TMC Drivers out of Memphis & Nashville TN $$$

When they fail you on appearance they take pictures. When they reinspect you they use a flash light. When you don't get your truck washed every two weeks they route you to a terminal to get washed. Now this never happened to me but, it has happened. Next time you go to a terminal for full service look around you will find that guy working till night fall. Shop vac outside, all his crap on the cat walk, and paper towels all wadded up on the ground by the tractor.

 

It happened to me...once. (The re-inspection, that is.) Never happened again. Way too much a waste of my time. As if the initial two or three hours spit-shining the inside of a sleeper truck wasn't enough of a waste of time...

I tell ya, they go too hard on that mess. (Or did, but I'm sure they haven't changed.) Well at least now that we're discussing it, more and more people will be aware of it going in...

 

AH....the good old days lol

 

I know, right? I think the only thing that made it tolerable is that we knew our brothers in black-n-chrome were sitting or crouching right beside us outside their trucks putting up with the same mess... that's when you begin joking and chuckling about it.

Doesn't make it any less unnecessary, however.

 

I know a driver that got a failure because he had a stock of bananas on his bunk. Any time I had an inspection I would put all of my personal gear, I mean everything in my trailer side boxes. When they looked at my truck nothing was in it....past evey time.

 

More than you know...(!)

We can laugh about it all now (those who've been through it), but while actively in that mess it wasn't as humorous.

Still, though, all that to the side, I got to see all but two of the lower 48 (OR and ME were the two exceptions), got to experience Wolf Creek Pass--three different times-- as well as most of the rest of Colorado (and dang near all of Wyoming), see a bunch of stuff and places I'd have never seen otherwise, grew up in a culture of comaraderie at a time when that very thing seems to be dissipating from the trucking ranks, and to this day even in my current capacity I still do things mostly "the TMC way" i.e. folding and rolling my tarps up all neat, tarping down all nice and pretty, using my standard load securement practices I learned there (even though all I haul is wood and building products), still stop to lend hands to other drivers when I can see they need it, still find myself "coaching up" some of the young guns with my outfit and others, still take time to make sure the inside of my truck stays (some kind of) clean...TMC done did a number on me. And for that I am definitely grateful.

So when I say I look back on my time there fondly, all that's kinda what I mean. Yeah I guess I left TMC but the TMC never really left me.

 

Oh and because I completely missed this...

BTC (Builders Transportation Company) is based in Memphis, down near Graceland. I can't say whether you'll make more $ with them over TMC or anyone else on average, but at least they're in your own backyard (like the TMC Indy terminal was for me...almost literally...since at that time I lived less than ten minutes up the road and around the corner from their old Indy yard). And as best I can remember I cannot recall ever having heard anything negative said about BTC, from their own drivers or otherwise. Beyond that, I really couldn't tell you of much else flatbed-wise in Memphis.