26 months with K&B Transportation

I have been employed by K&B Transportation now for 26 months. In these 26 months, I have personally been treated fairly well. While I can't say it has been the best time of my life, I also can't definitively say it was the worst time of my life. It has been what most jobs become, work. If a person expects to come to a trucking company and be treated like royalty from their first day of employment, then they will never be happy in the trucking profession. I came to K&B knowing of the bad publicity they have garnered over the years, but I live close to their biggest account in Illinois. The home time was appealing, and so was the fact of being payed $900/week salary. Originally, the home time was every weekend, but that changed just as I was starting with the company. Now it's 12 out, 2 home. I don't pay attention to the miles because i am payed salary. There are days I drive 500-600 miles. Average is about 350-450 miles per day. Some days i might drive a total of 150-200 miles and still make my $180 for the day. I know that doesn't seem like much, but do the math. The days you drive for 11 hours may lean in their favor, but those days are few and far between. At least that's how it has been for me. I'm fully aware that other companies pay their drivers more, but they also have you behind the wheel more.
My biggest problem with K&B, is the dispatchers. They are what makes this company have the reputation it has attained. The problem, in my opinion, is the fact that the lead dispatcher in S. Sioux City, NE, either works at, or used to work for a local colleges' sports program. What does this mean? Well, almost all dispatchers are hired out of this local college. So you have twenty somethings working in a field they probably didn't expect to work for. They, almost assuredly, were not in college to obtain a degree in dispatching drivers around the country for a local trucking company. Right from the start, you have a person who thinks of this job as merely temporary, until they find what they were educated for. I find that this is a perfect recipe for a bad driver/dispatcher relationship. These twenty something dispatchers, care very little for the driver personally, and more for just completing their shift and going home to mommy and daddy's and playing video games. Of-course I can't possibly speak for all dispatchers there, but I feel I'm describing the majority. I dread even calling the dispatchers in S. Sioux City. Especially after hours!
My dispatcher, however, is pretty straight forward and does work with me. I guess I'm kinda lucky, but I have had a dispatcher that was less than acceptable. He tried to put on a good'ol boy act, but I could clearly see through it. He didn't care that I hadn't seen my family, or slept in my real bed. He cared only for moving that freight! It was almost condescending the way he talked to me. I guess he feels that all drivers have no more than a 5th grade education, and can't possibly comprehend logic. Well, that may be true with some drivers out there,( lord knows I've met my fair share of them), but that's not the majority of us! I've met drivers from all walks of life. There are drivers who choose this life style because it's appealing to them, drivers who do this because they are unqualified in another field that brings in enough money to support their family, drivers who have no family or home, drivers who want to get out of Mayberry, and see the country, drivers who are here on work visas, and are sending their money to their families from whence they came, to drivers that just somehow ended up in the field and just stick with it. It's a mulligan stew out here, and it's unfair to treat us all the same. We are individuals, not clones!
My survival with K&B, is my approach, attitude, and demeanor. I will not, to the best of my ability, operate in an unsafe manner. I will not allow them to belittle me in any way that offends me. I communicate as much as I can over the qualcomm, rather than talk on the phone. The reason for this is, all messages sent via qualcomm is time stamped and saved in a data base for review at any time. They will not ask you to operate unsafely via the qualcomm. I have only once, in 26 months, refused to do a load that was dispatched to me. I don't whine about things like, "my chrome needs shining" or like, "that receivers lot is too muddy, and I just shined my tires today". I do what I'm asked to do, within the boundaries and morals I have set for myself. If I give K&B little reason to treat me with contempt, then they will be more apt to treat me fair. I don't know everyones story with K&B, but I'm sure that some drivers deserve to be treated as unfairly as they have treated K&B. That sounds pretty harsh, but I don't live my life trying to please everyone all the time. That's impossible, and to be frank, it's not important to me. I don't, however, wear a chip on my shoulder. I am a pretty easy going person, trying to maneuver his way through the matrix we call life. I don't ask for anyones unconditional and undying respect, but I feel we all deserve respect as human beings, until we have proven we don't deserve that either. It's like life. You get out what you put in. That's how it has been for me at K&B.
In closing, I do have some horror stories of my own, but almost all of them have been resolved, so I don't feel the need to bring them up, but if anyone reads this and asks me to divulge my stories, I will do so. Remember, I still work for K&B. I'm not here to trash, nor to praise them. I'm just here telling you my experience with the company everyone loves to hate.

 

A little follow up here. As my feelings about K&B have not changed, my path I have chosen for employment has. I will be leaving K&B in a couple weeks. I will be yankin' tanks now. I chose to leave because a) more earning potential, b) new trucks less than a year old, and c) tired of the know nothing 20 somethings that unfortunately will be the straw that breaks the K&B back. If they don't bring the company down, they will ultimately drive away good drivers. I'm looking forward to a change. I've never "yanked" tanks before, but to not have to sleep next to a reefer unit running all night to maintain -10 degrees in 80-90 degree weather, will not be missed. You get used to the noise after a while, but when u sleep without the trailer running and the apu off, you go to sleep with a smile on your face. I want to be clear. I didn't decide to leave K&B because of one argument with a dispatcher. It was because I'm tired of having to argue, period. I don't think I should have to explain the fed rules on commercial driving to a dispatcher who should know the rules. Maybe they know the rules, but have a different, or should I say selective interperatation. Its just time for me to move on, that's all.

 

LCL Bulk transport. I did a little digging on'em, and it seems they had some problems in the past, but I talked to a couple of people there(Mark & Dorothy), and it was like talking to real people. You know how it is. I've called other companies, and they seem hurried, impatient, short, and kinda robotic. They seem to have memorized the recruiting speech from the many calls he/she takes. This could be that they're growing so fast they need butts behind the wheel fast, or their turn over rate is so high they need drivers bad, so they stay in business. You make the call. I've made mine. Talking to LCL was like talking to, well, people. Not some robotic recruiter, that spits out the memorized speech so fast you have to ask'em to slow down. When you ask'em a question about something that wasn't in their memorized speech, they literally are at a loss for words. Lol. I know that just because LCL seemed honest and real, I won't really know til I'm knee deep in the company, and see what happens when I need something. I took that chance with K&B, and two years later, I see it as a draw. I've dealt with some crap, and got pretty mad, but K&B would do something to redeem themselves. Like getting me home for xmas, and thanksgiving every year. That would make any driver happy. Unless they have no family, and I know a couple of'em, and I thank them because they choose to stay out so others can come home. Thank you! Well, gotta go. Later.

 

Well, I'm done with K&B, and everything went smooth. Not sure what all these other drivers who posted on TRF, were talking about. I've read all the posts, saying K&B screwed them over. Not me. They even offered me a job if my new one doesn't work out. I have yet to receive my last paycheck, so I might be jumping the gun a tad bit, but something tells me I'm not. Ill keep everyone posted.