Cypress Truck Lines: Bad for Newbies, Great Weight Loss Plan

Whoever says Cypress is a "great" company is out of their mind and has clearly NEVER been to the Jax terminal. I was going to orientation with them as an o/o a few years ago. I drove onto their GHETTO ### lot to find hundreds. and I mean HUNDREDS of wrecked "parts" trucks. Yeah, they keep their hundreds of destroyed trucks around so they have parts to fix their "good" trucks. They then wanted to lower my suspension height to get my 5th wheel to 27". When I refused stating I would do it myself and or take it to the dealer they told me this was unsatisfactory. They then wanted me to pay for my physical and drug test. This was the last straw. I got in my truck and bobtailed down the road to the Landstar Terminal. Cypress Truck Lines is a joke.

 

They gave me a 1992 freight shaker.. and its in the shop at least one day out of every two weeks.

 

Well lets see, my Cypress truck is a 1992... #### breaks on it all the time, but its never nothing major.... New breaks and tires... like all of there trucks. I go through a safety lane every single time I enter and exit a terminal. When it goes in the shop, its usually out in a few hours. They never once question when I put it in a shop, they just fix it.

But in trade for not having a impressive truck.. I am home every single weekend.. my dispatcher is awesome..they don't bother me at all. I make my runs and never hear a thing from them. I can even work weekends if I want to pick up some extra miles. My average run is about 500 miles.. and most of my loads are tarped. Once you get the hand of it, tarps are a joke. I get about 2000-2300 miles a week, and considering the shape of the economy I am not complaining.

People like to piss and moan about Cypress... but in all reality they are not the worst company to work for. Although I don't plan on staying with them for ever... I am not going to run away because of an ugly truck.

 

Just tell anyone who tells you to drive a truck that is unsafe that its against the law to tell you those things and that you will pull that truck into a DOT scale and tell them my company just told me I must drive this truck that I feel is unsafe. Trust me after the Manager spends a year in jail with 1000s of dollars in fines he will never do that again...

 

I'm truly sorry you had a "bad" experience with Cypress Truck Lines. For me, it was one great company to work for. I was not a "number". I had a name. Not only did they have one heck of a saftey officer (Lon), folks working in dispatch, and the OWNER of the company, I did my job as they wanted me to and was rewarded for it. If I needed time off, they gave it to me. No questions asked. And when my wife broke her leg, they sent me back as soon as I found about it.

I had the best truck in the fleet. 49011. I took care of it even if it did not belong to be. When it rolled into the Jacksonvill yard, it showed. That WAS my Pete. Being a flatbed driver is hard. It takes a special person to be one. The heat and the cold. Flatbed drivers are the best! You got to have in you to become one. If one is lazy, go to vans. But if you want to keep rolling without down time (i.e., loading and unloading) flatbeds are great. I never waited for either.

By best guess you either did not care, or was just looking for a paycheck without doing your job. Cypress is a great company. Got my son to join them. I can only say you did not have it in you to work for Cypress. They treated me well. With that, going to give you my full name: Lloyd .

Thank you Cypress for allowing me to work with you!!!!

 

Cypress is one of the few that hire in my area. What is their idle policy? Also, do they have a rider policy? Do they allow TV's, refrigerators, and home items?

KH

 

I've been thinking of them more and more. I think I'll be looking into "Sage" in Ft. Pierce, then maybe trying to get on with "Cypress". Just kicking around some ideas....

 

Apparently you have a reading comprehension issue. I read the original post and nothing in it implys the poster was whining about hard work. Its a SAFETY issue. You remember that concept??

 

I had to laugh out-loud when I read your post. I worked for those pukes for 4 months in the summer - fall of 2007.

Everything you said was 100% believable and more ... I had the same year truck assigned to me .. a road-dog TLD that had a mechanical everytime I made a two-week run.

The 4-5 week "training period" is just as you said .. free labor on their yard learning to tarp and strap and do local P&D around Jacksonville before getting in my own truck. The fact is, they wanted to see what kind of personality and worker you are before turning you out. I saw slow learners, slackers, and smart-##### drum-rolled out during that training time ... as they should have ... but good drivers got axed along with them because they didn't have trucks to put them in and used them to fill labor attrition on the yard. FACT.

I had 10 drivers in my orientation class. By the time I was assigned a truck, only 4 of us were left. 3 had multiple years of experience and then there was me, right out of school. Each week, there's a new gaggle of rookies sweating their backsides off on the yard praying they get into a truck.

Their starting pay back then was .28 cpm empty and .30 cpm loaded. I was lucky to get 4 days in per week with the down-turn in the economy and no need for flat-bedding of construction materials.

And True: If you said you were a Lay Minister or never missed Church on Sundays, you'd get a NEW truck and longer runs ... I Witnessed it happen to my fellow drivers who learned to play that card with the company owner, a born-again Southern Christian. Talk about favoritisim ...???

The only thing left out was the miserable condition of the yard and facilities. The truck shack looked like a South Bronx tenement and smelled like it too ... the maintenace facility looked like it must have 50 years ago with the same garbage rotting on the shelves ... a freaking DUMP.

Like the Post said, Don't walk, RUN from these Dregs of the trucking industry. If you're a new driver and need experience, there are plenty of companies that will take you on, train you properly, and give you the necessary experience to land with a better paying company after a year's experience.

 

Hey Robin,

I wish you the best in your search, and I hope you get to where you are going, I just wanted to share my little "incident" with Cypress. I have years of experience behind me, with no accidents or tickets what so ever, and all my driving was "flatbed"...I submitted my app online, called them a few days later, and I was told, and I quote "your application was rejected"??

First time I had ever heard that in my total driving career. Couple of weeks later I was with another flatbed company and running a brand new Freightliner Century....To this day I am still puzzled about that one.

I even approached a Cypress driver one day who unloaded at the same place, he helped me with my tarps and I returned the favor. I told him about what had happened, and just how much of an "impeccable" driving career you had to have to work there? Even he though that it was "rather weird"....dunno....

But I like everyone else will say, unless you get a local driving job that satisfies you, you are going to have to get out there and do some OTR straight for a while to get that better equipment. And if you go local, some OTR companies still may not look at you depending, because your experience has not been "straight over the road"...

Good luck!!!