My Maverick Experience

I'm still here, job offer is soon. I was just tired last night and didn't feel like typing. I'll have 2 posts tonight.

 

I did look at TMC as well. Their hiring age is 23 minimum so they were not an option. While their trucks are all nice looking, no APU was a turn off for me. Maverick also pays considerably higher starting out, even more so since I'm going into the Glass Division.

 

Maverick Orientation for an Experienced Driver Day 4 - Wednesday 1/30/2013

As usual, 0530 start and 0630 in thee classroom ready to go.

Today consisted of more videos and tests. We had to get pretty much everything finished. We also took the final exam on the computers. It was about 30 questions long and consisted entirely of questions pertaining to the FMCSR book. The entire purpose of the test was pretty much to show that we knew how to find the different regulations in the book. All the questions had the exact section/paragraph that the question was pertaining to. It was pretty easy. There were a few questions that had some phrasing that was slightly different but Scotty helped answer them on those ones.

We also had a presentation from Andrea from the Recruiting Department. She went over all the bonuses if we could help point them towards a new hire. They also had us fill out a sheet. Anybody who could give them at least one name was given a free Maverick Lunch bag. It didn't matter if they had a CDL or not, they still counted. Unfortunately I didn't give them one. None of my friends are even a little bit interested in driving.

After the recruiting presentation Brett Graves from the Safety Department gave us a presentation going over the in house points system. They assign different amounts of points to different citations and accidents. The whole system is their own internal thing that has nothing to do with your MVR. If you accumulate 10 points in 1 year you are terminated. 1 time a year you can do a safety lesson to reduce 2 points if you need to. The points fall off 12 months after you gain them.

Also, ANY damage to equipment or property is a crash. Doesn't matter if you bend a rim, scuff some paint, or just rip the lumber strap off the landing gear, you get hit with an accident in their records and will get points for it.

After this the experienced group went back into our own room. Scotty explained how fueling works and how to find places we can fuel. I like that we are not told where we have to fuel. We can just stop when we need to and it won't count against us. He also covered the trailer drop policy for when we go home. As long as we can show them a king pin lock before we leave we can sign the form to get permission to drop a trailer on our home time and bobtail to our house. Doesn't matter if it's empty or loaded. This will help me a lot since I can't park a trailer at my house, but there's a couple places within 10-15 miles that would let me.

Wasn't much else besides that for the day.

-Ryan

 

Maverick Orientation for an Experienced Driver Day 5 - Thursday 1/31/2013

Guess what, another 0530 wake up and 0630 start to the day. I bet you didn't see that coming.

Today started out with a short written test. It was multiple choice and 30 questions long. After the test we took a break for a few minutes before heading over to the Main Office Building around 0800. We got a tour of the building. It started with a great speech from Kay at the desk at the driver's entrance. She showed us how she has the walls around her covered in pictures that were put there by drivers. The pictures are all of the drivers and their families and are there to show that they do care about who we are. She had actually filled one of the walls and was working on getting a board for another one.

After her presentation we walked through some of the office areas. We passed by all of the Fleet Managers and got to see where they are so we know where to find them in the future. While walking through the FM work space we also walked by the Million Mile driver wall. Every company driver who has achieved 1 million or more safe miles has a plaque on the wall. There were several who also had a small 2 Million tag added to their plaque at the bottom. Then we were shown the Presentation room and their wall of history. It has everything from the first Bill of Lading along with something from each of the companies they had acquired over the years and many other pieces from the history of the company.

After this we went upstairs and walked by the offices where the leaders worked. They were down a hallway though and none of them were out walking around when we walked through. We got to meet our recruiters for the first time as well. Turns out that my room mate and I had the same recruiter. It was nice to put a face to a name finally. We spent about 5-10 minutes just talking with our recruiters. Then we moved on and left the building.

While we were there I stopped and bought a hat at the Company Store. Since we were getting hired today I figured today was the time to pick up a hat with the company name on it.

I had never seen a hat like this so I picked it since it stuck out the most to me:


After the tour we went back to the Training Building and started our Flatbed training. It started off with a lot of note taking about the equipment and a few videos about the equipment and trailers. This went from about 0930 until 1130.

At 1130 we got our last free lunch for training. Starting tomorrow we have to bring our own lunches or go out to get them. This is just another reason why I brought my own vehicle. Now I can run into town if I want to instead of making a sandwich everyday or just taking the van down to the Pilot with everybody else.

Lunch today was Baked chicken with brown rice, green beans, a roll, and a small salad. I didn't eat the salad because I don't like it. The rest of the food was pretty good though. They did go a little heavy on the pepper.

During lunch they gave us a presentation on eating healthy and trying to stay in shape on the road. They also had a little test which gave everybody a chance to win a free aluminum water bottle.

After the presentation at lunch we went back to the classroom and watched some more videos about equipment. They also talked about the 2 shifts for working in the barn. There's a day shift and a night shift. Day shift is 0600 to 1600 and the Night shift is 1600 to 0200. I got put on the day shift. I was kind of hoping for the night shift since that's closer to what I'm used to working, but I'll make the early morning stuff work for a few more weeks.

After this we took about a 20 minute break.

After the break we went back into the room. While we were gone they had passed out all of our PPE and gave us our Short and Long form Physicals.

Every driver was given:
1 Maverick Hard Hat with a Chin Strap and our names on the front
1 Pair of Maverick Leather Gloves
1 Pair of Kevlar Gloves with PVC Palms
1 Pair of Kevlar Sleeves
1 Set Safety Glasses
1 Safety Vest

After all this we logged into the computers and were given our job offers. An instructor walked around and read the job offer individually for each of us. He then asked if we accepted it and if yes we would click the accept button and shake their hand. When we clicked the Accept and Sign button we were given the following message:



At this point we are now Maverick Transportation LLC employees.

After the job offers were all accepted by everybody we all lined up at the door and walked out in the hall to shake hands with all of the instructors in the building and get a Congratulations and Welcome to the team from all of them.

It feels good to have made it through the last 5 days.

We then watched a video on texting and driving as well as a couple more about preventable accidents and railroad crossings.

After this we took our PPE out to the barn and left it out there. Tomorrow morning we will start load securement training at 0600. It will be nice to finally get out of the classroom and starting doing something besides just sitting around watching videos and taking tests all day long.


My thoughts after the 5 days of Orientation:

I enjoyed the orientation here a lot more than at my last job. I think every one of the instructors did a great job. They were all very easy to get along with. They were also easy to approach with any questions. They treated us with respect and as equals. They were willing to joke around a bit and have fun with us while also getting work done. If the rest of this company is anything like the training staff I can already tell that I will enjoy working here.

-Ryan

 

I already have my own lock from my last company. I brought it with me in my toolbox with all the rest of my stuff. I would absolutely lock it up if I planned on dropping it anywhere.