Systems Transport

Prior to working for Systems Transport i had no experience in the trucking industry. Therefore I had to spend 8 weeks in their

training program which is outlined as well in this review of my experience with the company. Your experience will vary based on

your experience level and which sector of the company you join.

Orientation
-They fly you up or reimburse you if your close enough to drive.
-Last monday-thursday minimum and likely friday. Some students/veterans are able to leave on Friday dependent on circumstances.
-Orientation was paid about $100 for the week when i went through it.
-breakfast at the hotel is free,lunch at the terminal is free,Shuttle goes from the hotel your staying in (fairbridge inn) to

terminal twice a day monday-friday
-Dinner is on you
-All hotel rooms are booked for a single person. Rooms are perfectly nice clean hotel rooms with free wifi and cable tv. Some have

a fridge and microwave.
-Orientation starts daily at 7. Don't be late or miss the shuttle unless you want to get early placement on the ####list and don't

fall asleep during the mindnumbingly boring videos your forced to watch during orientation for the same reason as previously

listed.
-A urine drug test is submitted in house
-A physical test is done at a medical facility in which they check your heart rate,bp,hearing etc...
The physical test consist of several lifting and walking with weight excercises
also you will be required to pick up one red tarp (6ft drops 26ft long & 100lbs) that is extremely loosely rolled on purpose and

put it onto a shelf at chest level twice in a row.

Training
The training manager will be your boss for all intents and purposes for the 8 weeks you are required to complete in training if you

are new to trucking & flatbedding like i was. The training manager is an professional and seems to be very focused on his task

which is creating the best possible training program he can for this company. If you have any issues with your trainer or the

training curriculum i would not hesitate to bring them up to him.

-Training pay will be 500 dollars per week during your training period

Your expectations for performance which are flexible based on the student and trainer are as follows

Week 1-200 miles per day
Week 2-250 miles per day
Week 3-300 miles per day
Week 4-350 miles per day
Week 5-400 miles per day
Week 6-450 miles per day
Week 7-500 miles per day
Week 8-500 miles per day

For at least the first 3 weeks the trainer should be up front with you and he technically should be logging himself as on duty even

while you drive, but this was never the case in my experience. For the first 3 weeks you also should not be driving between 1 and 5

am. Do not be afraid to switch trainers if you are unable to work with yours. I went through 3 during my training.

Keep up with your paperwork during training and make sure to read every letter of every piece of literature they give you. At the

end you will take a
-load Securement test
-Driving Test
-General knowledge and trip planning test

upgrading to a solo driver once the above is done is fairly simple.
You will take a 8 hour recertification course and watch videos discussing some of the features of our newer trucks such as
-Auxiliary power units (APU's)
-mobile eye (forward facing only)
-Regen System (DPF)

From that point you will meet your new dispatcher and will be assigned to the "green fleet" for 3 months. If you do well in this

time you should upgrade from the green fleet after 3 months and be assigned to a permanent dispatcher.

At that point you will be upgraded to your permanent dispatcher after taking the recertification course again and recieve a 2cpm

raise.

Pay (this applies to OTR drivers only)
32.5 cpm,34.5cpm after you are upgraded to permanent dispatcher
30 tarp pay for tarp and un tarp (not each)
drop pay is 10 ea for the first 2 drops and builds up from there
100 per canada run which are optional
12 per hour when applicable
20 per day lay over without a load

Last but not least Equipment
-Kenworth T660's or Peterbilts (slope noses) all under 500k miles
-Equipped with Cummins or Paccar Engines generally
-Straight 10 eaton manual transmissions
-Closed headache rack
-All the equipment you need will be provided. I carry several of my own 2'' ratchet straps for oddball jobs though.
-No fridge or microwave built in i'm sad to say,but 1500 watt power inverters are installed in them all ready to go.
-All OTR trucks are equipped with Diesel APU's
-Qualcomm E-LOG's are Mandatory
-All trucks and trailers equipped with air scales
-53' step decks
-48' flatbeds/stepdecks
-48' mechanical stretch RGN's
-You can open or close the axles on both the steps and flats. When open you have a 10' spread and when closed you have tandems

obviously
-trucks governed to 63mph on the pedal,65 on the cruise.

Home time is 1 day for every week out. Minimum time out on the OTR fleet is 3 weeks and maximum days you can save up are 5 days.

They are very good about getting me home on time and i was able to go home twice during training without any issues. Overall i've

been happy with this company and how they have treated me and the Pay for a new driver straight out of school is very good IMO.

If your looking to get started in the Trucking Industry as a flatbedder this is a good place to start.

 

They are trying to hire in Baltimore, I called and asked what do they pay, how do they pay, flat bed or van work? All they will do is send me an application, I don't fill out applications till i know what the job is and how it pays. Also, I'm not a newbie, been driving almost thirteen years.

