Heartland Express Great Compant to work for

I remember when I was with Gordon and after the buyout I was asked to take a load from Seattle to the Heartland Dallas Terminal. Since that was my old terminal I thought it would be nice to see the old gang again. And it was. Except I got stuck there for 5 days while they tried to get me a load back to the West Coast. They did pay me to wait though, I will give them that. I went into dispatch to see if I could do a local run or something to help them out. But, I was using Peoplenet and they dispatched on Qualcomm. No way to meet in the middle. They finally got me to OKC and then SoCal from there. I got paid no matter what and I got to once again enjoy the traffic circle that is known as Dallas.

 

Heartland was my first OTR job and I made it 6 weeks. Had not a single clue what I was doing since I went from a local shuttling job to out on my own OTR with absolutely no OTR experience Poor driver manager was probably baffled when I decided to do my 34 reset behind a Tractor Supply with a truck stop 2 miles down the road. Safety manager had to have a 45 minute phone call with me to explain the basics of logging. Blew through the security shack at the first warehouse I went to cause I thought I was just following signs for shipping like I always did mosey’ing around at the mom and pop day cab company.

I will say they were patient with me and it was a very laid back environment. There was a surprisingly decent amount of long tenure drivers I encountered in my time there. Probably the biggest benefit I took for granted was having terminals in some very hard-to-park areas of the country, such as Atlanta. Main reason I left is because it was in the height of the COVID boom and pretty much everywhere was hiring, and was able to find something a bit more tailored for what I wanted.

Main gripe I had was it was a lot of 2-300 mile DC to store deliveries, but looking back on it, it’s probably cause they thought I was chewing on crayons in my free time.

I could definitely see the potential there on the right regional account. I think there’d be better OTR options, but they have their pros for sure, and fairly lenient hiring standards.

 

For them to have 7 straight losing qtrs shows they are in trouble regardless..

 

Is heartland intergrating cfi into the heartland brand and dissolving it?? That’s a cfi truck number on the sleeper

 

I still see a lot of trucks an trailers running around still branded with CFI's logos.

 

I’ve run across 3 trucks with cfi numbers on them and heartland logos in the past week

 

It's a dog eat dog world I guess. Lol! I was always a little confused about the cfi buyout by heartland. Originally I read where they were only buying up a certain portion of cfi, yet now it seems as if they've bought the whole enchilada so to speak.

 

You must be on the GP account. Kim is one of the best.

 

I did leave, we had no choice. Things got so bad that as a TEAM, we struggled to get 2500 miles a week, because Heartland pissed away the freight. In fact, almost every driver I knew at CFI has since left, and I knew a lot of people there. Their decisions cost us all $$$$$, and their decisions are why they are losing $$$$$. I know a few guys that left CFI to go to Heartland as they were actively trying to get us to all go over there. Guess how many are still with Heartland….0! I get being bought by another company, but at least be honest about it. Instead, they created an environment where everyone walks on eggshells and is afraid to actually say how they feel. Most of the CFI drivers you are running into were not there before Heartland bought them out, they have turned over almost the entire fleet, at least what’s left of it.