Builders take TWO: my 6 months at BTC memphis and why I still recommend them....

So everyone wants to know what happened to ybfjax? What ever became of BTC? What am I doing now.

Well, first I should start by mentioning what wasn't covered in the initial book I wrote about Builders Transportation flatbed out of memphis tn.

- They do use QualComm. You have your 'circle of service' marcos.
Hey I accept this load > 'i've arrived at the shipper > I've picked up from shipper > I'm at the receiver > I'm empty. And there are other marcos for breakdowns and other stuff and the free-form.

- home time Builders does not guarantee that you will be home every weekend. But if Builders isn't getting you home every weekend, you know freight is slow. Builders has out-of-routed me 300+ miles (one time almost 500 mi) to go home. This is consistent with what my trainer was telling me and what others have told me. But if you want to run, they'll let you run, too.

BTC wont make you run illegal, but there are always those drivers who want to do 3500-4000mi a week. So if you just so happen to get that load there "early", no questions are asked. It's an unwritten rule that apparently a lot of trucking companies have

Layover pay was $40 a day. I found myself fighting for this although some others at BTC had no problems getting their additional pays. I think we disagreed on what a layover was.

Breakdown pay was $150/day after 24 hours if u were away from home, if you were sent home, it was $75 a day (after first 24 hours). A $600/wk cap was placed on that.

Detention pay was $12/hr after 2 hours. I never got this though.

- Student tuition reimbursement was $50 week up to your loan amount. You had to run 1450 miles or $2100 in freight revenue or something like that. Not bad requirement to pick up an extra $50.

- They stayed on top of their pay periods. Weekly. The cut-off was tues 10pm CST that your paperwork had to be transflo-ed at any pilot or loves in order to get paid that SAME Friday. So BTC was only less than 3 days behind on pay. Kudos to BTC for that. Never seen a company so on point with pay

- They started an "inspection perfection" safety bonus deal for almost 1/2 year starting in June or July 2008 until dec, 2008. $100 for the first 2 clean DOT inspections, and $250 for the 3rd one. And then this process RESET with NO LIMIT. I spoke to a local short haul guy who, on top of being paid on percentage was really raking in. My trainer raked in a few.

I wanted to post this thread earlier on in 2008, but never got around to it so that others could get this news and benefit from it. May be too late now.

I did try to get it twice, but failed. One time because of an Out of Service OOS (a steering arm was loose more than 1/8" play, according to DOT). The second time, I had a light out on my tractor, it turned out to be a loose wire because it was on shortly before I pulled in. Being OOS sucks. A word to the wise, if you are going to do that with any company, fridays are a bad day to do it. I was able to get it fixed and move on, but it was the whole ordeal of having to wait for someone to come and take care of it. And you're not making anything during that time.

- They let you customize your truck how you want inside. I was able to install an inverter (the shop will do it for you, just bring them some long jumper cables), and I had a 2.7 cu ft haier fridge from walmart. I also had a printer to print my logs. [edit: I used Drivers Daily Log. Great program. just match up the correct form as there are several stock forms. I think it was 0801 with minimal driver inspection checklist.]

- They were also fairly good about keeping up with the maintenance of the trucks and trailers. Not to fancy about the low-tops you could barely stand up in them. And the engines weren't the strongest, but it got you from point a to point b. If you broke down, they paid for the maintenance, no questions asked.

- You could fuel at any pilot truck stop (Loves required permission). You couldn't fuel at the same truck stop twice within a 24 hour period. There was a cap per day on how much $$ of fuel you could pump. It is adjusted with price of fuel. It was $700/day at one point. You could also do a cash advance up to $150/day to take care of tolls

- NO prepass or ez pass. That sucked. Not sure if they ever did get either one.

- They left you alone in ur truck. They let you run how you wanted to. As long as you weren't significantly out of route, they never bothered you for those things. You plan your routes accordingly. I recommend Microsoft streets and trips 2007 edition with the TruckStopsPlus add on. You may think you need one of those "trucker" gps. That is a bunch of BS. The quickest routes often take you down limited access hwys anyway. And then you have your motor carrier atlas as a backup. But I've NEVER had to crack open that book. Do NOT use Copilot 11!!! Terrible software.

I know they allow riders. they have to be at least 18 yrs old. You have to fill out a form. It is a cost for the insurance. forgot how much/ never needed to use it. It varied on how long you were going to have the rider for.

-Dress code was farily liberal. No uniforms. Steel toe boots. That's it.

From what I understand as of now (Jan, 2009)

- No more weekly bonus. That really sucks. That was an extra .03 just for doing your job.

- quarterly bonus is still in effect, but that may change. BTC really does try to give you the bonus if you deserve it (met the criteria). If you are close in one category and were a hard worker, Ken (fleet operations mgmr) tries to give you the bonus. But if you give them a reason not to give it to you, they will pocket the money for sure.

- student grads are no longer being considered until freight picks up. In fact, they stopped this since about mid-nov or so. That sucks for trainers, because that's where they get part of their revenue from every mile their students run. So I guess it will work for them for a little bit, but after about 6-12 months when those ex-trainees fall off the trainer payroll, those checks are going to look noticably smaller.

- No plans to lay off any drivers (yet). I think they are just slowing down on hiring anyway and counting on attrition, as student drivers made up almost 50% of their fleet. I think at one point even more than that (closer to 70%).

