Avoid Marten Transport LTD.

my name is hot sauce,from tx i wroked for marten transport and my first month there i was a lease driver,and did not do well i was broke befor you new it,i admit that the miles was good but miles aint nothing if you dont have the right truck to cover them!so i went back to them as a company driver and one weekend i took off in dallas,tx and i went to the store in my own persnol car when i got back home,my truck was gone i thougt some one had stole it,come to find out marten had let me go i went almost 50 miles from my house to find the truck and couldnt get my stuff out of it,two weeks later i had my dac repot pulled and i have a truck abandoment on my report and they was the one that came and got the truck i been a owner opreater for all most 27yrs,even though i sold my truck and trl i would had been better of just fighting for it,dont do marten transport you been told!

 

Something tells me you were broke before you started.

 

And they even pay for the fuel taxes.

 

Why is it people think this is a big expense?Its not learn where to buy your fuel and you will owe nothing or at the most for me anyways it was $50 one time most the time it washed out.

 

--Hot Sauce

It sounds like you didn't pay attention to the Company's rules about where to park the truck. They were pretty clear with me (pre-orientation even) about Co Trucks getting parked 1) In a Marten yard, 2) at a secured, guarded location or 3) at your house, on your property.

That would mean if it's parked on the street somewhere, you're breaking their rules.

It's not the sweetest rule in terms of convenience for the driver, but I can't hold it against them for protecting their equipment vigilantly.

The fact that you couldn't get your gear back (or it was really hard to get it back) sucks. But I don't know how much of a federal case you can make out of it if you clearly didn't follow their established rules on leaving the equipment without tending to it.

Now, if they didn't tell you they were picky about where it was parked and then pulled the rug out, that'd be one thing. But like I said, the recruiter, on the phone, told me the parking rules before I even agreed to come to orientation.

I guess it sounds a little like I'm defending the company even though I haven't worked there yet, but goodness, it's not fair if these threads are just baseless slam-fests.

 

Did your dispatcher know you were taking the weekend off? I'm pretty darn sure if you took time off in Dallas you should have parked in Irving terminal and not your house.
It sounds strange that they never said anything about nothin and just sent a wrecker out to your house to snatch the truck.
I'm sorry to hear that you had your DAC banged up but you can and should dispute it in writing.
From what I've seen at marten over the years they don't let drivers go and just wait until you call to see what is going on. If anything, I'd believe you more if you said that they told you to come over to the terminal. Whatever happened I don't think your telling everything.
It could be that after 27yrs as an owner operator your in no mood to be ordered around like an employee. Once your driving that company truck you drive it like they tell you and park it where THEY want or your fired. Saienga is right on target about expectations with parking and driving Marten's rigs. They have no sense of humor when it comes to what a driver does with $100,000 truck that's against Marten's wishes.

 

Hows that?

 

Your right big companies giving you per diem and then taking 2 or 3 cents off your pay as a "FEE"? I've worked for companies before, out of town and was paid per diem, "on top" of my normal pay the way it was meant to be paid. Trucking companies are ripping us off especially when you remember that you can deduct the per diem at the end of the year. My Attorney told me the same thing, trucking companies who force you to take per diem like Marten Transport and then charge you a fee, like Marten Transport are ripping you off. I have read all the laws pertaining to per diem on the IRS web site and can't find anything that says it's ok for a trucking company to charge a fee to give you what the IRS states is legal pay, Per diem that is. Think about this, you would have made .36 per mile but because Marten requires you to except their per diem and charges you .250 per mile, this means that you are making .335 per mile and when vacation comes around you get that amount divided by 52 weeks. Loose your job and your unemployment is based on .335 not.36, get hurt and need to draw social security or retirement, base on .335 not .36. Now multiply two and a half cents times the number of miles driven in a year, lets say the average 120000, that's Three THOUSAND Dollars. You are paying your company three thousand dollars to get your per diem early. Now multiply that $3000 times the number of drivers a company has. Marten has about 2500 and lets say 2000 are getting the per diem treatment, that's ''SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS''. Not a bad "FEE" is it, and they say they are doing YOU a favor, give me a break.

 

1) He was an Owner Operator for 27 years and even though he sold his truck he was better off fighting fer it. Translation: the bank was acomin to get it.

2) He was only a lease operator for 1 month. Translation: He wanted to be an O/O again but didnt have the money or credit so he fell into a L/P deal. Any good O/O would know better then to lease a truck from the same place you get your loads from.

3) He stated the miles was good but not if you dont have the right truck to cover them. Translation: I could have chose either a aerodynamic or long hood truck and I wanted to be cool, so mpg went right out the window.

I may completely wrong just my gut feeling.

 

Yes, all good reasons why a solo driver should never sign on with a company with a team fleet.

Lets face it, each driver is competing for miles and is guaranteed nothing at most OTR companies. Your like the guys who stand on the street corner outside of Home Depot waiting for the contractors to come buy and hand out work. As a company driver I have seen these Teams and lease drivers roll in and out of terminals while solo's who have been waiting for loads where told no freight and given the locals they just dropped to do instead. It got so bad at USX which was supposed to be a first in first out dp that when drivers where tipped off by a dispatcher that solo runs where being dp to teams to keep them rolling while solo sat for days. A few unattended team trucks started breaking down inexplicably at the term.

If you are a solo driver do you want to be last in line for dispatch no matter when you delivered your last load and have to wait for team, O/O and lease drivers to get a load before you even get considered and if there is any loads left?

The less competition you have as a solo driver the better your miles will be. You want lots of slackers and boneheads which most company's have a plentiful supply of so that you will easily be the go to person when the freight numbers are low. Heck in the winter my miles would stay almost as good as in the summer. Because there are plenty of drivers who will open that curtain and shut it back up as soon as they see a snow flake fall out of the sky