Beware of Total Transportation Richland, MS

This story deserves to be told and told again due to the horrendous way I was treated by Total Transportation and Tony W in particular.

When I got to Total Transportation in Nov. 2014 after orientation I drove a rental car with three other drivers up to their terminal at Olive Branch, MS . On the way up there my new dispatcher informed me my truck was at a remote location and I would get a ride to it. After arriving at the terminal I dropped my stuff and other drivers off and went to Memphis International to return the rental car. It was rush hour traffic and my dispatch called me frantic telling me I needed to be back there to not miss the driver who was leaving soon. I told him, “I’ll be there when I can.” He took issue with that and that started a tenuous relationship with that dispatcher. Apparently he doesn’t understand rush hour traffic in the Memphis area of which he lives and works.

I was driven by a driver to a truck repair place where apparently the truck I was being issued had been left and later found out that truck had been left there so the driver of another truck could pick up his truck. I did a pre-trip and noticed the fan belt looked too skinny. I informed the company and later on that first trip to Texas I got a replacement fan belt. Upon replacing that skinny fan belt the new fan belt got skinny in a hurry with little use so I stopped by the Richland, MS terminal. They declared the wrong fan belt had been used and put on a new fan belt. That fan belt wore down quickly and my next terminal I stopped in was a US Express yard near Chicago and that shop declared to me the wrong fan belt had been used. When I complained the shop manager there got irate with me. The next shop I stopped at was Loudon, TN. I told the terminal manager that something had to be done to correct this problem. They finally discovered why the fan belts were being tore up. Apparently the truck was in a front end accident the previous summer and no one had caught that and the fan hub was out of alignment. All these shops including US Express shops are all computer linked and truck histories I would think are part of the info.

The next problem that never got solved through multiple shop visits was a leak in the air system. The air while driving would bleed off to the point of the system 1 red light low pressure coming on. Another three shop visits later no solving the leak in the air system.

The terminal manager promised me a new truck when all these problems had re-occurred and I was told after another fiasco of retrieving a truck from a PA repair shop I headed back to Memphis to pick up my new truck. When I got there the Terminal manager Tim reneged on his promise when I got there saying, “We don’t have enough trucks.” So there was a promise made to me not fulfilled.

Because of all these shop visits my average pay was $490.00 a week take-home. From this I had to buy my own food on the road. I was in a shop almost weekly.

I even had a phone conversation with John D. Stomps, CEO and he promised to meet with me when I got to the main terminal in Richland, MS and that never happened.

I got sick and tired.

I decided when I got back to Richland, MS I got all my things out of the truck, rented my own motel room at my own expense and decided that either they were going to get me a new truck or I was leaving.

The next morning I walk into Tony W’s office carrying my backpack and his first words to me was “why do you have your things?” I told him I was not getting back into that truck. He started scrambling to get me into a new truck looking at spreadsheets and such and he found one in Loudon, TN. He told me I would be getting a ride to Loudon with a driver who would “talk my ear off.” He certainly did. From Jackson, MS to Loudon, TN that driver never stopped talking and there was no place for me to lie down so I had to stay in the passenger seat after being up all day. I arrived at the hotel that Total paid for with instructions I could sleep til noon the next day. I arrived at Midnight. Around 9 AM I was woken up by a terminal person from the front desk who was claiming that if I didn’t come with him I would have to walk. I told him I was given permission to sleep in till noon.

At noon I walked to the front desk and that same terminal person was at the front desk verbally shaming me to the front desk person. At the same time a driver team also joined in the fray uninvited and I told them it was none of their business but that did not stop them. I was threatened physically by the husband of the driver team and I called the police. He exclaimed, “you’ll be fired by the afternoon.” The police hearing my story decided to give me a ride to the terminal and did so. While at the terminal I was in the process of getting my things near the new truck while it was being cleaned and I got called in the office.

The local terminal manager said I was being let go and said I had been swearing at the window person at the terminal. Nothing of the kind happened. I got my things, called a taxi and left as soon as possible.

What was my part? Hauling their stuff with on-time deliveries safely and dealing with defective equipment. What was their part? Lying to me about giving me a new truck, lying to me about being able to sleep in after keeping me up all day and most of the night, then harassing me and lying about me causing problems when their own personal caused the problems.

These people have no shame and no sense of responsibility. Be aware.

 

I really agree with another poster when he said there is no such thing as a driver shortage. The shortage is a great number of companies saying on the one hand "We care about our drivers" and that is all it is just BS. If you have a safe record and great on-time delivery rate there is no reason why something like this should ever happen. It's a shame the Teamsters got too greedy and corrupt because if they were still around companies that pull crap like this would not get away with it.