Halvor Lines, Superior, WI: No longer worth it

I guess the people from the office are getting pretty desperate and feel the need to bash others who tell it like it is, in true big trucking company corporate style. I'm sorry that you have such a hard time accepting the truth.

Care to tell anyone how long you've REALLY been driving, and how you landed that OFFICE job? My, oh my... and to set the record straight, I am not calling anyone out by name, as you have accused others of doing on here. YOU named yourself.

 

Ah, so nice to see one of the Kings of the West Coast Crybaby club on here. With the number of drivers that you've suckered into working and there and kickback you've received from it, I guess you feel its your duty.

 

Why don't you quit dancing on the fence and make your mind up. I caught up on some long overdue reading on here today. In some posts, you bash them. In other posts, you talk them up. So why don't you make up your mind about these guys instead of switching sides every few months?

 

Ok so you have less than 10 posts on this website in nearly a year and a half? And almost all of them flaming at Halvor Lines? Why not get over it and get over yourself, and put your experience to use in some other discussions on here instead of coming back here to troll every few months? If your new job is so great why not tell us about that on a different post instead of lashing out at others?

And for the record, no I wasn't happy working here So I left. I do not feel the need to dwell on it forever. I did not agree with a lot of the things they did but they are running their business, not me. I am seeing a lot more of their trucks on the road again by the way.

 

Not sure how this will post but here goes... I guess it comes down to perssonal preferences.If you dont like wher you work ...go some where else. Complaining and not putting up with Halvor's #### will only get you fired. I ,too, thought Halvor was the BEST till the honeymoon was over. I was costantly lied to by Halvor Dispathers , Halvors Head dispathers such as: Shawn Vinge - Biggest most worthless piece of #### that ever lived who lies as easily as he breathes . Chad is now Shawns lil-bithch and is as bad . Terry in safty is a ####### liar ........Well lets face it most of Halvor's Office staff are family or related in some way and if you disagree with one you get put on #### list of all .
Now there are good people at Halvor who at least try to treat drivers decent but very few.. at least in that way it is not all bad .
Another thing is I recognize are the names on some of these posts.. They put nice things on here .....but in the drivers room they ##### as loud as anyone.... Twofaced babys sucking that Halvor tit,.. tuck your heads low you twofaced lil ####### ..
I am not afraid to stand up and speak my mind . I am not afraid to call dispatch on their lies and ######## . However it did get me Fired from Halvorlines .. It did make things veryhard for me ..Fired on my birthday ..so .....no job ..Ilost my house ...Divorced.. . Halvor really tried to do a number on me ...All because I insist on NOT BEING LIED TO...

THe last is ......now everthing is coming together ....IE:I have found a wonderful women who loves me ... we have a beautiful home ...a thriving business and life is good because I got to laugh last and Im still laughing .......All the way to the Bank!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thats right . I took the BIG ...NASTY....Inbred ####beast called HALVOR LINES to court and won ............so can you . It was not all fun ...I had to go through a lot of #### and it could have been avoided if the company would have some principals .Tell the truth instead of lying to me ...

Soooooooooo..............now I have it all And a big ### pile of money and guess where Ill be? It wont be in a Halvor Lines truck it will be here to offer assistance and the number to my Lawyer so you to can fight back against injustice and just plain bad things Halvor Lines is doing . I have an appointment with MN DOT to start looking at papers and recorded conversations with safty , Diapatch , Shop and Halvor is in for a BIG BIG HURT...... WHERE IT WILL HURT THEM THE MOST..... IN the wallet.

 

Not sure if this is true or not, but it sure made me laugh!!! It's gonna take me 10 minutes to clean the coffee and half my breakfast off the screen and keyboard. I guess you are one of the people that got more p@ssed off than I did. I just got mad and quit was all. Listening to them still try to talk their company up while it crumbles in front of them is revenge enough for me.

Speaking of two faced narks, There is one guy there that really got under my skin. He look kind of like a grown up version of Ralphie from a Christmas Story movie back in the 1980's, only more annoying as he talks with that annoying Duluth-Fargo-Northern MN-WI accent. He has worked in the office and drives for them too. He is another one of them that will complain and gossip in the break room worse than a soap opera star and a day later it all gets preached to Dispatch and the owners.

So he played that game with me too one time, and a few months later I caught up to him at the Plainfield, WI truck stop. He was eatin at the counter sittin with all the owner ops blabbin about politics, religion, and trucker trash talk just like a true Billy Big Rigger, HL jacket on with all those stupid patches. When confronted with his narking in front of the restaurant his only response was--- "I .......uh.....uh....uh....it wasn't me...uh..........musta been one of those other guys there that day......uhhhh....I ain't hardly been on the phone or been in the office much lately......"

Sure............

Ralphie sank real low in his seat and quickly finished his breakfast and didn't say too much after I made him and his company look like doo-doo. I was ready to quit HL anyway at that point, had my new job in a month or two. I wasn't out for blood but it made my whole year to see Ralphie squirm like the little worm he really is.

 

"With as much freight as they haul between the Twin Cities and the East Coast, I see no reason they couldn't have built a couple more actual terminals"... "and one out east (NJ, PA, NY) probably would have worked out great."

