CRST Malone, Inc. - Trussville, Al.

I was leased to Malone back in the 70s before they were bought or merged with CRST and I can vouch with you what said.

Do they still have an office in Birmingham?

 

At the time I was with Malone, they were a van company. We were pulling 42' vans and nothing was "touched". We could unload in the middle of the "boondocks" and Malone would have another load close by. Johnny's Truckstop in Clinton, NJ looked like a Malone terminal, whenever we got unloaded anywhere in Jersey or NYC, we would come back to Johnny's, if we didnt get loaded right away. We never did sit around very much. Living on 1-81 in Va. I got home once or twice during the week and every weekend. Had fun and made a little money.

 

I drove for them through a fleetowner recently and can verify. Good company. Be ready to look for freight yourself/ deal with your favourite brokers/ make relationships with fav brokers to get the better paying/longer pulling freight. I saw a lot of steel being pulled to anywhere ; avg. rate ca. $1.40 i think. Check settlement closely for unexplained charges. They rent you a trailer, but better bring your own cause theyre expensive and junk.
One

 

I'm not sure which Malone you're talking about?

Because CRST Malone (The Flatbed Division) gave me a Agent list of 90 agents. I've only been able to get a hold of about 30.
They say they will give you the Fuel Surcharge but you had better check your settlement.

The agents want to keep everything on the Line haul. You need to be able to find your own freight, because if they don't have any they will let you sit.

Yes there trailers are a mess. If you don't get a company trailer they will get you an Extra Lease trailer. Mine was only 5 years old but was beat down.
DOT put it OOS on my first level one inspection.

They took $600 per week for my plates.

They don't want to give you all the load information up front. I don't know how they expect for a O/O to make a business decision on a load without all the load information.

They don't Pay your Oregon Tax, you pay it out of your settlement, just like every thing else. They provide it up front if you ask, but you pay for it.

Every Lease to Purchase operator I spoke to was starving. Always in the hole and their agents tried to control the freight that the hauled.

The agents have no control over you but try to treat you like a Company Driver. I bought my own truck to get away from that type of treatment.

CRST Malone just lost their biggest account. They have been letting Lease Purchasers go at a high rate. I heard they want the trucks back to put them on the Expedited Van division.

I've known 5 O/O that have quit in the last week, so I'm heading some where else.

I've averaged a $1.87 per mile but if I didn't have to sit or deadhead for freight that I had to find when they told me there wasn't any freight then I would have averaged well above $2.50 per mile. That's how much deadheading took away from my profit.
Now that's alot of money that should have been in my pocket had CRST Malone had a better support system for frieght locating.

The agents are Independant Contractors also, all they want is the largest percentage of the load pay that they can get from you.

CRST Malone will even double broker the load in order to keep the O/O form getting more than $1.80 per mile.

A lot the the Agents (Independant Contrators) Have their spouses working for them and give them all the great loads. Which i can understand, but there is a conflict of interest there if you ask me.

I'm sure there are succesful drivers there at Malone. But it's not an equal playing field for an O/O trying to start off.

I wouldn't recommend them to anyone. In my opinion you would be better off somewhere else.

 

Orientation went alright today. Learned (read: re-learned) the Smith System and a bunch of other safety stuff. We talked a lot about load securement. Tomorrow is the last day. Gonna go over load securement some more and then get into operations and HR stuff. The truck passed inspection, although they did discover a small hole in the exhaust that can be easily temporarily fixed with a clamp. I can't believe we didn't catch that during the three days we were working on the truck making sure it would pass.

I could be under a load as soon as tomorrow night. Rest assured I'll be on here asking for advice from you flatbedders/covered wagoners. There's so much to know about securement, but they do have a book that has good diagrams and shows how to secure just about every thing they might ever haul . Also, we secured a "trainer" coil loaded in the suicide position today. Tomorrow we'll work on the other positions.

In case some of you don't know, I don't own the truck that's being leased on here. My step-dad, who owns a couple of other businesses that aren't trucking related per se, has bought this truck with me in mind when doing it. I'm hoping for the best here. We both need this to work, and if anyone knows me they know I'm not afraid to work. I learned this from my step-dad. He's been self employed for over 15 years now and knows how to run a successful business. I'm wanting to learn all I can from his business sense and translate that into being a successful O/O myself one day soon.

 

Good luck
Do they pay percentage of miles

 

They pay 75% of what the load pays to the truck. My step dad and I have a loose per mile pay agreement for my pay as of now. We'll adjust it as necessary. As he said to me just tonight, if he's clearing a thousand a week off the truck, then he's going to share some of that with me. But if he's only clearing a hundred bucks or two, then we'll adjust it the opposite way. This being so new to both of us is making it hard to nail down definite agreements. However, I know I can trust him. He raised me from the time I was 6 years old.