Knight Transportation

One of my buddies just told me that also, he hasnt seen much of a difference yet. According to him, the favortism is still there, but maybe in time it will work out better for all drivers.

 

One of my buddies just told me that also, he hasnt seen much of a difference yet. According to him, the favortism is still there, but maybe in time it will work out better for all drivers.


She tells me she was sent to the Sacramento yard to do a local to get a mty and the receiver refused the deliver because it was 3 days early. The dispatcher told her to wait for someone to show up with a mty. this was at 0900. at around noon a local driver dropped a loaded trailer going to Kent Wa so she called the dispatcher to try to get hooked to it since she had no mty.

He said he could not do that anymore and called load planner. The load planner gave her a load that pu the next day at 1100 going to Puyallup Wa for delivery on the same day as the one in the yard. She got a mty at 2200 by the guy who pu the load she was trying to get assigned to at noon. He was dp on the load at 2000 after he unloaded in Fairfield Ca.

The next day when she got up she had a msg to call dp. The dispatcher told her that her load was reassigned and she was given a load out of woodland that pu at 1700 and delivered the same day as the other 2 loads.

She says not being able to be put on a dropped load 8hrs before the person who got it was even mty cost her 27hrs of sitting and that she might have to work elsewhere if this kind of idiotic load planning continues

And to add insult to injury. Her load home was pu by a driver from Tulare Ca, not Seattle or Portland.

 

Read lots of posts. Mostly dated ones. Can I get a couple of drivers to give me the long and the short of what its like here in november of 08.
I started a thread on the good co. side but no response. I would be running out of the Syracuse terminal........Maybe a couple of you guys could jump in?

 

My bunk heater is out, the Volvos have three batteries. their local directions are completely wrong most of the time, and #### it, I'm bumping my 70 hour! They can be a pain in the ###, but they are better than my last two trucking companies, at times. Sometimes I think they hire office people on looks alone, because they shouldn't be in charge of a fry machine, not to say 40 trucks.....

But I'm making money.

 

Thanks! What would happen if you were to idle??

 

Well, you can't really idle.... I mean the engine shuts down. Unless the freeze alarm goes off, then you idle all night long!

 

What is the idle percentage in the winter ? It's 40% in the summer but I got mine down to 30% and just gave up on it. By being below the idle your truck speeds up.

 

My truck never speeded up when I was at Knight. It was set at 64mph and almost 3 years later when I left it was still 64mph. The year round idle when I was at Knight was supposed to be 33% or less, but I was never able to do that, even when they put that bunk heater thing(Wabasco) in it didnt. BTW, I never met anybody in the almost 3 years that I was there, that ever got the bonus that they were paying at the time for keeping your idle down. I doubt real seriously if the trucks at Knight speed up any if you keep your idol down. Back before they built the new shop in Charlotte, they fired the entire group of mechanics down there because corporate found out that they raised a bunch of trucks to 67mph-fired them on the spot! and the story was that it was accidental, but the company didnt see it that way.

Also, Im not sure what they are saying over there now, but the reason their trucks were set at that speed had nothing to do with fuel mileage. It was all about keeping the drivers out of ticket problems. There was talk of raising it to 70mph, but when they studied other companies that did that, their incidents of drivers getting tickets more than doubled, that was Knight's justification for not raising the speed. Also acccording to Cummins themselves(and most Knight trucks are now equipped with ISX)Max torque and max power happen at 68mph and they tried their hardest to get Knight to trealize this, but Knight refused. They finally came to a compromise by leaving the speed at 64 and not bothering the RPMs or horsepower. That was the only way that Knight was able to stave off Cummins threats of voiding the warranties on the engines.

 

Yeah, that may be what they were telling folks. But the real reason for keeping the speed down was the insurance company. They looked at dollar amounts paid out vs speed of accident. That is what their speed was based on.

 

I was told they were at 66 mph.........Whats the real deal?