 

I'm pretty suprised to hear that although we have recently expanded our hiring area into the north east and texas, but it doesn't look like MD is on this map.

http://www.systemtrans.com/driver-opportunities

You shouldn't have any issues getting your pay structure all explained to you. They had several hot sheets and a thorough explanation of my pay given to me before i ever agreed to work for them because i do agree with you in that regard. They may be wanting you to send in an application so they can tell you what they think your worth since you do have experience. The work will almost certainly be Flatbed because our TWT division stays on the I-5 unless your a team runner and even then those guys are normally running the I-40 in my experience with them. Never seen one of our green trucks in the North East before.

p.s regardless of your driving experience if you have no verifiable flatbedding experience i would count on being put out with a trainer for a shorter amount of time for load securement experience.

We do have different pay scales for each division so it is important to understand that before joining.
Some pay %
some pay higher mileage pay such as our pole fleet
some pay higher salary such as our Blade Fleet
some pay hourly
some pay lower per mile like the 200 otr fleet i'm on, but give more miles

Really a very diverse company. Let me know if you have any more questions. I gotta put some miles down .

 

who was the o/o trainer you had? or at least what type of truck did he have? been with system for 14 months now

 

I'm gonna keep that anonymous as i'm really not interested in starting down that road.

 

This is for the new drivers with System Transport. You are in one of the best trucking companies in this Country.
I drove for System back in 04 and 05 and I have to say System was the best trucking company I have ever worked for. The reason I no longer drive for System is back in 2005 I got double pneumonia and was off the road for almost 5 months. when I got better and cleared by my doctor System did'nt want be put me back on but they were cool about it so I hooked up with a local so. cal. company. So any way, if your already with System then you should stay, if you are looking for one of the best flatbed trucking companies out there then try your best to get hired on to System and then Stay. I was foolish to have not tried harder to get back on with System that was a big mistake back then but I am going to keep trying and see if I can undo the mistake. System Transport was fair with me. So all you System drivers stay where you are, there are alot of other flatbed outfits that will give you a great song and dance but you will probably regret it later System Transport is a good thing hang on tight.

 

Well as you all know i track my #'s. My old Dispatcher took a little prodding, but in the end he brought home the dough. Here's Some #'s to show you the difference a dispatcher can make.

Old Dispatcher
[TABLE]
[TR]
[TD="class: xl63"]weekly avg gross pay[/TD]
[TD="class: xl65"] $ 1,377.71[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: xl63"]Avg paid miles per week[/TD]
[TD="class: xl64"]3225.62[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: xl63"]Pay per mile[/TD]
[TD="class: xl66"]$0.427[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: xl63"]Calculated Gross income[/TD]
[TD="class: xl65"] $ 62,203.83[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: xl63"]# of weeks paid[/TD]
[TD="class: xl63"]2.42[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]


New Dispatcher
[TABLE]
[TR]
[TD="class: xl63"]weekly avg gross pay[/TD]
[TD="class: xl65"] $ 1,071.18[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: xl63"]Avg paid miles per week[/TD]
[TD="class: xl64"]2628.32[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: xl63"]Pay per mile[/TD]
[TD="class: xl66"]$0.408[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: xl63"]Calculated Gross income[/TD]
[TD="class: xl65"] $ 48,363.85[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: xl63"]# of weeks paid[/TD]
[TD="class: xl63"]3.99[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]


Now time for a little vent/update

I jumped on this new dispatcher pretty hard right out of the gate and explained what my expectations of them were and what they could expect of me. Instead of using that information for maximum profits like the old one the new one decided to go up to management and have them yell at me and basically tell me to be nicer to my dispatcher explaining that i had to ''prove myself to her'' and ''give her a chance to screw up before making any demands''.

I think this qualifies as a pretty good screw-up . The only reason it's not worse than this is because after getting me only 1000 miles in 3 days the new dispatcher managed to pull a 2700 mile straight run with no drops and pre-loaded to boot out of his rear end. She Made me sit around for 4 hours explaining how they could not do anything and i had a pre-loaded trailer coming to me sometime this evening, but they didn't know when. That is until i cranked up the pressure and then all of a sudden they found that 2700 mile run and of course the trailer had been sitting across town pre-loaded all day long while i was sitting around burning up my 14hr clock. I parked at a weigh station to get as close to my unload as possible the night before to maximize my 14 for a reload and good mileage the next day, yet they managed to ruin the rest of my day anyways with their incompetence and non-existent forethought to a problem they knew was coming 2 days earlier (reloading) .

New dispatcher likes to screw me out of alot of money to. Wanted me to drive 10 miles to swap out my 48' flat for another 48' flat because it needed to get moved for a service and i said alright can i get paid an hour for this since i'm not going to get any miles for it as it's in the same zip code and the new dispatcher's answer was ''if this was all you were doing today then we could, but it won't take you long so no''. Oh ok, i'd love to waste my 14/70 hour clock working making no money...not . I wouldn't have even had to have asked my old dispatcher for the hour of pay.

Overall the #'s aren't bad compared to some other starter companies, but the rate at which my averages are dropping is just infuriating. We're still working with some pretty small data fields so I'm going to continue to watch and base my future decisions on the Data.

 

Are you running regionally?

 

nope,OTR. Bored of that I-5 yet?

 

appreciate the info, management routed me over here for posting something I shouldn't have and in the wrong spot, so thanks guys, I wouldnt've found it otherwise, been thinkin about this company for a while and couldn't find nothing about it,. I was wondering if you had any info on the texas regional