- They went to a new tarp system. Instead of the heavy 80lbs or so lumber tarps, now it is a steel tarp with a 8 ft drop and 2 smaller tarps (with 8ft drops?) I was told that you could cover a full 13' load with 3 tarps. It's supposed to work out really well on the driver's back and is much lighter.

[edit] Dont plan on getting new tarps. I remember back when it was as easy as walking in and just requesting a tarp. They gave it to you. Now everything is patched in the yard just about. So everyone is in deed cutting back.

- not sure about the "Inspection Perfection" safety bonus. I'm pretty sure that is canx. If they cant afford the weekly bonus, what would make them want to shell out 4-10 times that? Besides, if freight is slower, then in theory there should be less violations, and therefore a lower safety score, right?

I still keep in touch with my trainer (Charlie) every once in a while. I thank him for what he taught me and I guess what I teach him now.

I don't know what other pays have changed.

I have some respect for latanea and other union persons here. I know from first-hand experience what it was like to wait by a shipper/receiver for several hours and not get paid one cent. I'm not pro/anti union and don't really care which plantation you prefer to work for. At the end of the day, you do want to be fairly compensated for what you do.

I remember I was at one construction outfit and they were about 20 minutes away from unloading my trailer. Suddenly I saw everyone start to walk off and I asked 'hey, where's everyone going?'.... "Lunch. We'll finish unloading in about 1.5 hours" Then I was at another union dock at CSU in Ohio (this was after I left BTC) and we were in the middle of setting up a tent which would have taken 10 minutes at the most. Then we noticed the union people stopped and said that they were going to take their coffee break. Now do I have a problem with them taking breaks? No. But come on. Have some more professionalism. I could see if we had another hour or 2 to go, but why not finish the task at hand and then take the break?

You know what though, one day that might be me and I might be hearing the non-unioners whisper under their breath "are u kidding me?" Maybe I wont hear them because I'll be to far away towards the break room. (Oh, and don't remind me about the time I was at the Alcoa plant and waited almost 8 hours past appt time to get loaded. How many breaks were taken while I was (finally) just in the dock?) Oh, reminiscing on the good old days of OTR freight hauling.

So if things were so great, why'd u leave BTC? I was fired. Why? I never got a straight answer. on my dac it says late pickups and deliveries, which I know is bull. Anytime I knew I wasn't going to make it I either notated it on the marcos or sent in a freeform. There were several service failures that were counted against me that were not my fault. But I won't go into it. All of it was kept in house anyway, so I didn't sweat it too much. Besides, things happen for a reason, which you will see in the last paragraph.

Trucking is a bulls***ers game anyway. Anyone who says that you can do 2500 miles a week legally (flatbed) is either a) dedicated, b) in the right freight lanes and the right time c) full of it. Comparativly speaking, BTC was a great company. Some of these other flatbed outfits? Well, I know it wouldn't have worked out with TMC. They need to work on their people skills and how they relate to their drivers. I think Maverick would have been a great follow up to BTC or perhaps even vice versa, but to start out with I think I got the best of everything and for that I'm greatful. Ironically, I remember telling my trainer "You know, in order to get anything useful out of a starter company, you got to stay there at least 6 months. Otherwise, you might have to repeat the whole ordeal. [edit: of possibly having to go through another trainee process at another company. Staying at one company for as long as possible (1 year or longer)"

I think that BTC has the greatest amount of positives and the least negatives. They aren't the biggest, but the've made a [good] name for themselves. About 500 trucks strong. From some of the shippers I picked up to some drivers I met who used to work for builders, all had something good to say about them. There was one guy I ran into that was completely salty about BTC, something about an accident that occured on the job and how BTC treated him afterwards. (Clay in safety came from maverick; I wonder how Shawntel is doing and if she enjoyed the soap I left for her).

And I walked away with 6 months experience, a preventable accident. (they reported getting stuck in the mud a reportable accident on DAC; No property damage) I'm glad I got it at BTC.

So what am I doing now? Well that deserves another thread in itself. In fact, it deserves a whole other sub-category. I guess I'll leave you with a taste before my next book. I noticed that there's almost nothing about marketing/promotional companies on this board. There's a 'hidden' cdl industry in marketing and they are making good money. So this should be the thread to ask new BTC questions and I will close out the older thread.

Thank you all for your concerns and support.​

 

Wasn't able to add above in time, but it just occurred to me that BTC flatbed did in fact reimburse me for ALL tolls paid. You can do cash advances at pilots while you fuel at no cost. So trip planning is important if you do not keep cash on you and you are going up north (or wherever tolls are). If you transflo it before the deadline tues, you get it back the same friday.

Keep your maintenance and tire receipts just in case. Sometimes they pay for it with their card, sometimes they use EFS and they link your EFS card to it. In other words, they take it out of your check and reimburse you when u transflo the receipts in. I think if the maintenance is above a certain amount, then they use their card.

Also, another thing. Let's say a bank holiday comes up and it falls on a friday or thursday. That would push up the pay period for that week. So perhaps the deadline might be mon instead of tuesday. If so, you will be notified SEVERAL times on the qualcomm. Usually 2-3 weeks out and then again several times the week of the modified pay period.