Orientation 02/29/12

I also read online about having 10% of the trucks empty. My plan is to see if the give me a reliable truck and a good fm before i decide how long i am going to stay with them. I am not under contract with them so i do have more options. I really would like to stay the job hopping thing is not for me but sitting around waiting on my truck to be fixed isn't either. Anyway for the time being i will wait and have a good time at home.

 

How can you USA truck afford to upgrade its fleet, when according to some posters they're bleeding money, have a lot of empty trucks and on the verge of loosing accounts. Amazing!

 

Yeah from what I'd always understood, the Internationals were on some type of lease deal. The Freightliners were bought cash in bulk. Fuel Economy told me they went with Freightliners to get the Detroit Diesel engines with DEF due to their claims of higher fuel economy. So far this has been true as I've been keeping mine logged and I've averaged 7.5 even after some very heavy loads through mountainous states. In fact, the worst day I've had yet was 6.3 and the load was from Knoxville to Chicago and I tipped the scale at 79980 gross with half a tank of fuel. But my next heaviest was bottled water at 44600 load from Tyler to Memphis and still got 7.2 that day. the only time I ever achieved >6.8 loaded (I don't count bobtail or empty) in that KW was from San Diego to Laredo at 7.8 with 1500 lbs, which might as well have been empty.

International wants to stay attached to the hip with Cummins. Cummins has the new Maxxforce motors which utilize the idle and cruising cylinder shutdown from 6 to 4 cylinders. They bought a few 2012 Prostars as an experiment but they were all issued to trainers or teams. I only have heard one review on them and it's from a married couple team who told me they hate it. They said it lugs under heavy loads and they had to floor it to get the extra cylinders to reengage and it's been in and out of the shop for....you guessed it....problems with the good ole REGEN system. Additionally, they said thebest they had pulled off was 6.8 mpg. Looks like we will be back to an all Freightliner fleet like the company was up to about 04-05.

 

Oh and a 22 year USA driver told me that the Kenworths were purchased in 07 & 08 as a kind of perk for long time employees and million milers but most didn't want them due to the size and opted to go with the Prostars once they began arriving in numbers. He said the Peterbilts (first the big 387 condos and then the 386s) were bought in 09 to use as kind of a recruiting tool but that there was no fair disbursement system in place and many drivers who got them at first did so by "greasing the right wheels" at terminal management. Likewise, the first manual Cascadias to arrive ( 2900 series) were supposed to be offered to senior drivers first. This did not happen either. According to this driver, that's the reason we have Matt now as the equipment manager.

 

Oh and for all the doomsayers out there....freight is up and so is production. Here's the QC msg I got today."I want to thank all of my drivers for last week. Last week we were number one in miles out of all the fleets at USA Truck. We exceeded the company average by 318 miles per tractor."It continues but the rest is just terms of gratitude and endearment. To give an idea. I'm just over 3300 miles to close out that week and I'm essentially out of hours lol! If I'd finished this load today, it would have been a hazmat that put me at 3700 but I would have violated my 14 by an hour. Oh well, deliver in the morning and start the pay week off with 300 hazmat miles.

 

I believe USA leases trucks.

 

This report from the USA Truck website is my source for the loss of money AND if you look closely the unmanned tractor % is discussed in it. So it's not just according to some posters, it's actually according to the company. As far as losing accounts ask some of the current drivers here about this!

 

Did anybody get a seasonal job during February and March? What a bonehead. He lost drivers, and blames it on seasonal jobs.

 

The only things that really hire seasonally are ag (grain, cotton, livestock, hay and such) oilfield, and occasionally rail and port. Now depending on where these "lost" drivers call home...it's possible that some went that way. Likely that many did? NO! I can tell you what did happen upstairs during that quarter which is a possible explanation. A VERY high turnover in FMs and LCs. From what I heard many were fired. During the chaos that ensues following a FM change, drivers often get forgotten. I know. It's happened to me twice. Then the new one picks up finally and is trying to learn the system and ends up royally hosing drivers in that fleet. Thankfully after the last shift change for me, I got an experienced FM who was previously a freight broker and had also run her own trucking company before. She seems to be the exception and not the rule though as they continue to hire interns or brand new grads that don't know their arse from a whole in the ground and would rather ignore or pass the buck on drivers as much as possible. I talked to another USA driver in TN a few days ago who told me that he's been with the company for 7 months and is on his 3rd FM. He says he is NE regional but runs from Chicago to Laredo and down to Atlanta all the time. He's from MD and they tell him he will get home every two weekends minimum but he says he never gets routed to the house. His last load always delivers in PA, CT, MA, or NY then they tell him to deadhead home. He says he's never seen a pre plan and works one load at a time. He also says that it's completely normal for him to sit for 5-7 hours between loads. I was shocked. I told him that I have a comfortable satisfying job and he got angry. I asked him if he'd talked to his FM and he said that he wont answer the phone. He says this guy won't answer QC msgs either. In fact the only response he's ever gotten was from a group mgr after he sent a msg wanting to know where to turn in his truck over not going home. He said the GM called him and now he personally takes over planning this driver for his last load before home time. This driver has been driving since '98 and not a student.

I've said it before, the freight is there, the company is not bad as a whole, but your FM's quality and your relationship can make or break you. Thing is that if they are serious about what they keep saying about wanting to recruit and retain more veteran drivers instead of so many students then they are going to have to pick up the quality in dispatch.