanks this.
  6. itsMeFred

    itsMeFred Bobtail Member

    44
    18
    Jan 12, 2012
    NW Kansas
    0
    I guess...They slowed down again. lol
    Though nothing like it had been in February, early March.

    It's still not crazy-busy-have-to-turn-down-loads-to-keep-the-log-book-legal every week, but it continues to steadily pick up. Apparently even the guys at the frac outfits themselves are complaining that its slow, so it's still not just one hauling company.
    And, they've impressed a couple of the big frac companies, so that can only bode well in their future. :)

    To be sure, even considering it's still somewhat slow, he's making more up there than he did with his job here at home. And that's including his week home every month!

    I'm going to bet that once the load limits come off the highways things are going to get busier than anyone is ready to deal with.

    So far as the company itself, my husband is still happy with them. It's a small, approachable operation. You're not just a number. No, it doesn't have the regular hours or benefits of a big company like Power Fuels, but at the same time a smaller company allows you more flexibility and will know what you are doing for them.
    Life is a series of tradeoffs and everyone has different priorities. You just have to know yourself well enough to know what you're willing to trade off in order to gain somewhere else.
     
    Last edited: Apr 20, 2012
    jb9033, mje and tumbleweed1954 Thank this.
  7. jimmycrackcorn

    jimmycrackcorn Light Load Member

    66
    26
    Jul 13, 2013
    0
    LET ME MAKE THIS CLEAR: I AM GOING TO TRY TO BE AS HONEST AND AS OBJECTIVE AS I CAN ABOUT THIS COMPANY.

    When i go to a company, i try to give it a fair shake. 6 months is a fair shake, in my book, but i couldn't make it the 6 months here. I started working for Fox Run Transport in February, after i had a conversation with a friend of mine who was employed at this company swore to me that he was making a pile of money. I got out there and Brian (the guy that is in charge of hiring) didn't even know i was coming. I was technically hired by someone from one of the owner's other companies, which had nothing to do with Fox Run. When i spoke with this other guy, he had stated that the drivers would receive 25% of what the truck earned. That is pretty standard in North Dakota. When i showed up for orientation in Berthold, Brian laughed at me when i had mentioned the 25% and told me that no one at the company gets this except for a certain, crappy paying customer that they haul for. This should have been the first red flag, and i would normally have taken off at this point, but my friend insisted that he was making money, so i stayed.

    The training process for this company was not existent. I had ran pneumatics briefly in the past, so my training consisted of someone riding with me on a transfer load, saw that i had a clue as to what was going on and took off before i was done unloading the first load. Then i was turned loose. This was pretty common at first, but to give them credit, after a bunch of new guys wrecked some equipment and almost lost some contracts, they started a little more intensive training program and started paying the trainers for doing it. Their hiring practice is basically show your cdl and you get a job. They don't really fire anyone. If they want you to leave, they will just let you sit until you quit. Brian is the operations manager, but doesn't really have any say about anything. Everything has to be ran by the owner Dan, who only shows up for a couple days here and there when he chooses to show up. The dispatchers are typical dispatchers. Lie to your face and tell you whats convenient for them to get you out of their face, and when you call them out on a lie they sit you and try to get you fired.

    This place is feast or famine, but more famine than feast. In my experience, there is usually more than half the guys sitting at any given time. But they want everyone sitting in the yard ready to go, just in case. The yard doesn't have any gravel or rock on it, so when it rains it turns into a huge mud hole, and they wont put a grade to it to get the water to run off. Over the winter, we had to fight with them to get them to plow snow. If you get happen to get stuck, they don't have the equipment to pull you out. You have to rely on other drivers to pull you out. If you can't and they have to get a tow truck out, its on your dime. They have a revolving door like i've never seen before. Drivers come and go on a daily basis.

