TransAm Trucking, Inc. - Olathe, Ks.?

Yea but...... think of all that extra stop pay money your making. lol

 

DFW, TX
tornado over Garland moving ENE at 30 mph





Possible tornado over Garland moving ENE at 30 mph !

 

Please don't post this kind of stuff you are letting everyone know one of our top money making secrets.

 

I am a company driver for transam and have been here a little while, i will be leaving as soon as i get the amount of over the road experience i need for my next job. As a company driver, i do get a check every week atlest, but i am not able to go home when i want & i am never able to go home for any holidays(from st. Patricks days to holloween to christmas...none of them)...when messageing them for time off, i am sent a response message saying those days are full and i have to pick another day or other days. I've never gotten a quarterly bonus from them, even though i have deserved all of the quarterly bounses except the first quarter of working where i was learning the ropes & messed up a little. I've had friends do the lease program & none of them work with transam anymore. They never made any money is the reason they left, i seen their pay stubs. It was funny at first that they werent making any money & that i was making more than them clearly, but then i starting thinking, and it wasnt funny any more...that grown responsible men are out here busting their butt to try to feed their family and what not but they arent making close to the amount they were told they would. Transam is a company that will lie to you in orientation about their lease program so you can pay for transam trucks. A term often used in the transam leasing program is "in the whole" or "negative settlement", which means you had a minus zero check for that week. For anyone considering this company, i recommend you going as a "company driver" first & asking "lease drivers" how they're doing...they will all tell you they arent making the money they were told they would be making by transam. You will also notice(if you go "company driver" with transam) that none of the "lease drivers" have their own gps(a good one from a truckstop, not the one the company gives you), nor do they have a c.b., nor a t.v., nor a game system, nor do they have a laptop in their truck...reason why is because they arent making any money(and if your a student reading this, ask a transam driver if he is a lease driver, then ask him if he has the things i just mentioned in his truck)!!! Transam says you can make $138,000 a year as a lease driver, but they dont tell you that that doesnt include #1-fuel #2-truck payments #3-truck insurance #4-truck repairs #5-the percent for taxes a lease driver should set aside. Transams' insurance company is a rip off, they wont pay you if your truck is broke down & in the shop(their suppose to!) or if you have to get your truck towed(insurance is suppose to!). Transam gives a driver the run around before they will pay a lease driver "layover pay", transam also has a "5 cents per mile excessive wear & tear penalty" they charge if you drive over 3,000 miles in one week. The only lease drivers that get real checks are the coaches, thats because the coaches run team miles. And another thing, once you sign the lease, you can not go to "company driver" status, its their way of keeping you where you at until you quit. Even if you tell yourself your going to do the minumum 6 month lease once you've signed their lease...tha means your working for free & paying for transam trucks for 6 months! This is the reason companies do this because some of us(not me) as drivers are to stupid to say "im not putting up with this" and walk away & spread the word about these companies anonymously like how im doing! Instead, some of these lease drivers want to lie about the money their not making because they dont want someone that asks them to know that they are getting #########! In summary, dont sign a lease with any major carrier, its not designed for your benefit....be safe & smart drivers

 

Back when I trained a year and a half ago my trainer would not do team. Except for the first day I did every mile of driving on his truck. He sat in the passenger seat the whole time I was on the truck. Only time we drove alone was when I was driving a recovery truck and then I was following him and we took our 10 at the same time. He did that with all his students. He said TA frowns apon team driving during training. And he had large TV computer, internet, microwave, CB, and a nice GPS in his truck. Most LOs that I saw had personal trucking GPS.

 

Gamma did California just fine, he getting loaded in Santa Ana and heading towards Los Lunas, NM. Can't wait til his hometime next week How are the rest of you doing? Quiet here!

 

Thank you Brian for sharing your experience with us. We have all said it so many times that leasing is not the thing to do with TransAm. Our experience with getting home time during the holidays was much the same as yours. I think my husband was home for one Thanksgiving dinner during the years that he worked for TransAm. We learned to plan our family times around TransAm's schedule, it wasn't the same but it worked for us.

There have been many different experiences with trainers, some good some horrible. That has been one of the continuing problems that we have mentioned here. There is no consistency in their policy for trainers so it is just the luck of the draw. Some of the trainers are excellent.... and some should probably be in jail somewhere. It is the same with Driver Managers, some will keep you moving and put in for detention pay and some will not....again just a matter of luck on which DM you get. Some drivers have done alright with TransAm, both company and lease, the majority of them don't and yet they work just as hard.

Part of the problem is legislation, it has allowed carriers to have a driver work for them with no guarantee of pay. The other part of the problem are carriers that see this as a license to treat a driver as a piece of machinery that can be replaced quite easily.

The one thing that this type of situation is good for is gaining experience .You have the right idea, Brian. Use them as a stepping stone to something better, get your experience and move on.

 

ajacks, I forgot to mention something to you and gamma about home time. We learned it went so much more smoothly if we never scheduled home time to end on a weekend. Always come back on duty on a week day if possible .....that way you don't end up with some crazy thing that weekend dispatch has messed up!

 

Doing fine, ajacks. How about you and the kids?

They do get quiet around here every once in awhile. Then I have to be mean and threaten them with bad jokes, saying nice things about night dispatch, or pretend to be the dumb blonde and say something so wrong that they all have to tell me how wrong I am! I'm gonna have to come up with something new to get them talking again.

 

well drove around picking up all my stops around chicago
back on 80 heading to SLC then on to CA
that gamma is one driving dude
probably a walmart load back to los lunas
if he navigated those lil alleys around k-pack
he is already a driver