mercer transportation

juggalo, that post of Beethoven's you quoted is about a year and a half old, he came to mercer in march 2013 completed orientation, had his truck inspected and was told the abs light didn't work and had cracked front brakes. he got mad and left without leasing on, he then leased on to crst /Malone, by july of 2013 he was back to mercer.

mercer offers a flatbed orientation class for drivers with no experience with open deck, it was that way when I leased on 4 years ago, I had experience but just remember guys going thru the class when I leased on.

I would rather a guy with no experience come here to the land of milk and honey rather than go to crst/Malone . I don't wish that on anyone, lol. they can take those bogus csa scores and ram em somewhere.
I don't see a guy wasting a year renting a trailer, when he could working toward owning one here.

its almost like telling somewhere to marry a big ole crazy maniac woman to get experience before he marries a sweet good lookin one with custom boob job.


in reality your post was beatin a dead horse, cause he already been there and done that. a year and a half ago. pay attention to dates or you gonna be late with a load

 

LMAO true true thats beyond late, had that happen with my 1st load here lol it was a Military load i walked out to my truck looked it over to call in loaded and had to go right back inside she had dated it for the previous month, lol was lookin at it like #### i'm late and just barely got it tarped

 

Mercer does have a fairly high turn over rate. A lot of that is because many of the people they hire have no experience, no equipment, and no trailer. They come here because they are not making enough money where they are, their broke then buy all this equipment and can't dig them self out of the hole.

In the past you already had to be a fairly successful O/O before you got here. I agree a good amount of the scores Mercer complains about is a result of them lowering the qualifications.

This post is not meant as a rub against those of you that came here with no experience and had to buy all your equipment and trailer. If this is you, and you dug yourself out of the hole, I commend you. You are much smarter than average and adapted

I started in this industry as an O/O under a L/P plan back in 1985. I completed it got a few years under my belt and was fairly successful. Then I came to Mercer in 1989, everyone here was already successful in their own rite. It was the land of milk and honey.

Somethings never change, that first day here, some old gray haired man came up to me and said " I don't know what the hell they are putting more trucks on for, we don't have enough freight for the trucks we got" some of you new hands hear that same quote today.

I don't want anyone to fail at Mercer, just seems that many are destined to fail. I welcome new trucks.

 

LOLOLOL!!!!

I laughed SO hard when I read this post!! Your first paragraph is so dead on how DH and I ended up at Mercer! We were flat broke, had a truck payment due, didn't have any equipment, no flatbed experience, no trailer ... ended up *in debt* to Mercer for all of it except our Headache rack, which we got from another driver who had just bought himself a new one, was running by our truck and shouted "Looks like you need a headache rack!" and kept running LOL Found him later and got his old one (a bit beat up but still in service) for $150.

Our first load was to California. We were SO freaked because we delivered the load then had to sit for a whole WEEK waiting for a load out along with about 8 other Mercer Drivers. We really wondered if we'd made the right decision. That being said, we did have a good time all parked in a row at the TA! LOL

Now, here it is almost 4 years later and everything we own is paid for (except our 2013 pickup truck). It hasn't been easy and we've faced untold trials and tribulations during that time but no matter what our situation, Mercer has ALWAYS been there to back us up. DH had triple bypass surgery last year. All Mercer asked was that I take a short haul load once a month to stay active on the boards. Never mentioned us not being able to make our trailer payments or anything. Within one month of him being cleared to go back on the road, we'd caught up everything and were chugging along again.

Right now, we're seriously considering re-vamping the FLD we have sitting in our parking lot. Custom Interior, possibly stretching the frame some and adding a "dog-house" for the Harley. I seriously can not think of anything negative to say about Mercer as a Company. Our load guy, well, that's a different story But we still have the same guy we've had since the beginning and I've just learned that he's not as interested in our bottom line as we are and that I have to keep an eagle eye on loads and when I find something I think would be good for us, even if he's "refused" us on it, I call him about it.

And in general, Mercer drivers are some of the nicest ones I've met (even if they don't have a zip code truck number like us!).

 

When I signed on my first load was to Az. I don't even remember how I got out. Success stories are great, even better when the success was hard won my hats off to DH and you! I also have a zip code now, I took 9 months off in 2011

 

I got a level 3 in Wisconsin the other day. Guy showed me the screem that said "inspect". Due to log violations. I run paper, but keep it tight. Guess it doesnt matter now as we are all going elog.

I came here i. May, broke. I had my equipment and experience but not much else. I had bought in to a lie by a small company and paid dearly for it. But since being here, Im getting money put away, got my bills current. Been a good choice so far. No job is perfect, but Im happy.

 

Thanks mtoo! There are times when I have to point that out to DH. Sometimes I call him "Mr. Negative" because that's all he can see. He tends to loose sight of the positive aspects of what we've accomplished.

Honestly though, in our defense for not having flatbed experience, etc ...

When we came to Mercer for orientation we were supposed to get a dry van but they didn't have any! They managed to talk us into going flatbed.

DH is on a load right now that's going to take him until Thursday morning to finish (picked it up Friday in Ft. Worth) but it pays decent and will keep him busy for the week. So far his safety score is -50 lol He got DOT'd 2x in less than a week a couple weeks ago.

We are planning on getting our EORB before the end of the year. Inspection is coming up in December so we figured we might as well. I went and bought a (very expensive) tablet - 10" Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 - (which is the one the Logs department recommended) so that we don't have to use a cell phone. Got the larger one since neither one of us are getting any younger, if ya know what I mean. Not sure how the APP will operate but I'm hoping it's not too complicated.

 

Thinking of a Conastoga. Fasttrak FB.. I know I can't do over certain loads. Opinions please

 

I have a quickdraw system on my trailer. I love it however it's a lot like having a stepdeck. Sometimes customers will refuse to load a conestoga pretty much because they don't know what it is. A legal 40/8/8 load will fit in any trailer but just because I'm not a normal "flat", they don't want to take the chance. This has only happened a few times and most of the agents are happy I have one. I never did oversize before so not doing them now is no problem for me. My trailer is 102" wide and the tarp system is another 3" on either side. The roll up rear curtain with the ability to run with it open would be very nice. Mine has to be closed when driving

.

 

How much (ballpark) do those kits run? DH and I have talked about getting something like that installed on our trailer.