They had one in Carlisle,PA when I was there...it didnt work out so well. Sue ran that fiasco into the ground.

 

And I have to concur with just about as much as the drivers said/say about Halvor Lines. It is not like it used to be.

I was here from 95-2004. I was one of their senior drivers when I left. The ones here now have no idea what it use to be like. We survived Potltach pulling the rug out from under the carriers who pulled their paper, survived Flemming revamping their operations and destroying 80% of the backhauls back to the midwest, and the numerous other signs of the times that Halvor Lines withstood when I was a company driver there.

Back then...they were the best of the best. Things really started to change when Bill Vinje passed away suddenly. That WAS the turning point for most of who are alumni of the Good Ole Days, when Halvor Lines was a place that couldnt be beat...pay, hometime,equipment, and benefits. Bill treated us like family up til the day he passed. We were spoiled...and most of our rivals were jealous.

But that was then, and this is now. I am sorry tha Halvor has become just another same ole same ole trucking company. When I worked for them, they WERE THE BEST. So why did I leave? I hit the top of the pay scale and thought owning my own truck was the answer. And it was for the most part. But I miss the days when all I had to do was drive. Halvor always maintained their trucks, I always got home when I requested...and most of us were home either every weekend or every other weekend, and we could run where we wanted for the most part. Every solo driver had to do the occasional Hoboken, NJ, Astoria, Ny, or Woburn,Ma...but you got use to it...and it wasnt punishment. Someone always had to do it. And when we had great dispatchers who always remebered and made up for it the next time.

I spent most of my time in Tx, Ga, Al, MS, Fl, and the Carolinas....and I live in Minnesota, where for the most part, have never found a carrier to match what I had in the past.


But again...those were the good ole days.

 

I started working here toward the end of the "good ole days". Started out in the fall of 1999 and thought i had finally found that perfect job that I would never leave. Bill Vinje died in 2001 and like you said how quickly the tide began to change...

With a few exaggerations most of what is stated in these posts is true. All of dispatch owners and management are family, related or friends of each other in some sort of way. Get on the bad side of one and you are blacklisted by all of them. 10 years ago you were treated like a member of the family. By the time I quit I had to look at the paint on the door of my truck to make sure it didn't say Werner or JB Hunt, thats the way I felt anyway.

The favoritism with loads also got really bad the last few years I was there, and came to a boiling point with a lot of us in 2008. That still didn't stop it from happening even after at least one dispatcher got sent home for a week with no pay.

When I started there you did the armpit NE loads ever once in a while because it was part of the job, and I never had a problem doing 1 or 2 a month because everyone was doing their fair share. Most of the senior drivers left shortly after Bill died because they saw the writing on the wall, but some of them that stuck around developed a pompous uppity attitude that they should be entitled to the easy long runs every week. Dispatch gradually turned from a slight gaggle into complete chaos when they bought out Timberline.

My exploding point came in the Spring of 2008 when I had to use one of their spare junky Kenworth T2K one week. I found out that several other drivers used it after me, yet I was accused of hitting something and cracking the bumper on it. And my accuser was some little snot nosed punk mechanic, but since he was FAMILY, THEIR FAMILY it was his word against mine about who did it. They told me my safety bonus for Q1 was gone, and tried to write me up for damaging equipment and not notifying the company. I never had an accident while working here, and the few minor, VERY MINOR Mishaps I had in those 8 years I always owned up to them. Thats when I threw the keys back at them and told them where they could shove their 65 MPH POS.

Almost all the drivers i knew well and got along with are now gone. It doesn't take long for people to realize when they are left out in the cold and not wanted.

Oh and nice try trying to ruin my DAC there big safety man (you know who you are), I had that taken care of and erased in no time.

I found a good driving job a week after i quit but I wish I could find one as great as Halvor used to be.

 

I worked there on two ocassions and wish I had never left. Sure, some things werent always my way. I spent most of my time out east, but it didnt bother me because of the mileage I was getting. Plus you go to the same places, its not so bad. The broker freight could be abit challenging and micky mouse, but they didnt bust your balls about "getting it there on time" or if the broker was freaking out. It seemed alot more laid back when they went to E-Logs. No more "favors" for dispatch. Which I liked. They had some overweight paper loads comming out of thunder bay and asked me if I could run them, I told them no and no problems. Still was getting my mileage. 65 mph trucks are the norm for most fleets anymore thats truckin now-a-days. they were 68 when I first started there. I had occassions where loads were pulled off me after being dispatched to my qualcomm and I know they went to another "senior" driver. But hey, if they were there 20 years, let em have the gravy train run. If I was there 20 years, Id want a perk too.. Once you get maxed out on pay, ya know, what else ya gonna do. They have a lot invested in the industries up there and its a great carrier especailly if you live up north. I lived in south bend and got as many miles as I wanted.

im sorry about your bad experiences. and I know there is a lot of family working in there and what not, but thats what a family business is all about and if the roles were reversed, you would do the same. i think the difference now is that its a business now more then a truckers business. and you will always have that when the higher ups havent trucked.

i wish i never left, hope to pull for them again, recomend to anyone.