Question about USA Truck?

I'm heading to usa truck to start orientation on monday january 11th in Dayton Ohio

 

wishing you many safe and happy miles at USA truck. hope things work out for you .

 

I worked for them for a year and a half.Never had problems getting home.Sometimes got home later in the day than i preferred but always made it home the same day i requested to be home.I would stay out two to three weeks at a time and my take home pay would average 650 a week take home for the weeks i was out.I left them for a local job that has me home every day taking home the same pay.I would go work for them again if i needed to.

 

Had a good friend in the same situation and they hired him.

 

start out with an open mind. There are back and forth opinions on most companies, especially the bigger ones. Just go out there, plug away, if things dont work out, then look for something else. Life is full of experiences. Learn from them, and the only thing that can happen is you become a better trucker.

 

USA seems to be a real schitzoprenic company. Some people have it really good with them and other people are miserable.

Hometime seems to be based on two things 1.) communication and 2.) if you live where the freight is. My advice is if you want to be home on a Friday, you ask for a Wendsday off, giving you 3 days to gripe about being late for hometime. I wish I could give a case by case example of where a good place to live is, but all I hear are rumors. I live in NYC and everytime I go up to New England I can go by the house both ways. But the rumors I hear is that Michigan is dead as far as freight and if they send drivers home up there they have trouble getting loads out again. If you live in VA, TN, PA or OH I figure you'd get home quite a bit since those are virtual crossroads of freight.

Now not to say I'm being a total promoter, I just had a nightmare of a weekend with them. Had a load Saturday for Sat delivery, dock worker at the consignee was a jerk, didn't want to unload, wanted to pass it off untill monday, I told him "fine but the trailer's gonna stay on your yard untill then" So he reluctantly agreed to DO HIS JOB. Couldn't get a load from dispatch for 3 hours after that, using up almost all of my 14 for the day (maybe they EXPECTED me to be stuck there?) So I went looking for fuel, (60 mile detour) Took my ten, didn't hear anything from dispatch. Waited another 6 hours, nothing. Another 5 hours, still nothing, found a TV watched the big games (Pats = LOL! Suckers) went out to my truck before GB-Arizona and found a load for 8am p/u (WTF?) it wasn't sent untill 3pm (WTF?). Said "screw that, I'm watching football!" (and it turned out to be a pretty good game, eh?) Plus I knew this customer, it was a drop hook with preloaded trailers, 24 hour ops, and an attitude of "whatever" The wouldn't care if I showed up on TUESDAY. Get to the shipper at 9pm and the trailer is frozen to the ground, loaded and broken. BD won't send a repair truck and advises me to limp this POS 300+ miles. After about 2 hours working with the yard jockey onsite we get this trailer to move. BD's attitude is "great you fixed it, now go down the road!" *sigh*

I won't disclose the nature of the repair since it will probably ID me, but we're talking instant DOT fail here.

I get about 100 yards off the customer property when I spot a trailer repair shop! Gee guys, why send me 300 miles to a TA when there's a SHOP right *explitive* here! Had to wait untill they opened and THEN it took another 4 hours to get Auth to fix. (humiliating) Turned out the damage was substantial and I was down for the whole day.

So in 3 days I got MAYBE 400 miles. When I could have gone double that. And mostly because of 1.) bad flipping by weekend dispatch. 2.) Passing the buck by breakdown, 3.) some other driver not reporting a problem with a trailer before leaving it at a customer.

But hopefully this week will be better. (or at least less cold.)

 

u s a truck is the worst the trucks you will be driveing are junk you have to wait for hours to get aproved to buy a light or oil or anything you need
thay swap you around all the time in the middle of delevering load
the new drivers only get crap loads
never get any miles thay all go to trainers
you have to sleep in trainers bunk when trainer is driveing
had 1 trainer always made me drive after midnight fighting to stay awake if you are not use to running team sleep is always hard but he did not care all he wanted was the miles to bring in the bucks while you make 50.00 day

 

The original poster (OP) hasn't been around in 2 years !!!

Ya think he's still driving truck for a living ???

 

The $350.00/week student pay was better than the single seat pay, imho.

 

that is why i left no miles sucked at .26 went broke