Why not avoid a bad company ?

It pretty much boils down to this. Everyone deals with b.s. The trick to evaluating reviews is to ascertain whether the complainant ‘s grievances are in line with your tolerances.

Example, some care deeply about driver facing cameras. Others, couldn’t care less about them.

 

Some co's earn their reputation...yes if a company has 1000's of complaints well then you generally take it as they have a problem with that certain issue...but there are others where the complaints are few and looks like someone whining especially if they dont give real good details as to what the issues were...

 

I can appreciate someone in the industry helping younger drivers like myself...I have had my CDL since 2012 and been in and out of the industry due to personal reasons. I read a lot of threads on here and in my life have learned to read between the lines. If there is one thing I have learned is there is always issues with all companies, it all depends on your personal wants and needs like you previously stated. You could be at a start up company and have a great fleet manager or or dispatcher or broker and enjoy your tenure there. The idea is to find a home then learn the industry. I have always had an entrepreneurial mindset so once I learned about the trucking industry I jumped in. Like any industry therr are always growing pains. It is about having the right mindset to recover and be willing to learn and grow.

 

Exactly, Fozzy. Why would people want to get advice from someone that WASN'T a successful driver at XYZ company? "I failed to make it into the top tier drivers at XYZ company, and here is how I did it!"... I guess you can learn from their mistakes? But honestly - Drivers who reward shady companies are the main problem in the industry - they fall for the advertisements and razzle dazzle, and then realize that either its going to be hard work or its a shady company again, and they fell for it... again. Eventually, they become trolls and try to bring their naiviety and negativity to everyone else in the industry. They are Trolls.

And that's the other main problem in trucking, isn't it? Bad carriers that manipulate the numbers or just outright lie about it and set false expectation... However, if they put those big, fake numbers out there enough times, 3 things happen:
1. Super truckers will claim they are making those numbers everywhere they go because they want to be cool and look like super truckers.
2. Gullible people will see those ads, remember SuperTrucker1234 said he was making that kind of money straight out of trucking school last year, and assume that is the industry standard for pay.
3. Otherwise honest and normal companies are forced to manipulate or "spin" their numbers to try to compete on the job boards without falling into bankruptcy.

Trust me, quoting honest and true CPM, and trying to explain how a driver making .47 CPM at Company A is making more than the driver making .57 CPM at Company B is almost impossible. It's just easier to drop the quality of insurance, start paying Zip code miles, start paying 1/2 cpm (or NO cpm!) for empty and bobtail miles and then promoting your NEW HIGHER CPM! It isn't really higher as far as income goes, but looks better on paper, and now you can put up flashy cpm numbers too! The same segment of drivers will keep falling for it. Those fake numbers are what becomes the "reality" and anything that isn't BS now seems like an insult. It's a vicious circle. As long as trucking companies have drivers focused strictly on CPM, the shady places will have most drivers by the short hairs. Since there is no "Standard" set for what "CPM" even means, there is no real way to compare one company's pay to another.

At the end of the day, most companies are paying the same. CPM, Benefits, Equipment are all included. One place might have the highest CPM, but they have bad equipment, no benefits, and don't pay detention, layover or backhauls. But that CPM looks pretty! Everyone is competing based on the same hyper-competitive freight rates (Thanks deregulation!) and the margins in trucking are razor thin.

Would you play professional baseball/football/basketball/Call of Duty/etc... everyday if someone paid you $60-$90,000 per year? If you love it, you would. The problem I have been noticing a lot lately is that many drivers I talk to don't actually want to BE truckers, but they can't make life work on a regular 9-5 job that only pays $30-40,000 per year. So they turn to trucking without considering the cost and sacrifices that truck drivers make. 90% of them don't make it through year one, and the ones who do hate every second of it. They are bitter, stubborn and refuse to turn back. They can't admit that it's just a hard job and its not for them- they have to lash out at anyone and everyone who loves trucking or isn't an angry maniac towards their employer. Terminal rats are awful. Rabid Terminal Rats are outright dangerous.

