Heartland express

Well I've been at Heartland express over a year now and as I'm headed out the door I thought I'd give the low down on what to expect.

First the good-
High cpm for new drivers .40 and for experienced guys it goes up to .50. You can get up to .55 with bonuses and running northeast.

Paid detention 1 hour after your appointment. Comes in real handy at fcfs shippers. Pretty easy to game the system too its all based off when you send your empty call.

You will never be asked to run over your hours, run unsafe equipment, or in bad weather.

While they are notorious for buying the cheapest new trucks they can, they have been noticing they have crap for resale value (imagine that) so they are finally buying cascadia and kw condos! (As a new guy, expect one of the old midroofs tho)

Now the bad. I was hired under the guise of "regional home weekends" was told I would get 2200 miles/week and see home for at least a 34. Not the case. If you go home every week the MAX you will get is 2200 miles. Average maybe 1800-1900. You will also not always get home for a 34.

If you need a service, it will be a very long affair. First you must sit through an inspection lane (every time you pull into a terminal you are suppose to get inspected but I only did for service) that takes them about 1/2 hour per truck. I've sat in line for 3-4 hours before. Then the service it self can take several hours depending on the terminal. I've been first in line for service in the morning and got my truck back at 1 pm before. If you pull in a big terminal like Atlanta or Dallas after noon, you might be there till tomorrow getting a service

Night runs. I hate night runs. Empty out at 8 am and get a call for your dispatcher "go ahead and stay on break then pick this load up at 20:00 it goes 400 miles and delivers at 06:00." I guess I'll just force myself back to sleep. At least once a week, expect to get one of these lovely loads.

Sams load (sams club dc to store) Almost as crappy as the night runs is the sams loads. Usually you have 5 hours left to drive at night and you get a sams load for tomorrow morning. They pick up around 11 am and go 175-250 miles and deliver between 21:00-23:00. "But Lucy, those are just drops?" Ya sure IF they have an empty. About 25% of the time they won't have an empty and you're there at 15:00 and have to wait for you appointment. Or (my favorite) they have an empty but no one will come out and sign your bills. Also these loads frequently cancel. Say your all planned up with 3 pre plans and this p!ss ^ss sams load cancels, so do all your other loads. As I sit here now just yesterday I lost 500 miles thanks to this. At least once or twice a week expect a sams load. Certain cities lik minneapolis st Paul 99% of the time you get a sams load

Load politics. The way plannners put loads on you is weird. I wont get into it but sometimes you empty out at night or first thing in the am and sit for hours waiting. Sometimes till noon sometimes longer. Then when you finally get a load you have to drive till 1 am or so just to get a full day of driving in. If you are someone that likes to start their day around 4 or 5 FORGET ABOUT IT!!!

Short hauls. I hate this word. Get used to it. It's all they do. Even team drivers say loads over 600 miles are rare. Also they have no day cabs for their terminals. If you get caught at a terminal expect to do a bit of "day cab duty" pick up a load, take it 10 miles to the yard. Grab this load, take it 15 miles and deliver it.

Weather shutdowns. O yes every Heartland drivers favorite! A bit of snow on the ground? Expect a 12-24 hour shutdown. Unpaid of course. Customers avoid us in the winter because of this. That, combined with the fact that frieght slows down naturally after Xmas, makes winters here pretty brutal. About 20% fewer miles I'd say.

They are a VERY cheap company. This will bubble up in all kinds of annoying ways. The biggest is this-they operate on one of the lowest driver to back office staff ratios in the industry. The office workers they do have get WORKED. 6 days a week, some nights, some 12 hour days. They squeeze all they can out of those guys. Also they over hire drivers. So it makes it easy for their understaffed and over worked office to run all their contract loads.

Basically all the above means about 66% of the time (if you stay out) you will get around 2500 miles or more. But 33% of the time you get 2000 or less because of combinations of the above issues. The more you go home the less you make. I thought it would be a good gig for a family man...IT'S NOT. The promises of the miles and hometime were bold face lies. Even on good weeks the miles you do make are hard fought, headache inducing miles. There are better companies out there folks.

 

Thanks Lucy
A well written and informative report.
About time we got one of those.

 

Good review of the good and the bad!

 

When you get stuck doing day cab Duty do you get paid by the mile for these 10 to 15 Mile runs with live unload tacked onto them? I'll give an example of the worst thing that happened to us we picked up an empty drove it 10 miles spent three and a half hours getting it loaded and then they gave our load to some other driver so we worked basically four and a half hours and got paid 4 20 miles worth of driving. Gotta love these companies.

 

I am assuming you are a Beatles fan. You get bonus points if you can pinpoint the source of the 909 in my username.

 

Milage pay but they through in 20 bucks for loads under 50 miles and 15 for loads 50-100 but as you said all the work you do for it isn't worth it. They bought gordon trucking a few years ago and Gordon had quite a few day cabs around there yards in CA. Recently they sold all those day cabs and told those drivers they can either quit or drive a sleeper truck.

The song one after 909

 

When I'm a a terminal I won't shuttle
Don't care if they fire me for it
I didn't hire on as city and won't do city.
Just me

 

That's messed up. I heard good things about them before

 

Some call it "Heartless Express".

 

Great post... thanks for the information.