    Now, here's the reason that i left. Payroll is every other week. You fill out a BOL/Time sheet for every load that you pull. They use that bol to pay you off of a spreadsheet formula that the owner dictates per the contracts that they have with the customers. but here's the kicker. The owner won't let anyone see the contracts and doesn't share the terms of them with anyone else in the office. So by rights, you are getting paid a percentage of what the owner says the truck is making. They DO NOT pay you a percentage of the invoice that they bill the customer. So you aren't really getting a percentage of the truck, and the drivers have caught discrepancies in the payroll. My personal experience with payroll has been this: Every payday i go through my bols to make sure i got paid for everything, but there are on average 2 bols/loads that i didn't receive payment for. So then i have to go fight for the ones that they "missed". The common practice is if you catch what they miss, they will pay you for it. The dispatchers figure out your pay per the bol, then they send it to another office for further processing. She trims some off your pay and sends it to payroll (which is in Fargo). These are the people that decide which bols they are going to pay you for. You can never earn over a certain amount of money with this company. The more you earn, the less they pay you. Let me explain. I had worked 120+ hours for both weeks of the pay period and would have grossed over $6400. They shaved $20-$50 per load on every load and brought my gross down to under $5200. They don't care how many hours you work because they generate a time card on the computer and make it look good. The only way to make money with these guys is to put in a ton of hours when there is work, and if the company doesn't get paid for the loads, they don't pay you for the loads. In 5 months, working a 3-4on/ 1 off schedule, i averaged $1000/week gross. They steal your pay and basically tell you to leave if you don't like it.

    The shop is a joke. The "mechanics" are untrained monkeys that don't do a whole lot because they don't have any formal supervision. The last shop supervisor screwed the company out of over $150,000 and now everyone that works for Fox Run is an #######. Any time they get anyone decent in the shop, they seem to screw them over and kick them to the curb.

    My professional opinion of Fox Run Transport is that they are a #####*NG JOKE and you should not waste your time with them. They recently started offering a biannual bonus program. You get 1% of your 6 month gross if you don't screw anything up. To offset this expense to the company, they are taking 2% away from your pay on one of the customers, so the more you work, the more you lose. Let me reiterate, do not waste your time with this company.
     
    mje and tumbleweed1954 Thank this.
  8. pattyj

    pattyj Road Train Member

    22,474
    20,134
    Jul 19, 2008
    Sioux City,ia
    0
    So what are you doing now Jimmy?I suspect this is a small company by the way you described their parking lot.You know their's something shady when the owner wants to keep the contracts such a secret.About their dispatchers,that got me to thinken maybe they're not any better off then the drivers are an why some are bitter towards them.
     
    mje Thanks this.
  9. jimmycrackcorn

    jimmycrackcorn Light Load Member

    66
    26
    Jul 13, 2013
    0
    I will touch on this... The owner has many other ventures going on. He has a very large, if not the largest implement dealership in the state. He has one or two water disposal sites. He has a couple sand handling companies. He isn't hurting by no means. That is why it boggles me that he would nickle and dime the drivers and his trucking business. As for being small, he has the capability of putting about 60 sand trucks and 20 water trucks to work, but can't get any water drivers and can't seem to break 30 sand drivers. The smart ones realize what's going on and leave within a few days of starting. After making the first post, the dispatcher called me asking what i was planning on doing. I told him that i didn't think i would be coming back out because my last check was around $500 short, again... Without drivers to do the work, the dispatchers wouldn't be needed and the company wouldn't be able to function. Drivers are the heart and soul of any trucking operation. Why would you continually mess with them? He said he agreed and also told me that he has had to fight for his paycheck (on salary) in the past. I have otr experience, oil field experience, hazmat, tanker, a perfect mvr, mechanical knowledge, and i'm willing to work 120+ hours every week. I can go anywhere and do anything. I don't need a company that is going to screw me every time i turn around. I found a small company that is in its infancy that is founded on some pretty strong values, and I think I will be quite happy there. There are decent companies out here, just have to find them. Fox Run has the potential to be a GREAT company. They're just not willing to take that step.
     
    mje and jb9033 Thank this.
  10. BigBuck44

    BigBuck44 Bobtail Member

    1
    1
    Aug 22, 2013
    0
    Hey Jimmy...I'm a new member on this site, but have almost 5 years of oilfield experience with tankers and hazmat, including my time in the Bakken. I would like more info on your new company. Please send me a private message with some general info. Thanks!
     
    mje Thanks this.
  11. jb9033

    jb9033 Bobtail Member

    19
    4
    May 7, 2007
    0
    fox run is a very hostile work environment, drive are robbed and beaten on a regular basis and management encourages this behavior. i have been hit with steel hoses and knocked out by a driver. go anywhere but here if you enjoy living.
     
  • Truckers Report Jobs

    Trucking Jobs in 30 seconds

    Every month 400 people find a job with the help of TruckersReport.