TMC Transportation, Inc. - Des Moines, Ia.

See you completely MISSED the gift that the trainer gave you! Yes he may have broken rules and been sloppy but he gave you the GREATEST gift of them ALL! Never becoming LIKE him!!! DOING the J O B RIGHT! What greater training tool could he have shared with you?! Communication is the key you could have gotten another trainer but well would have had to wait a week or so… You could have gotten a bus ride home on TMC’s nickel but you chose to be dropped off or rent a car… I wont share ALL of my experiences in training… Believe you me if I did it might make your time with your trainer seem a little meek. I stuck it out till I saw an out… Till the end of the week because I knew I would be @ my home 20… I kept my mouth SHUT drove the truck and kept to myself… Know when to fight your battles and prove your point and when to have a LITTLE common sense when to keep your trap closed cooped up with a loon in a 7x7 foot space… I drove through a tornado almost was hit by a falling tree on highway 44, got part of my Phelps Dodge copper load jacked (because while I was in the shower he was bragging on the phone @ Wendy’s about our HIGH DOLLAR LOAD) at a Pilot ALL in the same evening… He was sloppy careless caught the trailer on fire by leaving the trailer hand brake on (for 10 miles), rolling up the NJ Turnpike at 7am rush hour… I got out waited a week and POOF! Got the greatest trainer (and a new friend) in the world. Funny what you can learn from a 25 year old. hehe… You have a mind-boggling reality check coming my friend in this business… My BEST trucking advise I can give you (honestly) is go work for CFI hands down. If you REALLY take to heart and believe all the information recruiters give you... I have some beautiful ocean front property for sale in Oklahoma I would simply LOVE to sell you!

 

Wake up. Until drivers start demanding better standards among themselves, none of us will ever get treated like the professionals that we all are and should be. .
melfry[/quote]


If you think for a minute you will get a united movement to act upon this you are crazy! It's not rocket science… HA! Come up with a viable excitable plan and I will be the FIRST to sign on! Jimmy Hoffa is dead and gone… Sadly there are a lot of drivers and companies that under cut the freight and will continue to bring the standards down for us all just ask JB Hunt!!

 

Like Slacker (who is no Slacker btw) I too am sorry you had the problem. Communication is key. We can't fix it if we don't know about it. I teach one of the Train The Trainer classes and I cover a great deal of "short cut" topics and tell them all (new and old) that if we become aware of a problem we will make sure they don't train again AT A MINIMUM. Think we don't follow through? I had one in here a few weeks back, his trainee (like you) was fed up and called into Safety to report him. To lend credibility to the trainee the trainer whipped a U-Turn out here on a highway and got stuck. We called him in on it then I learned the trainee had made a call of concern just a few hours before reporting very similar activity. Long story short, we pulled the trainee out of the truck right then and there after I interviewed him and got him a new trainer. Then we dealt with the trainer. He does not train anymore and is on probation. We do not tolerate or condone unsafe practices here gentlemen. It may take a few calls to get your complaint heard but we do follow through once we identify a problem.

 

If you think for a minute you will get a united movement to act upon this you are crazy! It's not rocket science... HA! Come up with a viable excitable plan and I will be the FIRST to sign on! Jimmy Hoffa is dead and gone... Sadly there are a lot of drivers and companies that under cut the freight and will continue to bring the standards down for us all just ask JB Hunt!! [/quote]

You may not believe in standards, or think they're achievable, and that's fine. But chaos can't rule the trucking industry. If truckers don't hold themselves to higher standards than the undesireables of the trucking industry then the industry itself will never change, nor will the bigwheels that run them. This means worse treatment for drivers, low pay, and being treated like a number, not a person. So you just go on living in your "it will never change so I won't even try" mentality, and I'll keep pushing my opinion for better standards. You mentioned how JBHunt brings the standards down for us all, so you just sit by idle and accept it.

At least my plan is better than yours. You're intent on sitting on your hands and waiting for someone else to give you a solution, instead of representing and holding high standards in your job, at least that's the way you make it sound in your post. You may be an excellent driver. And if I had you as a trainer I may still be with TMC today. But it sounds like you're sticking up for the lowlives of this industry.

Accept what you will. I won't. And we'll agree to disagree.

The other issue you are missing is that when I was in training in South Carolina, at TMC, they harped relentlessly about driver accountability. Wreck the truck you bought it, lose a load you bought it, and every aspect was covered on how TMC would make your life a living #### if you didn't act as a responsible driver. So I was told by my training coordinator that he set me up with one of his best trainers. If this was TMC's best, what am I supposed to think? They'd already lied to me at trucking school, via the recruiter, lied to me about the pay I could make, supposed to be 60,000 your first year, but turned out it's much less. So when the trainer turned out to be crap, I was fed up with being lied to. I'm a grown man and don't need to be suckered. And that's how I felt. TMC was holding me 100% accountable when it seemed they were not at all accountable to me. That is the problem. I work hard and want to be treated as such. I can get lies and garbage at any job. TMC needs to do more to crack down on stuff like this. If I have to be accountable, then so are they, and I didn't feel they were. So I made a decision and left because they had betrayed my trust as an employee for the 3rd and final time. When I say "they" I mean the individuals I was dealing with at TMC, such as Training Coordinator and Trainer. Again, I'll say, you accept the table scraps, I won't. However, my experience was certainly not evidence of the way that everyone is treated by TMC. It was simply just my experience. And I'll again say that I don't think TMC is a bad company, I just had a bad experience. It is not justifiable to say that TMC is a bad company just because of my one experience. I'm sure they have plenty of good trainers, I wasn't willing to gamble on getting another bad one, and the company couldn't assure me that I wouldn't. That's why I left.

