TMC Transportation, Inc. - Des Moines, Ia.

and they are a great training company, but not a career choice. Rude dispatchers and weekend home time that starts 6:00 pm saturday. Avoid TMC unless you are a student and want some great training.

 

Communication is a big problem, but dispatchers aren't always the one to blame there.

 

TMC dispatchers communicate just fine. They also communicate with no respect or common courtesy (forget professionalism). You will not be treated fair. I am talking from a company driver position. It might be different for an OO and I would not put lack of home time as a simple problem. Getting home late Saturday is great for the company. It avoids dispatchers having to scramble to find something to keep you running all weekend and resets your logbook. The good for TMC is their flatbed training and so TMC is good for new drivers. Do your time and get out.

 

I am sorry you feel that way DaveG. I have no problem communicating with my fleet manager. Sometimes he could inform me of things in a more timely manner, but he is managing other drivers, not sitting around waiting on me. Communication is a two way street. I give him the information that he needs to do his job, and he gives me the information that I need to do my job. If I need information I ask and it is provided. My fleet manager/Dispatcher has never been rude to me, not once. He is a professional in every sense of the word. I have also never gotten a rude person as a substitute, or from night dispatch, though I have talked with a few who didn't have a clue.

I get home when I want to usually. It took a while to find the groove for getting me home living in Maine about 150 miles outside of their normal freightlanes but now it works quite well. Most weeks I get home Friday and leave Monday morning, 2.5 days where we are promised 2 as a longhaul driver. Several weeks when it was important to me i have gotten home early, once on Wednesday evening for a Thursday event. This week I did get home on Saturday afternoon, and I was impressed at the company lining the loads up from Austin TX last Monday straight through to Maine for this Monday. You need to tell your fleet manager when you want to be home. If you don't complain about getting home on Saturday they will think you like it and the money you can make running that schedule and keep it up, not realizing that you don't like it. And some people who grumble about not getting home will grumble louder about not making the money. You need to choose what is important to you and tell your fleet manager. To me getting home is important, and I like to make a few dollars while I am out, but I turned down a $1.75 per mile run for a $0.91 per mile run this week so I could get home. I take all the home time that I can squeeze out of my FM and my paycheck.

Now if you are talking about Customer Service reps actually responding to communications from fleet managers that is another story. They habitually ignore suggestions for getting me home since we have a dedicated run that I could take by my house on Friday and deliver Saturday morning, but I never get it.

 

Great way of putting it, Rawlco. Your posts never dissapoint.

 

That is a great way to show the differences between company drivers and OOs

 

I believe Rawl, and I are both company drivers.

 

Yes, he is a company driver.

 

Simply put, they lie, they steal and they don't pay ####