Straight Talk about Gainey Transportation Services.

Not all the trucks are falling apart. I'd take photos of mine but I am ashamed of it right now. Too much stuff cramped in too small a space because hubby is too hard headed to leave the darn cooler at home like he was told.

Mine has been in shop 3 times since working here, once was a broken acuterater, one for a broken brake light switch, and one for some other thing I dont remember right now oh broken axle. Hubby did that one all by himself, I was home and he was dropping a load off at the term.

I think we've had 5 total days affected by breakdown. As opposed to 18 at SNI. And nearly 30 at Werner. Why are you so uptight over new trucks anyway? As a newly hired driver your on the back list for trucks. They hand them to the tenured drives first. And there is no rush or need to replace trucks that are barely 5 years old

Before you get too uptight on the issue you might want to remember the enviorment your in. Going out and buying 500 trucks would cost MIN 25,000,000

Thats 25 MILLION dollars.

If every GTS truck out there runs without issue for 4 weeks at 3000 miles a week... at the payrate per mile I saw them getting last they'd only make 9,600,000

BEFORE paying for the fuel (around 2,408,000 average), drivers (around 1,800,000 average), payroll, benefits, dispatchers, terminals, maintenance, and so on. GTS isnt large enough to have that sort of buying volume especially coming right out of bankruptcy.

They have only been out of it for 6 months. Can you name 1 carrier planning to put on more than 200 new trucks THIS year? Considering the last year or more of DOWN freight the fact they are getting any new trucks is amazing. To me anyway.

 

Well as of last week I don't work for GTS anymore. Much to my chagrin. I was asked to transfer to their sister company and work for them on a new dedicated account. Supposedly it will be 5500 miles guaranteed a week, and home weekly. Of course, they forgot to mention 'home' is San Antonio. Which is 5 hours from MY home.

My beloved dispatcher swore that this would be a good move for us, at least in terms of money. And we have an open door to return with GTS at anytime should we chose to. He made me promise to try the account until August before making a final decision. If we lived in San Antonio it would be a great deal, but the 5 hours to and from the house may make or break this little deal.

But to sweeten the pot a bit they did let us keep our truck, but they ripped the GTS words off and put SuperService on the side. Which annoys me. But I wouldn't have even though about this if they tried to give me a ratty T600 or volvo.

On the plus side, we have a 75 mph truck now >.>.

So far I am not overly enthused with SuperService, having read over their manual I am sure this is NOT a company I'd work for aside from this one account. The people seem very nice, but the overall company policies leave much to be desired driver side. Including the refusal to pay for scaling on loads weighing less then 45000 lbs?! This account will never weigh that much but still pff. They also told us to run with a trailer with no lights, AND made me fight to get a light fixed before entering cali.

These guys seem like small potatoes next to GTS, being as most their freight base and experience is in the east coast and eastern central us. I am amazed they agreed to try this account going in and out of Cali. I don't feel they have a good grasp on what they are getting into in Cali. I really don't. If a major break down occurs, or if they have a load problem I don't see them having much fix it power.

The only consultation is the man in charge of the account is very truck saavy, he's a 2million miler former drive, seems like a good guy. But honestly, with the mismatched company behind him I don't really see this working out long term, I mean the entire account, not just with us. My sense of this company is a general sense of disorganization and right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. I don't like feeling that '##### about to hit the fan' feeling that I get with the unconfident responses to simple questions.

 

After 3 weeks on this account I am pretty much ready to say to hell with this. Dedicated or not, I was told it was a drop and hook deal and its not. Dealing with 5 stops through rush hour traffic in LA is not my cup of tea. Had LA been mentioned I would have told them no thanks to start with. I'd rather deal with NJ traffic thanks. At least the tickets are reasonable in NJ.

 

At this point I am up in the air. I was REALLY happy at GTS. Loved everything. But the last time I called my dispatcher from GTS to tell him how unhappy I was here, he seemed to be miffed that I wasn't happy. I am starting to wonder if making the switch may have made the awesome relationship between us and him screwed up somehow. I am not sure how, it was his idea we would be happier on this account. So far, I am not happy. He thinks I need to give it more time. I think he's not taking into account how obnoxious it is to have 48 hours off and have to spend 10 hours of that off time in transit to and from work.

So at the moment I AM company shopping, no real commitments, just looking through all the pet friendly companies. So far I have a very good lead with two, US Xpress, and Interstate, both companies I've considered before.

 

I smell a sinking ship. Another big change coming, merging all companies into one. I find it odd it took so long to get to that idea. Was literally two weeks about from me mentioning how dumb it seemed to run three companies, two of which haul the same freight.

What caught me off guard was that instead of merging them into gts they are merging into super service, which by far is the worse run of the three. Merging a 600-800 truck company into a 300 truck one? Weird business decision.

Turns out, they chose the company not directly based with the name of a previous owner. Its a branding move, is how it was worded. But I have a feeling the motive is more than branding, or dissassciating with previous owners, or making things easier to manage. Its easier to sell one big company than 3.

Everyone at the grand rapids office seems uneasy now, my old dispatcher is worried about every decision he makes. A clouds of who will survive this change is heavy there.

The account I am on is about what it was billed as. But the 5 hour drive from its base to my home is too much. Coupled with the unsure nature of this change, I am in the process of going o/o till I can find a good home nightly gig.

If most of Super services rules are retained, gts will be driven into the ground. There maintenance is piss poor, they don't answer half of the qc messages...They will find it hard to get drivers in the competitive market of a driver shortage as is currently being predicted.

Funny how you can be perfectly contented and then utterly disenchanted so quickly.