Marten transport

Pointless to lock it. Someone will just open up another one and it'll start all over again.

 

wow.. I was at Hershey in Palmyra and bumped into a Marten driver who says has been working there for 3 1/2 years. He told me that he was ready to jump ship. Says that his dispatcher stranded him on thanksgiving and made it home on thanksgiving night. Said that he is ready to turn the keys in and cant pay his rent and bills are late. Had to cancel his cell phone. Said that all he does is sit and has been late 3 times in 3 1/2 years. Said that the company is ran by an ex Knight exec and he is running it into the ground. That drivers continuously sit and get less miles as time passes. He told me he was cleaning out the truck so that this will not happen to him on Christmas...said his truck was already cleaned out. Doesnt expect to get his last paycheck, and fears that his dac will get trashed. Why do they do that to the drivers after they leave? I saw several posts on here that drivers complain about being hosed on there dacs when they decide to voluntarily leave. Also he says that they do not mention anything acout their illegal pay scale, or that you will pay for any orientation expenses if you leave before the 90 days is up. Also said they tried to get rid of drivers before the 90 days if they were not 'above expectation'.....is life that bad at Marten? It sounds as bad as Knight Transportation. I'm sure glad I asked questions before going to this company. That payscale is illegal to say the least.

 

He told me he was cleaning out the truck so that this will not happen to him on Christmas...said his truck was already cleaned out. So which is it ?

Sounds a lot like another poster on here

 

And they can continue to get locked until everyone learns to behave. We'd rather not have to, but if we must, we will.

 

here you go...another casualty....so he already had his truck cleaned out and just the essentials....this is the kind of treatment that must be stopped. Maybe someday the company drivers will be able to pick there own loads...according to a computerized system that replaces human dispatchers and thus....the dehumanization and bad treatment would no longer exist......it would at least lower the amount of dispatchers and computers would do the rest........so there would be no favoritism and drivers could get home on time.......ALSO since elogs are in all the trucks, we could reduce the number of people in safety.......and that way drivers would earn more money per mile.......by shrinking office staff........its like the horsetrack........they have computerized totes instead of going to a window with a human to make a bet.......use the tote system...be less of a chance for someone to screw your bet up.......hmmmmm a computerized system to replace dispatchers down to a few? that's something even Randy would go for......boost the moral of his drivers at the same time.....and the stock would go up.

 

Last time I was at the horse races a couple years ago, it was still a person taking your bets . . . You have to be responsible and make sure they placed your bet right.

 

Sorry, ezpickins, I have to comment on your idea of allowing company drivers to "self-dispatch." Before I do I'll make one series of statements to qualify my position.

I am currently a Marten driver but I am looking elsewhere. I've seen the changes in this company first hand since the Ex-Knight management team took over and I've watched my miles suffer greatly because of the changes implemented. Naturally I was also affected by the non-pay-cut pay decrease brought on by the "Fair Pay" sliding pay program introduced along with the mandatory per diem I railed against. I went from averaging around 2800-3000 a week mileages down to 1800 per week--which has recently dropped to around 1600 per week. To be fair that number may be on the slight increase in the last few weeks but if so it's got to be because of the Silly Season spike. I have survived strictly because my wife and I do not owe our souls to credit card companies and huge car payments. But I'm watching those numbers get tighter and tighter. So I'm on the market and figure in the next few weeks (after the new year kicks off) that I'm moving on to something else--that is to say perhaps another toll free number, another logo on a different tractor door.

Now, to address your idea of company drivers dispatching themselves:

It's a novel idea to give such a thing credit. But it will never fly and for a very simple reason. That reason is a guy I'll call S.S. Mind you, S.S. is a real person who holds a real CDL and has driven for several years. But S.S. has a serious problem with being proficient as an employee of any orgnization much less one where being a self-motivated, self-starter type of personality this kind of work requires. S.S., in short, would never get off his back side long enough to really do the job in a meaningful productive way. It's unfortunate but S.S. is the genotype for many if not most of "working stiff" America. He'll show up and do minimally what he's required to do to keep his job but in the process he'll whine and moan about it while trying to lay off at everyone else's feet the fact that he's not making (and I'll quote him directly here) "what he's worth as a driver." Funny, I can complain of the same ailment: I've never been paid what I think I'm worth but I've been paid every cent of what I've agreed to work for--well, almost as there are some less-than-reputable employers.

S.S. is precisely the type of individual who will actively seek out ways to bilk the system and game it to his advantage. I've personally witnessed him idling his tractor at 2500 rpm and when asked why he says: "to get more frequent fueler points." I've had him complain to me that he's out of hours and God Almighty the company du-jour was running him to death. Knowing his type, I inquired as to how many miles he'd run over a 7 day stretch on his log. The total: 2200 (And mind you he's at 70 on his log!) At another job he complained about running over 2800 miles for the week--it was too much demand for the schedules. At another the same 2200 was too little. I've witnessed him scaling a single load at nearly every CAT Scale between Milwaukee and Toledo saying he can't get it to scale and spending more than $50 doing so then expecting the company to reimburse the wasted money.

No sir. Self-dispatched company drivers selecting their loads would be a financial boondoggle for any company. If we were talking about owner/operator types who were serious go-getters and determined to make a small company and a living then you'd have something there--and in point of fact Landstar and Schneider offer those things to owner-ops. Those owner-ops I've spoken to regarding that kind of load boarding seem quite pleased with it and do fairly well from what I've gathered.

One final point I'll toss out here about many company drivers to be fair. No all of them are like this. Many realize that the way to make a living in trucking is to turn the wheels. This they will do in support of [insert your reason here, be it family need, simple desire, military background, or what-have-you]. Those are the ones who could take a program like self-planning and turn it into something beneficial for both themselves and their employer. Sadly there simply isn't enough work ethic ingrained in too many people these days to make such a thing a reality.

 

Marten in my opinion gets the 2010 graveyard of suckers award....remember marten...the graveyard of suckers....avoid this company and save your dac

 

hi my name is chip brice was at marten from feb 1993/2009 stay away not good company anymoore they have a flooting pay scale and mantory perdiem which screws you on matching funds and road expence write off on your taxes they were doing it at 16a mile when i left hope this helps good luck chip brice