Truckah from Maine, ayuh.....

Send a msg to psalm10720@gmail.com with ur cell and I will call you

 

I am posting this as an update.. I am no longer working for the same company and am disappointed that what I was told turned out to be false on many levels. The reason I left the company is because I never earned what they promised. They told me things that were just not true and when safety became an issue they seemed more concerned about their interests than the safety issue at hand.

1. They told us we would be making 700-900 a week. The recruiter told us between .37-.50/mile. When we got there it turned out to be perdiem paid to use plus a much lower mileage rate. If you really take time to crunch the numbers you will find a lose-lose situation with being compensated per-diem. It benefits the company greatly to pay you in this way. One way it hurts you as a driver is at the end of a year or many years your income is much lower so that hurts you on social security retirement. Perdiem is meant as a tax benefit for you the driver, based on the fact that you are living away from home.

2. I was issued a truck and I asked the maintenance head to his face if there were "known problems" with the truck. He answered no, none that I am aware of. The first time heading down the road I applied the brakes with a loaded trailer and the front end shuddered greatly.. I contacted the company and they told me when I came in for service they would look at it. Days later while at 77k I applied the brakes at about 30mph while coming up to a stop light and the brakes did not slow me down properly plus the front end shuddered greatly. I called my dispatch and his first words were "Can't you just ease it down the road?" All through orientation we were told how safety was such an important thing. My dispatched was also more concerned with what drive status I was in. I was not in the mood at the time to be concerned about anything but the fact this truck had some serious issues. Road service was notified and the guy came out and could not determine what the problem was so I gingerly followed him about 5 miles to his shop where he discovered the tractor brakes were way out of adjustment.

When I informed the company the weekend service call guy revealed to me that this particular tractor had been to the dealer many times with a "glazing" problem that had never been found the cause of. The road service guy adjusted all the brakes and even though the front end shuddered severely at times I managed to deliver my final load.

The reason it was my final load that in addition to the incident my pay for that week was $379.00. I had been staying out for a week at a time but the pay was low for the following reasons.

1. I had been made to sit for one time over 24 hours plus another time for about that time while waiting for a load.
2. They automatically deducted out of route miles plus "over-idling." The over-idling is really quite strange because these trucks are supposed to idle every time the apu batteries get low, so how could anyone deduct money for over-idling?

I knew the person who turned in this truck beforfe I had it and I spent many hours moving my stuff from my old truck to this truck without any compensation and he told me that he had reported brake problems two weeks previous.

When I took this tractor the maintenance guy told me that he hadn't had a chance to look at the truck but according to my watching the road service guy it took a very short time to adjust all brakes both tractor and trailer so based on what I reported above

1. the brakes
2. the low pay
3. the response of dispatch when I had the scary incident
4. the fact the brakes had been reported before
5. the truck had a long history that no one made me aware of

It just was not worth it to continue there. No one from company helped me arrange to get home or even met me so I rented a car and it took three weeks to be compensated a bus fare to help compensate me for my return home trip.

Lessons Learned???

1. Never work for a company that compensates with PerDiem
2. If I ever work for a company that overtly lies to me I will react the same way and not work for them anymore.
3. If any other company speaks safety with their lips but their actions say differently I will not work for them anymore...