Avoid Marten Transport LTD.

All company drivers trucks

 

Funny you should say that. We haven't had to send macro in for service. Matter of fact, the Qcomm does it automatically every other day. It will tell us that the APU needs to be serviced or an E service or whatever. Then the shop and/or the dispatch will tell us we need to go in for service. We just recently had our truck serviced and it was supposed to be an hour long. But they found something wrong with the truck. Whatever it was, we gained power, we noticed it was kind of sluggish for a few days.

OH YEAH!!!! Love the APU!!

That's the part we LOVE...There's no idling involved except to put air in and defrost windows if needed.

Ditto on Payroll . It's nice that we can tripak scan at the TA's as Pilot is not always on or near our route for transflow. The Terminals also have transflow and they made it easy for the drivers to do it themselves.




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At orientation, they said they only reimburse scale tickets anything over 42k. However, we have scaled at 40k and got po# for reimbursements. So as long as you contact your dispatch for a PO, all is fine. We have air scales on the trailer and it's pretty nice when they are working. We've only encountered 3 broken ones. When we talked to a shop guy about it, he said he wish that the drivers would report it. But we all know that they just want to get moving!

And you are right, they keep up on their equipment. I've seen shop guys out in the parking lot marking down what trailers are there. It's a daily routine for them.

 

Where did you hear that from? I doubt it is true.

Here is a link: http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/othercities/milwaukee/stories/2009/01/26/daily36.html

Hope it works.

 

I have worked for marten twice actually, i was forced to drive otr due to situation, i have only one complaint about them, and that is the qualcomm waking me up due to night dispatch not knowing what they are doing. I expressed my feelings about this the next day to my fleet manager and it never happened again. As we all know otr is a hard job, your not going to get rich doing it, time away from home sucks plain & simple, as far as i'm concerned marten treated me well, got me anywhere in the u.s. I wanted to take time off, and never bothered me when i was off, deliver your loads on time, which is really simple, ( give you plenty of time) act like a professional at the customers, use common sense and you will have no problem, parking was a problem at the ontario terminal, but the others were ok, for the otr driver who wants to work marten is a great company, good luck& be safe

 

Hello Gypsycowgirl
I noticed you said there is a branch in Ontario, Ca. I have been looking for a company to start my training with and get my trucking license but I am worried that my previous accidents will prevent me from getting a job in this field. I have 4 accidents but they are all about 3 years old, do you think Marten would consider me for hire? I am a very hard worker and a very fast learner, I've always had great work ethic and always wanted to be a trucker but kept getting stuck in jobs I hated just to pay the bills, I'm ready now to become a trucker and never look back. Any feedback would be really helpful, I've been running in circles the last week trying to learn as much about this business I can.

Thank you for reading my msg, any advise or guidance you can offer me would be appreciated more than you will know.

 

Sorry to say, but with the number of accidents, I'm not sure that Marten will look at you. You could call the recruiter and ask them.

 

Not sure of which model of QC you have. But i have the new OmniVisison, and i make sure all the volumes controls are turned down low/ off.
With the older version, just wrap it in a coat or something.

Only been called twice on my days off at home, asked to repower loads 40 miles from the house. I make them send via qc, all the conditons i asked for, b4 i say yes or no.
Needless to say they have learned to leave me alone.

 

Yep, always document everything on the qcomm! We only do business via the qcomm and dispatch knows not to call us. Though they do try only to get ignored. Won't talk to dispatch on the phone as they have tried to get us to cheat on our logs. Nope, don't do that, and they pretty much know not to ask now. They have tried to send us tight loads that we don't have the hours for only to get refused. Dispatch seems to finally to get a clue to give us a little wiggle room, but it's still not enough. Oh well, that's the reason why I miss the last company we drove for. But wouldn't trade them for Marten at this point since we are getting the miles and the luxury of an APU! If we are at home and dispatch calls, hubby just tells them to send a message on the qcomm. Often, we won't get the same message on the qcomm so we get out of it. <G>

 

Marten requires 1 year minimum experience according to a website that I can't link to this forum. Their website doesn't specify experience, but IIRC from my conversations with Gypsy (she's a close friend of mine and doesn't get on here very often) Marten doesn't provide training for new CDL holders. I'll give her a call and verify this information with her. She's no longer with Marten, but still doesn't have a bad thing to say about them on the whole. About a year ago she took a local driving job with a company close to her hometown.

Those accidents are definitely going to be a set back for you, but I wouldn't say it's the end of the road. You might try one of the companies that's not very highly thought of collectively on this forum (Swift for example). Stick it out with them for a year, keep your record CLEAN and then give Marten a shot.

One thing to be very aware of, however you go, is that in trucking things that aren't considered accidents in your own vehicle will be in a big truck. As an example of this, let me tell you something I did in my first few months as a driver. I was dropping a loaded trailer in a gravel lot that had a concrete pad for the dolly legs. The trailer was loaded heavy with newspaper ads. I was going to drop it on the end of the concrete pad, however I didn't insure that both dolly legs were on the concrete when I pulled out from under the trailer. Since one of the legs (the passenger side) was on loose gravel, the trailer pinned the drive tires of my truck. I couldn't go forward or backward. Being new, and still pretty unfamiliar with trucks in general, I called the company and they sent a tow truck. The tow truck driver just cranked the dolly legs to raise up the trailer enough for me to get back under it and move it over some more. No damage was done to any equipment, however I was still charged with a preventable incident (aka accident).