? for Knight Refrigerated drivers - what are your thoughts on Kooltrans?

This doesn't make any sense...on too of that they hire the former CEO of central refrigerated to run the company...

 

Talk about stuff that doesn't make any sense.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say they are doing this to pay back some favor somewhere. Guy has been around the Mormon boys for a long time.

 

where does it say the boys are mormon?

 

They're mormons...look it up..

 

I'm a driver for KoolTrans and I can tell you that Knight's reefer loads are a snooze. KoolTrans is here to fix that up. So if anything, Knight drivers should be happy that we're raising the bar on weekly mileage with better timed appointments. Quite frankly, I don't understand why Knight would run their reefers and dump so much money on reefer fuel by scheduling loads to deliver days longer than necessary. I notice that Knight drivers don't like to run hard. What's up with that?

 

You answered your own question.

In addition their pay is so low, most drivers have been out a month or longer and are trying to get home so they can quit. They aren't very motivated.

 

Most Knight reefer rigs are like 'turtles' and carry their 'shell' with them---i.e. dont have to look for MT's as their loads are all live load/live unloads which means their runs take 2-3 days with waiting times for a typical 300 mile run........but no time spent looking for MT's as reefer trucks can always carry a dry van MT if needed (seen several doing so myself, altho dry van trucks arent allowed to carry MT reefers and must spend time looking for the MT's not 'stolen' by reefer trucks!)

 

When I first started a month ago, the first week was like that. After that we pick up the load, haul ### the same day and dispatch would bug the planners to reschedule the delivery dates to when we the drivers say we'll get there. In 28 days we've averaged 11,000 miles so far and were still not satisfied. A lot of the loads I'm now squeezing in delivery, dead head and pickup all on the same shift and then run 650-700 miles a day to get it there just so we can show Knight that these reefer loads don't need 2 days extra. KoolTrans doesn't plan on dropping and hooking trailers and I for one am for this. My truck and my trailer stay damage free and well maintained. I don't have to worry about picking up another trailer that's missing lights, flat tires or ripped chutes Etc.

Im really hoping we get our own planners and customer service personell so we can run the way we used to do it in Central. If any knight drivers want to run hard and not cry, come over too the Kool side

 

Going to be honest. This post made me chuckle a little inside. Most loads on the reefer side have 1 day at most extra on them some have none (Few hours) most can be changed if needed if not I simply drop it in a yard a day early and move on. As of not running hard, Solo I avg between 2900 on a very slow week to 3400 to 4000 on a busy week. The miles are there if a person wants them. It's on them to decide how they want to run or not.

As of raising the "Bar" please realize that Kool trans was created by a few Knight exec's to pick up loads we were "MISSING" because of ether a conflict of interest with another contract or simply did not have the trucks in the area to service them. Kool Trans was based out of SLC to be able to soak up that market. Its a experiment to see how it works under the Knight umbrella. How do I feel about this ? Awesome to be honest. We are getting additional contracts on both sides because of this and less loads are going to "Other company's" Allowing more of us to soak up the miles. Will it work ? I guess we will see and frankly hope it does. All else fails MR Knight will just absorb Kool trans back into Knight if it does not.