Marten Transport, the good and bad

bummer Rachi,, im pegged right at 65

 

LOL- I worked in the Mondovi terminal as a truck mechanic back in the 90's.

Had a driver wrap his truck around a bridge in Minneapolis on his second day (he was a day late already picking up his very first load).

Randy was so pissed he brought the (several chunks of) truck in the shop and had us dismantling it looking for drugs. He (I hope) jokingly offered any of us a Million dollars to go pull the plug on the guy's life support.

 

Are you serious on this ####? I know theres alot of crap talk about companies, but ####¡!

 

Going to update this a bit since a lot of this info is a bit old.

I have been driving for Marten for a month now. I have been driving commercial for almost 2 years having done long haul dry van, flatbed, and local P&D for a refrigerated food company. I have run legal paper logs, governed trucks with elogs, and ungoverned trucks and looseleaf logs with an outlaw company.

Now with Marten everything isn't roses, they are very strict about things like the steering lock (they check trucks parked in the yards to make sure they have a steering lock on them). They also now have a no tolerance policy for speeding as well as seatbelt violations. Get csa points for speeding 6mph or more over the limit and you are terminated. Get csa points for not wearing a seatbelt and you are terminated. Also the fueling is a bit of a PITA. You pick your own fuel stops but you have a book which stops are recommended to fill, ok to fill, emergency fuel only (50gal), or prohibited. All their fuel stops are pilot/flyingJ. Currently they do not want you fueling in the high price states...Il, PA, NY, CT....I run NE regional and live in PA. You can only get 50gal in those states. I have made 3 50gal fills in 2 days criss crossing pa and up to new york and it's annoying.

Now on the brighter side, for an older fleet truck the one I got is decent, '10 cascadia which now has 494k miles. It has a few issues I could get fixed at a shop but they aren't inspection issues so I live with them in hopes of getting a new truck in a few months. The trailers IMO are in pretty nice condition, way better than some of the junk I pulled for Penny A Mile, I have yet to put a trailer I picked up oos for maintenance issues. They have in cab scanning which is a blessing and a curse. It's nice when you have a 1 or 2 page bill to scan, not so much when you have a 26 page bill to scan as you have to scan each page individually and they take forever, maybe 2-3 pages per minute if you are fast. The qualcomm navigation is ok but I have found if you are hauling hazmat you are still on your own for routing. This is the first time I have had an apu and I feel spoiled, heat, a/c, and 120v power whenever I want it without idling the truck and using an inverter? Sign me up.

As for loads, maybe I just have a good fleet manager but I have yet to sit waiting for a load, often I have my next load plan a day ahead of time. The last 3 weeks I have averaged 3k miles/week and did not use a reset. I have lumped my own load twice (by choice) and got paid well for it ($70/hour). I have benifitted from the automatic detention time twice now and didn't know it until I got my settlement. One load I was 5 mi from the receiver a day early and couldn't deliver or drop it so I asked my FM if I could get some compensation for sitting for a day while under load with hours and got a bonus $65 which is better than a slap in the face with a dead fish any day. And I have gotten my bonus pay for hauling hazmat loads. They will throw money at you if you ask for it politely.

As for hometime, I couldn't be more happy. I have had official hometime twice so far and both times got home in the morning on the day I requested and in one case the day before I requested because I requested the wrong day. I told my FM he's gotta get me home on thurs instead of friday because I got a hot date with a beautiful young lady ie. my 11yo daughter is having her last daddy daughter dance at the school and I promised I'd be there. He made it happen. Plus I usually can take at least 1 break a week at home since I live on US22 and wind up driving it a lot since we are discouraged from running the turnpike which is fine with me. My usual schedule is home every other weekend. I start my hometime on friday and go back on duty monday. And the nice thing is I always have a preplan before I go on duty so I know how to plan my weekend and when I have to leave monday.

I am averaging $1k+/week take home and after my other jobs I feel like I'm hardly working for it and am home quite often. It isn't perfect but so far the best driving job I have had of the 4 companies I have worked for in the past 2 years.

 

Just another quick note about orientation. I chose to drive to orientation with my fiancee so she could take the car home. They reimbursed us and we actually made out since the reimbursement was more than the cost of the fuel to drive down to VA. Now you are told you may have to fly to wherever your truck is and you can take 1 check in bag no more than 50lbs and a carryon, what they don't tell you is at the end of orientation they give you another bag with about 25lbs of stuff in it. Luckily I was able to do some creative packing in my duffel bag, at the counter it weighed 53lbs and after transferring my cb to my carryon I was just under the limit. They also tell you your bags were paid but in fact my ticket did not include any check in bags and I had to pay $25 out of my pocket for it (which I did get reimbursed for later).

 

This is a good post man.

 

Randy is a shady one....I would believe it.

 

These was just done to my wife and I in Indianapolis, in. We are stuck here now It a good thing that god understands. How the evil and the wicked work. The day this happened to us. We went from Phoenix to Chicago. and Rushed me to indy on with a load I couldn't complete, then terminated me. My dac has been clean for 21yrs. This company could a least get you home, where you started. Be careful they now have officer out there that will say your doing one thing, and will not write you a ticket to fight. marten fire because of warning for some anyway. A driver told me in Kansas city he had gotten a warning for speeding. He was not fired but I was. Hate to use the race card but he was white and I am black. He is working and Im not. It is the way it is please stay away from this company. You know to whom im talking to .

 

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

 

im not suprised