Knight Trucking Opinions?

I drove for Knight out of Phoenix, dry van and reefer. I turned in the truck in November of 2020. Basically, they treat you alright. I never cared about home time, but when I did request it they got me back to Phoenix when I wanted to be back there. When I left I was making 43 CPM for reefer and that was with 39 months of cumulative experience. I feel that this was a low rate, but I do have unique circumstances as to why I chose Knight in the first place.

If you do reefer, expect to be sitting around a lot getting loaded and unloaded. Detention starts after 2 hours of waiting, 4 hours if you are delivering to a Walmart DC. You have to keep a close eye on your paychecks, that goes without saying, but I said it anyway!

You will have short trips and you will hate them. You will have to do these trips just to get an empty trailer. Usually they are live unloads and local.

As for the Phoenix yard, there was always a shortage of empty dry van trailers and when I left, reefer trailers were also showing a lot or Orange Tags or generally in short supply. Maintenance at their shop was generally alright,but some of the wait times were excessive to get minor things fixed.

They have SmartDrive cameras in the trucks and if you hit the brakes too hard or go over a pot hole or other road abnormality, it starts recording and sends the video to the safety dept. Not a problem usually, but it adds another level of annoyance to the job, most of the megas have some type of camera system in place. Hard to avoid because of the insurance discount companies get from having them installed.

Knight operates their CDL school at the Phoenix yard down on Buckeye, they call it Squire. I have no idea what they charge or what they teach. I would always see some of the students walking around the drivers lounge in safety vests during lunch. Knight, when I was there, used the Comfort Innn of of 51st Ave to house the students and new drivers attending orientation.

Overall, they were an easy company to work for, if you know your job and have terminals and yard locations in all the right places.

 

Even with Swift there seems to be a shortage of empty trailers, no matter where you are.
Getting a t-called load from a terminal on a very short run with a live unload can be a common thing to get an mt.
Short meaning like 25 miles or less.

The camera is in Swift trucks as well, but they really don't bother me. My score is usually between 0 and 4, when they allow 20 to get the safety bonus and a whole lot more before they might consider action against the driver.