Knight Transportation

Let me start by saying this is just my opinion if my experience with this company. Some people absolutely love it and I know some people who can’t wait to get out. “Bad” May be a strong word, but here it goes.

Squire school:
Their CDL program requires no contract. And they have a high success rate. That’s about all that’s good. You go out for two weeks (as long as you pass) and you pay for everything. No matter what your recruiter tells you, they only buy you lunch on Monday. Everything they teach you is to pass your CDL road test series by Arizona standards. If you pass you owe them roughly 3500 or so at least at the time when I went. You’ll also owe them a 500$ deposit on day one which you may or may not be told about. You’ll learn in a manual which is slowly losing its purpose and stressful to accomplish in two weeks (and again this was when I went through school). They literally teach you how to pass the exam. Your trainer will have a field day trying to teach you how to actually back, turn, and drive and he’s going to wonder what the point of you going to school was.

You’re out I’m the truck. Some terminals are great and have great dispatchers. Others are not. If you’re unfortunate to fall into the latter than you’re going to be chasing empties all the time and begging for miles and runs if you’re running dry van. I can’t soeak to the reefer side as I never did it. There is very little camaraderie among the drivers. They have a tendency to only be out for themselves. I’ve seen more kindness, helpfulness, and just plain friendliness from random drivers from other companies out on the road than o have from knight drivers. You could be broken down and asking for help and they’ll just walk by you.

While they pride themselves on late model equipment, they don’t outfit it very well. The biggest problem is the bunk beaters and the inability to idle. There are inverters but no APUs. Your bonus isn’t based on fuel, but rather miles run (if you can get them) and safety. They don’t have refrigerators in the truck and no place to really put one. The trucks interior strikes me as the “basic” no frills package.

Pay is on a sliding scale and middle of the road for most companies. They pay your basic extras like detention. I will say that they don’t make you drive in weather if you don’t feel comfortable. But they require communication from their drivers—which makes perfect sense. Just don’t expect your dispatchers to have the same level of communication.

What it all really boils down to is that Knight is becoming a mega carrier only without some of the perks of being a mega carrier. They owners are good businessmen and don’t believe in debt. As such they keep acquiring companies and losing sight of what once made knight different. Knight isn’t the worst company to go with in the world. But, if you’re looking for something “different” than a mega carrier you won’t find it here.

 

Yeah it seemed good in theory, but it doesn’t really work out well for drivers in the end. I really hate that they are moving towards a mega carrier because I had heard such great things about them. But even the greats can fall I’m afraid.