Everyone says we need to band together and demand more money and better treatment in our industry. I haven't had any issues with being treated poorly, but I'd be lying if I said I was against making MORE money. Duh. "If we would just all stop driving for a day, that'll teach 'em!"
But...There isn't a trucking pay issue hanging out in some vacuum of time and space, there is a nationwide problem with salaries and income. From waiters to attorneys, income has not kept up with inflation. As long as everyone's salaries are low, they will be forced to buy lower priced goods. In order to sell goods at a lower price, retailers have to keep freight rates low. Freight rates determine trucker's pay, so lower freight rates mean lower pay.

If you want the industry standards to get back to "the good old days", you need to either bring back Gub'mint regulation on setting nationwide freight rates (unlikely!), and/or support the bottom 85% of American Citizens, because it's their spending and purchasing habits that determine what happens in the trucking industry. Instead, our industry and drivers cater to the top 15%, the CEO's, the Investors, the Board members. We seem to make sure that the big shareholders are making profits, and we are putting their wants above the needs of the very folks that determine our pay. The bottom 85% of the country might not be signing our paychecks, but they sure as hell determine how much is going to be on them. The people you see at Walmart, Chik-Filet, Home Depot, Burger King? They are the majority, and their purchasing power is what drives the economy.

So even if you hate the poor, the lower middle class, the hustlers, by supporting ideas that increase their income, you are supporting truckers. Even if you hate all the other truckers too, you are supporting yourself. Call it "Trickle Up" economics if you want, but at the end of the day, we truck drivers are last in line when they hand out the paychecks. Everything that determines our pay comes from consumers. Support consumers, support truckers.

I love the free market, I love small government, but there are always examples and nuance to consider. Sometimes, the area is grey. Truck drivers made more when the government set the freight rates, the freight lanes, and determined what companies could drive where. Deregulation in our industry led to cancerous Hyper-Competition that only drove rates DOWN for us. Sure - it made the costs of shipping and buying goods go down, so for the economy, it was a win, but for us, the rank and file of the Transportation industry, it was a giant loss. The CEO's made out fine, the investors made out fine, and the loss was all taken by truck drivers.

Not all issues are black and white. Sometimes, we need to put aside petty partisan politics and just look at things from our own perspective, and not hypothetical. Look at history, look at facts, ignore the scare tactics that should only work on scared, ignorant people. Not us.


PS - Pre-Reply: yes, thank you for pointing out that one exception, that one guy you know, that friend who is a union driver (only 6,000 unionized truckers left in the US now!), the guy who turned his Lease Purchase scam into a lucrative career of millions. IDK what kind of mind can look at a small exception and have that erase the other 99% . Ugh. One time a kid was underwater for 30 minutes and didn't die. That doesn't mean you have time to run to the store before saving your kid if they fall in the water. Yes, I know that supporting ideas to increase the income of people who make less than $100,000 (the largest majority of America) is totally a socialist/communist/Liberal/leftist plot to:

" ________(verb) the __________(adj) _________(noun) in the_________(location)."

(Fill in your own OUTRAGE Mad Libs! oooh! it even says LIBS! Nice!)

Enjoy!

 

That is the nature of a capitalistic country. I don't want to get into politics or the nature of this country but there will always be a little guy. Also, you can't knock someone for trying to put more food on the table for their families. Unfortunately, big companies know that it is easy to replace a driver. I worked at one if those companies as a parts coordinator to learn more about a truck and the stories I can tell would make you queasy. It is human nature to have that predator mentality. The sad thing is the pretty don't realize that they are pretty until it's too late. What is really sad about all of this is that I have the time to post on here. The good companies are hard to find because they don't need to advertise. That is why it is imperative to as someone stated earlier, Listen and learn.

 

Sorry autocorrect... pretty should have been prey

 

How about a single driver who can complain about all of the companies though?
(you know, the premise of this thread...)