How Good is Shaffer?

People treat you how you let them. That’s why it’s important to lay down the law early on.

 

How does Marten Transport compare to Shaffer:

At orientation at Marten, our dispatcher took us out to lunch at a nice restaurant compared to Shaffer ordering us fast food. During lunch, our dispatcher at Marten Transport told us that he wanted all of us to make a lot of money working for Marten Transport.

My dispatcher at Marten Transport, consistently pre-assigned me three loads at a time, compared to waiting for a load after empty at Shaffer, and my weekly paychecks were consistently excellent, compared to the anemic pay at Shaffer which pays a high cents per mile but they don't have the freight available to run more than 2500 miles per week.

For the first time in my life, I felt like I had hit the jackpot, and working for Marten Transport made me feel genuinely wealthy. It seemed like the company was always looking for reasons to throw money at you, which made me feel appreciated as a company driver like never before.

In contrast, Shaffer seems to look for reasons to punish their drivers and withhold bonuses. One driver told me that he made a U-turn while bobtailing and, because of that single incident, hasn’t received a bonus in the two years he's been with the company. Shaffer is also the only company I know of that makes drivers pay for Per Diem—something that feels almost as underhanded as Judas, selling the location of Jesus to be crucified, for a few pieces of silver.

At Marten Transport, detention pay began automatically at $20 per hour after one hour past your appointment time. Nowadays, detention pay starts right at your appointment time.

Marten also offered a $200 bonus just for watching a 20-minute safety video on the Qualcomm each month.

They gave a $100 bonus to anyone willing to drive during Thanksgiving week, and another $100 bonus for driving through the week of Christmas.

In conclusion, Marten Transport rewards their drivers with pay and Shaffer punishes their driver by pay.

 

I worked at Marten and they didn't do any of that ####. But hey congrats to you if it's true.

 

This is just not true. No pumps will cut off, if you do go over the fuel amount though you will be getting a phone call about it. What they fail to mention is that all the money saved on fuel directly goes back to the driver's via profit sharing. So yes I care when lazy fat bums complaining about having to stop twice for 60 gallon fill ups.

 

I recently left Crete after 1 yera and months, it had ups and downs. The downs were over different things the first dispatcher i had was a ####in #####, she would cancel loads with a bunch of miles on it and it would be given to someone else. The reason behind the cancel that she would put was because i supposedly didnt have enough hours on my clock even though i had plenty of time and she did this to me 3 times. The other reason is home time she got me home late 2wice on purpose. Im not gonna tell my whole story but i complained about her to terminal and she had already quit by the time i got back to Wilmer for my assesment.

Dedicated was bad for me mentally and physically but i pulled through it, Im not gonna say everything but i thought that maybe i would be favored because of the way i was running the loads and i even talked to the terminal manager about it and they only cared for 1 week and that was it. I barely had time for anything doing dedicated all because i hoped that maybe i would be favored and hoped to net over 2k almost every week but most of the time i made the average of 1500 - 1600 same as just being otr. i ran the 70 and would always end it a day early than usual also i PC A LOT

Thats my experience, so for anybody if you're going to crete stay otr and dont do dedicated unless you're more of laid back person or live in the area.

 

HI NOT LAZY GUY HERE and the 2 stops is DUMB, this was always one of my complaints when i was with Crete. The thing that irked me is, i can see where the cheap fuel is at so i can do a 1stop and everytime i tried to send in fuel request it would not give me the truck stop im looking at when its on the same route of pickup/delivery. So me being me, i always drove to the truck stop im lookin at on my phone and would call home terminal to give me the truck stop im at to do a 1stop.

 

Just because some app on the app store gives you a price does not mean that's what Crete is paying. Crete has their own contracts with individual truck stops. For example Marshall Illinois has a road ranger and a pilot, they always have the exact same pump price, and Crete will always have you fill up at road ranger because they get a better deal. No company, especially a mega carrier, pays pump price. Any bonehead with experience in the industry and contracts would know this.

 

I know they dont pay pump price but the way i saw it was, if the loves its routing me to shows $4.75 and another Loves 50 miles away shows $3.75 i figured they was still paying less at the other one too so i would drive to it but i guess im dumb bonehead then lmao. Also if i had 2 fuel stops and the 2nd one said fill up but i have enough fuel i always went directly to the 2nd one. Im gonna end up paying for fuel myself now so i'll feel the pain unfortunately in my bank account soon.

 

I don’t have a dog in this fight, but sometimes it’s about IFTA filings, and pretax fuel.

 

Exactly. Never fuel in California, New York, Pennsylvania, etc if you can help it. Crete is honestly my first ever CPM job, here just to make some money to buy a new truck. I would be interested to see what their contracts are fuel wise if I lease onto them