Cobra was taken... By Holland Enterprises

I didn't want to divulge my plans until it was set in stone, but I just finished orientation at Holland Enterprises and got dispatched on my first load today so I would say it's set in stone now, lol. Despite the existing threads on this company, I decided to start my own since the creators of the other threads no longer update them. I will update this thread periodically until I either quit or retire. I will be posting in the Caledonia Haulers thread to give my review at some point in the near future as well.

I got a rental car to orientation at no cost out of pocket other than gas but that will be reimbursed on my first paycheck. Orientation started on Monday, but I arrived in Mapleton a little early on Saturday evening. They had no problem at all letting me stay in the room until Monday. Also, Holland wants you to bring all the stuff you need for your truck and load it directly into your truck (if it's ready) as soon as you arrive so it gave me time on Sunday to organize all of my stuff and store it away in the truck how I want.

To summarize, orientation was a breeze. Overall Holland has exceeded my expectations so far. First of all, the truck I got is much better equipped than I expected. It has tire pressure monitoring, heated and cooled seat, upgraded radio with apple car play/android auto, and a pretty big fridge (for reference, if you drive a cascadia, there's only 5 inches between the top of the fridge and the bottom of the microwave shelf) with a separate freezer compartment. They also have pretty much all the settings on the dash unlocked. You can choose to turn off eCoast (when it coasts in neutral downhill), you can change the over/under limits of the cruise control, you can adjust engine idle rpm, change the transmission to performance mode, and probably many other settings but there's too many for me to remember. The truck is fairly new with only 85k miles. I also have a pretty big cattle guard (it basically goes up to the top of the grill). Obviously it has all the safety features that almost any company has these days: adaptive cruise control/collision mitigation, Lane departure warning, and blind spot warning. It has Freightliner's ParkSmart system which is a battery powered APU and the truck is capable of starting automatically when the batteries get low. There's also a shore power plug so you can plug the truck in and keep the batteries charged in a addition to running the heat or AC inside without the engine ever having to start. The Holland terminal has plugs in various locations outside the building and inside the south bay where you're welcome to park your truck if there's room. There's also a bathroom in the south bay so if you're sleeping in there it's conveniently close by. If you don't want to sleep in your truck while staying at the terminal, you can also get a room upstairs if you let them know ahead of time.

I could rant about the truck all day but this post is already getting extremely long. If you guys have any questions about anything I didn't cover, please feel free to reply.

The accommodations were another thing that surprised me. While waiting for orientation and during orientation you have access to the driver's lounge. They constantly stock sandwiches, chips and other snacks, soda, water, fruit juice, instant ramen, instant mac n cheese, and sometimes have a hot pot of soup on the counter as well for the drivers. When you're not actively orientating, you also have access to their company vehicles if you want to run to Fargo to get something to eat or do some shopping (2 hour limit). My room had a very comfortable bed and a mini fridge that was also stocked with some drinks and snacks.

I'm making 54.5cpm starting out and I was told it may be reevaluated after 90 days. I would like to note: not everyone starts at the same cpm at Holland. It depends on your record. I guess mine was pretty good because the range they gave me beforehand was 50-55cpm. You get 1cpm quarterly for safety, basically just don't eff up and you'll get it. 1cpm quarterly for 33k miles in a quarter, an additional 1cpm for 36k, and an additional 1cpm for 38k. So if you hit 38k and don't eff up the safety bonus, you're looking at 4cpm on 38k miles which comes out to $1520. The detention pay after 2 hours is $15 an hour and a max $150 per day. Layover pay is for if you wait to receive a load for more than 24 hours at $150 per day and the same for breakdown pay. Stop pay is $30 per additional stop but not first and last.

As many have mentioned before on other threads, Holland Enterprises does really long hauls. Lots of coast to coast loads but even the ones that aren't technically coast to coast are pretty long as well, 1500-2000 miles usually. They even showed us their loads on the backend and you could see lots of 3000 miles runs, 2700 mile runs, just lots of 2000+. When they scrolled to the bottom, the shortest hauls they had were in the 900s I think, but don't quote me on that. There could be loads that are shorter than that but I suspect it's incredibly rare and only for getting you to a place where the longer runs are.

Some of this might be repeat information since other threads already exist for Holland, but I figured it doesn't hurt to confirm it.

Like I said, I just finished orientation today and I got my load assignment. I'm going to pick up tomorrow in Buxton, ND going to Wilkesboro, NC. 65 empty miles and 1408 loaded. I can't express how excited I am to work for this company. I don't think I've ever been this excited about a job. I don't want to make it sound like everything is completely perfect rainbows and unicorns. Every company has their pros and cons. But so far this one seems to have way more pros for me. I'm excited and ready to prove it stays that way.

 

I'm not sure what you mean.

 

You say that like I have to work harder than you to make the same money. More miles does not necessarily equal more work. I'm going to run on recaps which means I'm working 61.25 hours per week on average instead of 70. I'm also not going to have 14 hour days as much since I'm not dealing with pickups and deliveries quite as often. I also get to see different parts of the country all the time instead of running in one certain area which is tedious to me. I'm aware that some people like to stay in a certain area because it's familiar, but the whole country is my familiar area.