best flat bed companies

Before you make a final decision on whom to lease, you may want to check to see their freight lanes. Otherwise, you might find that you will need to do a lot of deadheading to get home.

 

I use to have a lot of respect for this company and use to get some loads from them until they pulled that crap in 2009 with their owner operators. I put it right up their with Arrows handling and leaving their drivers abandon. I don't care if you are weeding out the bad or lazy O/O's you don't handle it that way. Telling a driver their lease is terminated when they are far from home is not the way to do business if you are the best. Just saying.........

 

What happened in 2009?

 

http://www.landlinemag.com/todays_news/Daily/2009/Mar09/030209/030609-02.htm

 

They could have handled it better IMO but I think that this statement, from your link. From one of the O/O,s pretty well says what kind of company they are.


< One OOIDA member from Florida found out last week his lease with Mercer had been terminated while waiting to be loaded at a truck stop. The 31-year trucking veteran, who didn’t want to be named because he said he would lease back on to Mercer “in a heartbeat” if they called, said he had heard rumors from other owner-operators that this was coming. However, he didn’t feel it would affect him because he had been with the company for many years and had a good safety record. >

 

I have a friend of mine who was leased to Mercer when that happened. His revenue dropped to where he was only doing about $1,100-1,500 for 3 weeks. He left and went back to running his own authority and hasn't looked back since. He really liked Mercer, but wasn't doing enough business to earn a living. The economy was in the toilet during that period. Mercer had to do something in order to continue operations. They cut those who were causing them problems and had safety issues, for the most part. You can find good and bad issues with any carrier. There are those who have done well and others have lost their shirts with any carrier.

 

They have re-hired some of those drivers... the atmosphere over there is unlike any I've experienced in my time behind the wheel... where else will your carrier loan you $12,000.00 interest free to rebuild your engine?

You can truly run your own deal there with little input from management... I quit because I could no longer do flatbed work (needed a shoulder replacement) and I couldn't make enough with their van division to make it work.

They may have handled that a little poorly but they are a top notch operation...

 

Didn't you post some where that you quit their in the 70's? Lot's of things change in the last 30 or so years. I bet you can't get a interest free loan know even if they still do loan that chunk of change. As far as them rehiring some of them back well I wouldn't return to any company if I was let go like that no matter how they pay or operate. I called them shortly after they started hiring again and all the recruiter talked about was selling me a trailer because I guess that is the business they are into, Lease Purchase. I couldn't get leased on unless I bought their trailer on a lease purchase and the interest rate and payments were not cheap.

 

I ran for them from '01 until the end of '06...

I think you may have gotten some bad info about the trailer deal. Everyone I knew had their own trailer when I was there... a few new guys came on board without. They had 1200 O/O's then and maybe 100 trailers on a rent to own deal.

That may have changed some in the ensuing years but I doubt Mercer ever required you to lease/rent to sign on...

When you needed tires, repairs etc. I'd just get a Comchek and they would deduct from my settlements for a maximum of 12 weeks... unless it was a big ticket deal then you'd have to negotiate a payment schedule.

Having that ability to use someone else's $$$ made my cash flow even better. I could have paid for most anything... the biggest loan I took out was $4500.00... but it was nice to have that reserve in my bank account just in case.

Another nice thing was we weren't charged for fuel taxes... they paid it all. And if you quit early, before your license was expired, they would sell it to the next guy and refund anything you didn't use... plus you get a fe lunch from your travel agent every time you visit Louisville... they have company cars you can use to run errands, go to dinner, etc.

You can turn down 500 loads in a row... they never withheld a check because your paperwork wasn't in (but they won't reload you until it's right)...

Good outfit...