Tmc or Maverick

Flatbed freight does slow down in the winter, especially in the North and North East. TMC is decent with home time, but you will spend a few weekends here and there out. Plus a weekend off can mean getting home Saturday morning or afternoon and most times you have to be on the road by Sunday afternoon or night depending on where you first stop is. You can idle all you want but it can affect your pay percentage rate which I is based on your performance too. What you make money wise can vary. Some do real well, some don't. Having a good fleet manager is a must. Being on time to your deliveries and good route planning along with low idle times can increase your percentage rate.

I'd choose TMC over Maverick but Maverick is a good company as well.

 

As for right now, idling has no affect on your certification points(performance bonus). I think in the future this will be one of the items that will affect your points. Freight does slow down in the winter for all flat bedders, and tarping becomes more difficult, as does traffic and so on and so forth. The point is is to get your foot in the door and planted and be ready to make some money come spring. All the FM's at TMC pretty much plan on getting there drivers home every weekend, as a previous poster stated, you might not get home till Saturday morning, and have to leave out Sunday evening, but this is the exception rather than the rule. If you want to stay out on the weekends, your FM will accommodate you. I am home 2-3 times during the week(sometimes) and every weekend. Last weekend was one of those weeks where i didn't get home till Saturday morning, but this is trucking, and the people loading or unloading you do not care if you get home on the weekends, so you are at their mercy, but that is every trucking outfit there is.

In my mind, TMC and Maverick are the top 2 flat bedding companies that base their business on there drivers getting home every weekend, and the pay is comparable between the 2. They have nice trucks, TMC's trucks may have some older trucks on the road out there, but they take such good care of the fleet that each one looks like it just rolled off the new car lot.

Its all up to you, TMC will take care of you and there is alot of pride working for TMC as well.

 

Does TMC give each person their own room...or do they make people double up?

 

You will be sharing a room while at orientation.

 

Since when? You get certification points towards your snapshot, which directly relects on your percentage increase. Out of route, and mileage both have the largest direct reflection towards your snapshot. Otherwise the mileage certification we get each thursday that tells you what the fleet wide mileage was with cert points for each.
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Yes , Or at least I did. And youll have time to hit the pool, a real pool. Again if your just starting its a great company but even if I were going flatbed id be working toward one that used APU's such as averitt, and there are others that use percentage but those will require experience.

 

Idling has no effect on your MPG, they track your idling differently. You can go to the performance monitoring tab and look at your "over idling %" in the summary section.

 

Averitt and TMC are in 2 different leagues, TMC is far better on every level than Averitt. APU's are annoying, almost as bad as a reefer. As far as being a company driver, there is not a better company out there, small or large that beats TMC's package, believe me I've looked and have had many phone conversations with other "small" companies. They don't compare.

 

I've talked to TMC drivers who make around 5k/week. May be the rare one but they can do it.

 

thats 5 grand a week to the truck. and its very possible. Of that 5 grand to the truck that driver is propbably making between 30-32%.