Disaster with Boyd Brothers

Well, I recently posted that my housemate and I had been signed on to Boyd Brothers, working in their new territory. We were invited to attend orientation this past Thursday; actually encouraged to travel to Alabama as soon as possible. So, we did as requested and made the trip (12 hours by rental car), arriving Wednesday afternoon.

All seemed to be well. My housemate got up and went off to the first day of orientation, which was to last until five that evening. You can imagine my shock when he showed up at our hotel room shortly after three in the afternoon, approximately two hours before anticipated.
When I asked him about it, he told me that there was a man waiting to take us to the bus station.

It seems that Boyd Brothers had not finished verifying our paperwork prior to inviting us to orientation. During that first day, my housemate took their tests right along with every other guy. He passed each one of them, and they were harsh. The testers freely admitted that they were harder on him because he was the oldest person in the class and they wanted to see if he could cut it. Not only did he pass, they admitted that he passed with flying colors.

However, it was discovered that the mom and pop place he was working for just prior to going to Boyd Brothers had screwed him. Although he had been running a Class A tandem trailer for this place, the woman doing the paperwork measured only the deck and put that measurement down as the legal measurement. This did not go tongue to bumper. The irony is that the staff at Boyd Brothers stated that they knew it couldn't be correct, yet they accepted the measurement. As such, they chose not to count his driving experience from the last year and nine months. They actually came out and stopped him before he could take the driving test, and they further refused to allow him to do so. The woman working with my housemate talked to six different people, attempting to convince them to allow him to take it. The last guy that she talked to refused, simply telling them to get him a bus ticket. He almost didn't get the second ticket because they forgot he had brought a rider along with him (me). This woman tried very hard to get him into that truck, but we were shafted. He was only three months shy of their requirements, which he would have had if they had chosen to count at least some of his most recent experience.

They dropped us off at the Birmingham terminal (in a bad part of town), making us wait for four hours before our bus came. They did not offer to stop anywhere to let us get any lunch or anything. We were just dropped there. My housemate was aceing the class, answering questions that the others didn't know because they lacked the experience he has. Most of them are just out of trucking school, while my housemate has over ten years of experience under his belt.

I am very disappointed with our experience concerning Boyd Brothers. Although we had heard great things about them, we received horrible treatment. Furthermore, the hotel they put us up in was in a bad part of town, was rundown, and had poor service. Is this how they treat their drivers? It's disgraceful.

 

I know you smell a rat, but it's honestly not me. I have tried to lay out the facts as they are. All I can say is that the mom and pop place he was working for underrated the trailer deliberately to screw with them. Even the staff at Boyd Brothers admitted that it didn't add up, but they refused to allow him to show them what he is capable of. He did not get to take that driving test, no matter how hard this woman who was fighting his cause pressed the issue. We have no hard feelings against her whatsoever, but we were turned out cold by the company overall. After paying to go down there and being repeatedly reassured that everything was in order with his work history and such (that they had all they needed and he HAD met the requirements), we were turned out. We were told that this happens at least once per week.

 

It is very not-so-generous to trash someone in distress. I understand that most of you think that people on here automatically try to trash them. So, I will answer some of your comments right on.

First, I will acknowledge that the hotel was the Quality Inn on just off Valley Street in Birmingham. There were cigarette holes in the comforter, the fridge in our room did not work, and we did not have toilet paper in the room!
To me, that is pretty shoddy. I didn't expect a Hilton or even a Holiday Inn, but I also didn't expect to be in a hotel that didn't put TP in the rooms, either.


I realize that most of you expect me to get incredibly heated here and to exaggerate things. Some people do when they are angry. However, this isn't about me venting my anger so much as to provide a warning to people about really being aware of things.


I don't know what the Boyd Brothers website said. I do know that they had been recruiting my housemate for nearly three months before we chose to sign on. We did research them well, and yes, everything pointed to them being a great company. This was one reason we chose them. He was upfront with them about his experience from the get-go, even knowing that giving them the information for this mom and pop company and allowing Boyd to contact them could weaken his chances for being hired in. It is the only honest thing to do.


As for his attitude, I should tell you that he had a MUCH cooler head than I did. He is not perfect and certainly not an angel, but he kept his cool on this one. I was the one who got somewhat heated. He had to tell me to pipe it down and not verbally abuse the man who was assigned to drop us off at the bus station. And no, Boyd Brothers cannot control the location of the Birmingham station. However, he was turned down when he asked if he they would rent a car, pay for part of it up to the cost of two bus tickets, and he could make up the difference.

I am not "trashing" Boyd Brothers. My motives may seem vindictive, but they are not. The company did what it did, and we can't change that. My motive was to provide a warning to someone else. It is this: Make 200% that your paperwork goes through BEFORE you go down there! If you were to call that woman who tried to argue his case (an actual employee of the company), she would tell you that this was a shocker and he was the last one they expected to be sending home.

I also realize that a few people will likely have now written me off as being a hysterical woman, and that is fine. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I just know that I tried to honestly present the facts as they stand. I was told directly by the man who dropped us off at the station that he was shocked to be driving my housemate there.

Yes, my quarrel is partially with the mom and pop operation. However, I felt