Autumn transport

Apparently you heard they were bad...............

 

Yea you posted in the Bad Section; I was just giving you a hard time

 

Autumn used to be a pretty good company up until recently..since the owners daughter took over operations it has gone down hill..They used to stand behind their o/o, but now if you aren't doing a lease purchase thru them they make you feel like you are begging, even if you just ask to use the tire account for the discount..I was with them for seven years until we parted ways..they sited that "I RAN OUT OF HOURS TO MUCH" even when dispatch knew I was running hard to get all of my loads done and I argued with my new dispatcher to much..funny thing is I never had any problems until they swapped dispatchers on me and the new one wanted to micro manage the account I was on..So as long as you are a "YES MAN" you should do fine..

 

You are so wrong. I have been here several years and have NEVER had a problem getting help for repairs. They run you hard, but legal. Julie is the daughter that you speak of, and she is a true professional that has always proven to me that she has the drivers best interest in mind. Thier philosophy "if the driver's down, we cant haul the freight"

 

72.7% HOS BASIC suggests quite a few aren't running legally . http://ai.fmcsa.dot.gov/SMS/Data/carrier.aspx?enc=K/dS75nLsf7foy7lOIo+/w==

 

Yep, we get a reminder everyday from safety man about that! He is working hard to weed out the bad players. Gonna take time to get that score better, but they somehow passed the last in house DOT audit with flying colors. I think Autumn is gonna be fine. I was more or less reponding to the comment about the company not backing drivers. Based on my experience, they have always backed the drivers if they needed repairs, whether it was a leased truck or an old 1999 like mine. Excellent company, in my opinion.

 

It might help to hire a former FMCSA inspector as a consultant to come in and monitor logs . Quite a few carriers do that and it helps during an audit . It shows the carrier is making every effort to detect violations .

 

The reason Autumn passed their last audit with "flying colors" from what I was told (hearsay) is they don't keep any of the original b.o.l's from the shippers with the date and times on them . That's why they have the drivers fill out the hand written AUTUMN TRANSPORT b.o.l's (I'd asked several times why we needed them when we had the b.o.l's from the shipper and never got a straight answer).. I ran out of b.o.l's a couple times even after asking them to send me more weeks before and was basically told if I didn't turn in the hand written & signed b.o.l's I wasn't getting paid... Also when it came time for them to settle up they tried keeping $500 of my escrow money even though I returned everything I had from them including unused paperwork. I returned the trailer where she wanted it in good shape for a trailer with over 500k northeast miles on it (with no cosmetic damage to it which is the only thing they could charge me for since AUTUMN is responsible for all maintenance cost on the trailer according to the their contract) . They tried saying it was in such bad shape it wouldn't pass a FED DOT inspection which I thought was kinda funny considering it had just passed a full FED DOT inspection within the last 2 months that I had it. Within the last 12 months of me pulling that trailer I had had a complete brake job done (nov 2012), leveling valve(leaking), several wiring issues fixed (good old northeast winters), new tarp, 8 tires, both hopper door gear reductions, alignment, every hopper door bearing replaced, had the shur-loc cable on the back rebuilt(cable broke), a couple wheel bearings and wheel seals and i'm sure i'm missing a bunch of stuff.. Then she (owners daughter) basically called me a thief by saying I had to have had work done to my truck and had it charge to them..Really?..How does that work? I could see maybe if say like the brakes or tires where done at my local shop they could think that, but that stuff wasn't even done in Vt and I do my own brakes on my truck at home!
Once I told the owners daughter that she had no reason to be holding back the $500 and they had to return it or I was going to file a small claims suit against them and charge 10% interest plus court and lawyer fees she sent me back a email saying and I quote right from the last email she sent me "I would rather send you the $500 to make you go away. It’s not worth my time or effort to argue about it..Check will be in the mail this Friday." Which basically tells me that they really had no leg to stand on and didn't want the bad press, were just trying to get a little extra $$$ out of me. And I know $500 really isn't a lot of money but if you think about the driver turn over that Autumn has if they try this with every O/O they hire it adds up over the years!!