A chicagoland company that is not going to cheat you.

Had an at fault collision so my driving record was tarnished. I could not get hired by the good companies, even Western Express turned me down(which now I am so thankful for them doing so), so I knew I was going to have to dig deep here to get back into trucking.

If you have been looking at the Bad Company reports then you have seen a lot of negative reviews about a lot of the Russian and Eastern European companies around Chicago. I have been driving for this company out of Lynwood IL for over a year now named Guardian Express. They hired me as a 1099 company driver, gave me a white volvo, have a 630 area code, and are Serbian owned so that labels them pretty well as a member of the Chicagoland white volvo mafia,

Except they have not cheated me out of any money or 'forced' me to do anything illegal yet. I work at least 3 weeks and then get a week of home time. I do not have to worry about details like detention pay, breakdown pay, or other things like that because I am paid $1,700 a week as long as I am available for dispatch the entire time. Ever sicne I have been driving for them, only a few times have I not been paid at least the minimum because I worked only a portion of the week coming off of home time. Pay has never been late or incorrect. One time the dispatcher even gave me full pay when he let me off on home time early on a Friday.

A normal week is Monday through Sunday. When I am ready for home time, I usually get home by Sunday night. On the occasions they could not get me home until monday with a delivery, they at least have always paid me at a rate of 70 cents a mile, treating the last delivery as separate from the prior week. Meaning I will get a few hundred dollars extra for Monday deliveries right before my home time, even if I picked up that load several days before and drove hundreds and hundreds of miles on the week before.

The minimum is $1,700, only if I drive over 2600 miles do I make extra at 70 cents a mile over 2600. The miles are calculated using mapped miles from the point I am at to the pickup location, plus the miles to the delivery from there. They do not count the miles from my delivery to where ever i go to park until my next load is dispatched to me. I do basic dry van loads ranging averaging 100-500 miles around the eastern states. The longest load i ever had was around 750 miles. No nyc.

They gave me a brand new Volvo vnl truck with under 20 miles when I started with them. It had a fridge, microwave, and 2,000 watt inverter. It was the first time I ever had a fridge since I started driving in 2013, and now I can never live without one. It was capped at 70 mph. A few months ago they sold that truck I was driving to an owner operator working for them. They gave me his old truck, a freightliner cascadia which had over 400,000 miles. It had a lot of worn out broken parts to it, mainly I think because the guy they sold my truck to did not take care of it. Four out of the ten tires were low at 30, 60, 60, and 70 psi. Air was leaking loudly and would empty me completely after two minutes with the engine turned off. The fifth wheel was super dry and filthy, the fire extinguisher was rolling around in the cab, and a couple other issues i forget about. I gave the whole list of problems to the company and they fixed them at the yard over a couple days.

Now for the hard parts with this company. They deducted $2,500 from my pay over several months for escrow. They also deduct $140 every month for my workmans compensation insurance thing. They reimburse me for somethings that i have to buy for loads such as straps, a lock, and a few other small things. Other things though have been hard to get money back for, specifically a gallon of coolant i bought before getting their okay, grease for my fifth wheel, truck stop weight scales, and maybe a couple other small things, not a big enough deal to really piss me off though. This is my first time working as a 1099 so not sure if this is usual but it is in my contract so none of it was hidden from me at the beginning.

While they have paid me bonuses for clean inspections at $100, $200, and $300 depending on the level, they also have it in the contract that they will charge me the same amount for a failed inspection, so far though I have passed all three times I have been pulled over. The company has a repair yard in Lynwood with a good mechanic, and have always fixed any problems I reported at repair shops on the road. They take their safety rating pretty serious.

I read all the reviews about these types of 1099 companies from angry drivers on this site, so I tried hard to scour the internet for as much information about these guys as possible. They are a small company of 50 trucks, but I could not find much information about them from previous drivers. They have been around 7 years i think and have a small facebook page and website. No news is good news at least so I gave them a shot, and I do not have any plans at the moment to quit working with them for another company.

One of the big things I like about these guys is having a whole week off so I can do small vacations with my wife on my home time. I do not get paid for that of course, no vacation time being 1099. No benefits either, but that is fine with me as i never took advantage of benefits from any company i worked for in all my life. The only time I ever see medical folks is for my two year dot physical. As long as I work for at least three weeks, I just let my dispatcher know when I want to take home time and he will route me towards home.

 

It was a Craig's list ad that I responded to, I believe they wanted three years. They do not have any training requirements like big companies do, just a 15 minute road test was all I had to do on my first day.

 

As I understand it, I am required to pay quarterly estimates or else get penalized for late payments. Is that not correct?