TMC Transportation, Inc. - Des Moines, Ia.

This guy getting fired, expect to see more of it out here. Freight, especially flat bed freight, is getting slim to none out here. And I cannot believe that an outfit like TMC is still hiring. They came into my areas two years ago and started slashing rates left and right. Allot of us indy flat bedders have been wondering how they keep their doors opened after what they did to rates out here.

Mike

 

I think what a lot of companies are going to start doing, they will keep those students going thru their school (why not, they can get them on the hook for $4-large) and then send them thru orientation, etc. then after training they got a driver they can pay .28cpm. Then they will replace a driver they want to get rid of, that they pay .40cpm. makes for good business to me. And any company, when the economy is this bad, wants to save $50,000 a day anywhere.

I once sat at at a shipper waiting to get unloaded, when two company trucks came in. Exact model truck, everything. Including their 'lean' to the drivers side. (both drivers were inside) I looked, and they both did not have a passenger side fuel tank. Now 150gal tank weighs about 1050lbs. think of the added fuel mileage (albiet a few tenths of a mile) but if your company has 200-300 or 1000 trucks, and each truck can improve their mpg by .5...that saves some green.

 

I said that my husband may not be completely innocent because he could have made it to the shipper on time if he had driven past his legal hours. Like I said before, I believe that the breakdown happened between the FM and the shipper. The simple fact is that TMC will not accept any customer complaints. It doesn't matter if it was the FM who screwed up or not. I am not trying to bash TMC, except for the fact that I would like to see them stand by their drivers instead of just firing them. I would have absolutely no problem with TMC if they gave more valid reasons for firing someone. Now, the Team Leader told my husband that this termination would not affect his DAC and that when other companies call it would not look negatively upon him. I ask you what that must say about the firing? I am sorry that I convinced my husband to stay with TMC for so long, since he was urged many times before to leave and go elsewhere. I am someone who is not easily fooled by one loyal employee's opinion, and while I value the fact that you can remain loyal, I will say that TMC has done my husband a favor. I did not come into this forum with false accusations, my husband has already contacted the DOT with his complaint and he was informed by them that this was not the first complaint they have gotten about TMC from other drivers. I urge you to do your own research before proclaiming something you know to be fact. As I said before, I am not a woman who just comes into something with no information. The fact is that my husband will do just fine elsewhere and I hope that you will not encounter any negative action from TMC towards you. Until then...best of luck! We will take this negative experience and build off of it. I am pretty sure that when I logged into this forum it was to make a complaint against a bad company and there were already 92 pages of posts against TMC, are you going to say every single person who has posted is a drive-by-poster or not giving the whole story? As for your accusation against me, it is an interesting one, since it seems you spend a large amount of your time trying to defend TMC. Are you in Public Relations? If not, you should be.... You try hard and you can believe what you want to believe and support who you want to support, but the information I have posted on here is the information we received from the Team Leader when my husband was fired. Other than that, I don't know what else to tell you. I also do not believe that TMC's turnover rate is simply because it is a training company. There are lots of those out there, and they don't need to advertise every day in the paper.

 

I also must say I find it most humorous that you have only been a trucker for one year. My husband was a truck driver for the army for almost six and drove truck for two years before he even did that. Sorry if you seem to be pretty unbelievable seeing as you don't have much experience, now do you?

 

You keep talking about your husband...your husband...your husband. The simple truth is you hear what he wants you to hear! You are not a trucker! .....

 

Real mature.

 

ekovatch,

I, too, am a truckers wife as you can see from my profile. My husband has been a driver for 7 years, although only recently with TMC. So far, the company has been more than what we ever expected. If your husband was having as much trouble with the dispatcher about running illegal as you say, why didn't he ask for a new FM? Never once has the FM my husband has made any suggestion for him to run illegal. If he's loaded late all he must do is notify someone.

As for your comment to terrylamar, please don't make his opinion less important because of his experience. Everyone must start somewhere and I have witnessed newbies who know more than veterans several times.

I hope your husband finds new employment soon. Best of luck and Merry Christmas.

 

Trucker's wives generally know as much about the company their spouse drives for as the spouse does. I am a trucker's wife as well as being an ex-trucker. There are a lot of trucker's wives on here, and most of them know quite a bit about the industry. Some of them even know how to drive a truck too.

You also have no idea as to their relationship, so you have no idea what the hubby tells her.

I'm guessing you aren't married?

 

If you run over hours at TMC you will get a message on your qualcom and if you dont reply you will get a phone call. Saftey will not let you run over and you send a message in when you arrive at the shipper and you send a message when you are loaded. So in my opinion nice try, because it would have shown the excessive amount of time at the shipper to get loaded and his FM would have had to make a new ETA....with no problems. The shipper called and complained about him so that tells me he was a jerk # the place and if you get banned from a place it is subject to termination. Maybe his numbers were low and had a bad attitude and this was the last straw! Well sorry he lost his job before christmas but chances are he has no one to blame but himself!

 

I agree with you there, it depends severely on the relationship and whether the spouse is interested in knowing. There is very little I don't know about what my husband is doing....A lot of times I give him the directions to his drops even. Oh, by the way...lol..my handle's Little Bit....lol...just thought that was kinda neat...I'm a Dork...I know it...

Also, to the wife, even if this person's FM did, by chance, insitigate things, your husband should have requested a new one if he was having problems with it. Companies don't in general like to fire people, it is much more costly to train a new driver than it is to keep a good one, that is true anywhere.

My husband just switched to TMC in October and we've been very hapy with them, and he's been late a couple times due to the shipper's loading time, but he just runs it by the neccessary people and he's fine.

As another driver said, it may have been several small things that the team manager didn't relate at the time that added with the last thing. Or as you say, it may have been a problem with the FM. At least now you know to request a new FM if you are having problems.

My husband previously worked for CR England and was being screwed every way possible, but we learned a lot from his time there, and you just have to take the bad an learn from it for next time.

Best of luck to you and yours....and Happy Holidays to All!