hEARTLAND EXPRESS OR MARTEN

Heartland.

 

From what I have heard from most Heartland express drivers is they like it there. Yes they are a larger company and there are issues everywhere but Heartland does give a crap.

Now a friend of mine went to Marten and left shortly there after. To put this in perspective he had driver for Werner for 10 years.....he now drives for Smith and is fairly happy.

No personal experience with either hope that helps

 

Heartland if I had to choose

Marten has become swift with reefers from what I've heard

 

I agree in this case. Heartland is most likely the better choice.
You will get home more, and get paid allot more per mile.
If you said Shaffer then I may have answered differently.

 

HEARTLAND, HEARTLAND, HEARTLAND!!!!!

I hear you will not get many miles a week, I hear average 2000 and less but your pay per mile is so high that you can still make good money each week with them.

All I hear about marten is crap, I think I would stay away from them.

 

Miles depends on your region. Or if you are system.
The northeast region guys get the least miles but the highest pay. I still would not do it.
Ohio region is the one I am in. I do over 2000 75% of the time. Most weeks are 2200-2400. And home just about every weekend.
Normally home Saturday morning and out again Monday morning.
.05 cpm+ talks though. Even at the lowest regional pay I believe the lowest starting rate at heartland is .38 cpm with 1 year experience.
One year experience going with Martin is what? .32, .33? (does not say on site, just sliding pay scale) So may be good on short hauls.
Which is all that Heartland does. I would have to see more of that to know.

The only large company's that I have any interest in at all are Heartland and Crete.
Both are 100% debt free.
Both have decent pay.
Both are stable as heck and have really good freight bases.
I really like Heartlands set up for regional work. They have a great network of terminals in our running area and ALLOT of drop and hook freight.
The only negative is that they pay short mile pay and not practical mile pay.
Oh, and our health insurance is very expensive and sucks.

 

I have seriously thought about trying to get on with Heartland. I live about 2.5 hours from the Chester terminal. I called recruiting recently and they told me I would have to do NE Regional b/c of where I lived at(eastern NC). The only problem is I have 2 years OTR experience but I have been out of trucking for 2 years. I am not sure how much recent experience you have to have with them. I used to work at a Sears store and would talk to a lot of the drivers that deliver to them. Most were all happy, said miles were not that great but pay per mile was very high.

 

You would need to check into the refresher program. Since it has been more than 6 months since you have driven.
If you have 1 year in the past 3 you may be ok. But they may not let you go system for a year due to experience. You would have to ask them though.
I never did catch any of the recruiters lieing to anyone here. That is a plus. They are pretty straight forward on miles.
Chester gets better miles than Carlisle. You can get more runs going south and west.
Carlisle is the worst one for miles I think. I get shafted every time I have to spend more than 2 days in that region.
But I worked it out with dispatch now that they will try not to let them hold me for more than 1 or 2 loads. Then a load out.
For a while I was getting stuck there for a week at a time and only getting 1700 miles per week.
This was when I talked to Crete, as soon as they called and verified employment my dispatcher fixed my issues.