Heartland will ruin your DAC

Very bad company.

They lie to their drivers.

Rarely authorize any tolls, and sometimes "forget" to reimburse scale tickets.

They don't get you home for weekends that they promised, instead make you work another week (over and over) cause of freight excuses. They don't care if your 100 miles away from home on Friday, your not going home. Good luck making any doctor appointments, Heartless doesn't care. Must go home WITH a load adds to their list of excuses of keeping you out another week.

No pets allow. They don't like you to have passengers. Although not prohibited, they make it difficult with single bed, uncomfortable passenger seat, etc.

Men can't have long hair, flip flops, or sleeveless shirts. Minor issue though. I can sorta understand trying to make the drivers look respectable.

Limited choices for fuel locations.

Spend half the day going to different customers looking for an empty trailer without pay.

They have high priority accounts that must be covered on time. If you have a break down or not enough hours, they rather fire you than lose their own bonus. They also like to flip your sleep schedule upside down every other day, day time, then night time, etc to cover loads. For example, wake up at 8am and ready for a load, and dispatch says you have Sears load coming out 6pm to run all night. Hrm, already fully rested, not like going to get any quality or quantity sleep again so soon. Also requested to make deliveries and pickups when your out of hours, and customers don't allow you to take your break on their property.

You'll get fired for inverter, but yeah most companies will do the same.

They lie on the DAC report the reason you were fired in retaliation to the driver so they don't get hired again.

I can remember talking to drivers that been in the industry for 30+ years and say they never saw a company treat their drivers so badly before.

The ONLY reason to stay would be the pay and if you don't need any home time (ie your single, no doctors appointments, etc). But also depends if you can get the miles. They have some pet drivers, the rest of you can get 1200-1500 miles per week. They even try to convince new hires during orientation that its ok to get low miles cause they pay high per mile, so you only have to do 2k miles a week to make the same other company drivers make with 3k miles per week.

If you need the highest paying job out there, and can put up with the bs including no home time, then maybe this company is for you, but eventually you'll reach your limits with them (or they will with you). I think they treat their drivers like crap and expect them to stay cause of the high pay. Well, people have their limits you know. Can only kick someone around for so long before they had enough of it.

Half of their terminals have crappy driver facilities, especially for showers.

Avoid this company.

 

Communicating to Fleet Manager that it's not legally possible to deliver 800 mile load within 20 hours from pickup time will get you "Performance and Communication Failure" on your DAC report.

They probably didn't have any other drivers to continue the load and weren't able to reschedule, so reflected bad on FM and his boss. Best to burn the driver to save their own career or bonuses.

Sure, lots of companies lie on DAC report, but I've also seen other companies treat their drivers better during employment, even the mega carriers.

Now go troll some where else.

 

Your right, one incident doesn't get you fired. We all know this, thanks for stating the obvious.

Refusing the load and refusing to drive illegally are two different things. If dispatch say pick up the load anyways, and we'll swap it out later towards the end of your hours, then that is what I do. I don't refuse stuff or complain, just communicate to them the issue.

I always communicate over the qualcom for obvious reasons. If its important and/or they aren't responding, then I'll call them. I communicate with dispatch very well, its what they were hearing that they didn't like.

I've met drivers not afraid to run illegal over hours. They tell dispatch he'll do it if dispatch can keep log department off his back, and dispatch promises yes. You know how that turns out. Yeah, I won't do that. I only run legal and safe. They'll have to get some other sucker to do that. Heard they went electronic since my employment, so probably less of an issue with logs by now, but I'm sure the attitude is the same, just burn the driver to save their own butts from incompetence.

They have special high value or priority accounts that absolutely must have an extremely high on time percentage, no excuses. Dispatch and their bosses are burning drivers to save their own job, which yes a lot of companies will do, just Heartland seems to be real good at doing that. Total backstabbers, liars, and no morals in that company.

I know you're trolling, and have more endless questions for me trying to debunk any fact that Heartland is a bad company. I doubt that I'm the only good driver (over 10 years exp, no chargeable accidents or tickets, professional attitude when dealing with company and customers, only willing to drive safe and legal) that had problems with this bad company. Hopefully others will post their bad experience here as well. I'm sure some pet drivers, recruiters, or office people will try to counter my post, but it gets obvious.

 

At that time was paper log book, and every midnight have to send over qualcom the totals.

The 20 hours was from the time arriving at the shipper, must get to consignee within 20 hours. Even calculating 50 miles per hour, that is 16 hour drive with 4 hours to spare for food/fuel. Where is time for 10 hour break? That is illegal, and I communicated that. They say just pick it up and get rolling, we'll get another driver to continue the load later.

I had the majority of my hours available when I arrived at the shipper, and ran that load down to the last minute available as far as I could get. I sent multiple reminders to dispatch in advance where I was and how much time I had left, and polite reminder again that we need to find another driver to deliver the load on time.

Any time dispatch says we'll figure it out later, you know they are lying and won't fix the issue. Its like a parental thing "well see" thing. But when they say just get the load rolling, and we'll find another driver later one, how do you argue with that? You can't. Just do as your told, pick it up, and get rolling.

After multiple updates, then telling them where I'm located for my 10 hour break, they freak out and say they have other drivers willing to do what it takes. They were very careful not to actually say "double logbook" over the phone or qualcom but you know wink wink, that is what they wanted at the time.

Actually, Heartland has a lot of "Just In Time" loads with super tight schedules. I'm guessing dispatch gets in trouble for any % not on time and its easier to just burn a driver now and then to save your own career.

I do agree though, one bad dispatcher doesn't mean the whole company is bad. But this company has a whole is nasty to the drivers.

If taking every load given to you, running your hours to the last minute, only willing to drive legally, and communicating with dispatch about the situation is being a difficult driver, then I guess I'll just have to suffer with that title as difficult driver.

It doesn't really upset me that I lost my job. I was actually happy and relieved at the time. I remember turning in my keys and direction book in at the office with a smile, and wishing everyone in the office to have a nice day on the way out, without even being sarcastic or anything. They seemed to be in disbelief how well I was taking it, you'd think I won the lotto or something.

I previously found it difficult to quit the company due to the 48 cents per mile they were paying me, so yes I tolerated their bs for the good paychecks I was getting. Getting fired actually turned out to be a good thing considering the next job I found allowed me to be home daily for my 10 hour break plus home every weekend, for almost similar pay.

So why am I hear blowing up the forums? Cause they lied on my DAC in a way to get revenge and and an attempt to prevent me from getting another job. Sure, other companies do the same, and its happened to a lot of drivers. I guess this time it was my turn to get burned on the DAC, so yeah I have good reason to be upset about that, especially since I didn't deserve it. I won't shut up and be quiet just cause someone accuse me of being a liar, disgruntle, or problem driver.

People looking to sign on with Heartland should know what they are getting into. I doubt I'm the only driver to have these type of issues with Heartland. Anyways, I probably won't create any new topics about this. I said what needed to be said. Might reply to a few though if in the mood. Thanks for reading