all the best,
melfry

 

I'm a grown man Lakeready, and I was there to learn. But not from an idiot who couldn't even wake up on time. I'm not gonna take crap from anybody, trainer or no trainer. I hold people accountable, as I hold myself. Maybe you don't care but I do.

And I don't need a reality check. I'll make my own reality on my terms, because I say so. And if I don't think I'm being trained right or fairly I'm man enough to do and say something about it. I don't care how rough you had it, because you didn't care to do anything about it. And that trainer of yours must've went on to probably make several more people quit after you because you didn't stand your ground.

In fact, I've already lined up three jobs, two are local, one longhaul. I'll make my own reality, I don't need to clam up and let some careless slob of a trainer make me act like a mouse.

melfry

 

he simply meant you could have timed it more to your advantage.

 

Couple of things. No one ever bought a truck here that they wrecked except the company. Total $200K of truck, trailer and cargo and you will be out of a job more than likely (if you were at fault) and $300. Who loses in that deal? Ummm... the company. As to cargo, fail to tarp a load that requires it because you are too #### lazy to do so OR you are not physically suited to the job and you may participate at a higher level if your interested in saving your job. As to the money comment, you stayed with us a year did you? Doesn't sound like you stayed 6 weeks so how would you know what you would make in a year? You can't project revenue based on the 3rd or 1st quarter my friend. I do appreciate your closing remarks though. It's like I have said in other posts. Not everyone can make it here, those that do are truly a cut above the rest and have a great deal of pride in not only the company and how they do their jobs but themselves. I am sure you will do fine in a less disciplined environment. Good luck.

 

Anomeley, the money issue was brought up at orientation in South Carolina by Dennis Clinton, who I thought was a great teacher by the way. Dennis asked us what we thought we could earn our first year at TMC. Most of us said what the brochure said and what the recruiters told us, 55,000 to 60,000 our first year. Dennis was honest with us and told us point blank that most of us would be lucky to make 50,000, and that's rare. He told us the more realistic figure was around 45,000, being that we were all new and would be learning. He seemed upset that the recruiters were telling us different and remarked about it. But aren't the recruiters representing the company?

45,000--That's a far cry from what two recruiters told me. I literally got up in the face of one female recruiter and asked her to look me in the eye and tell me that I could make 60,000 my first year at TMC. She said squarely that the company sets you up so you can make 60,000 your first year. She then pulled sample pay stubs out of her car and showed them to us. Grosses of 1300 to 1600 a week. I was impressed. And I asked her again, could I make that kind of paycheck my first year at TMC. She adamantly said yes. She even showed us how the brochure says so.

Therein lies my gripe with the company. If the company/recruiters would've just been honest up front, 45,000 is not bad money, I would've been glad to still highly consider TMC as my first trucking job. Why does TMC let them do these things to people? I just wanted to work for a good company and make a decent living. They didn't need to lie, and I still gave them the benefit of the doubt.

I even asked them at orientation what to do if I got a trainer that I wasn't seeing eye to eye with. Lo-n-behold they swore up and down that wasn't going happen because they knew the quality of their trainers. But I got a turd and didn't have any real recourse about resolving the situation, other than a 25 hour bus rude home and a wait for a trainer, and then a 400 mile trip to go meet the new trainer. It just wasn't worth it. I came home and immediately found three driving jobs. TMC would do better to weed out the lying recruiters and lackluster trainers if they want to keep serious drivers. I just think it's something they should work on, and it seems like they are, but like I said, I'm just not willing to put up with the lies when I can make 45,000 on my own without tMC's help. This was just the situation I didn't want to run into. I heard all the horror stories and still wanted to give TMC a chance to prove the stories wrong. It just didn't work out that way for me, unfortunately.

best,
melfry

 

I appreciate the response. I would just say to anyone following this thread that quitting is easy and no company is perfect. If we know about a problem then we will do our best to correct it. If we don't then we can't. You have a lot of time, money and energy put into this career path, seems like to me you would put as much effort into sticking it out till things were addressed.

 

hey anomeley, i just came in on the backend of this post and it seems like you work for tmc. i am scheduled to start training there next monday in s.c.. i don't expect miraculous money my first year, but what is the average for newbies? also, i have talked to several drivers who stopped in at my school and they had no complaints about tmc. are these others just isolated incidents, or are the drivers just trying to get their bonus? so far, i have four pre-hires and tmc stands out to me, i just don't want to make a mistake. any info is appreciated