If you could improve 1 thing at Knight, what would that be?

You can come in for service up to 1,000 miles early. As for the home terminal thing... your guess is as good as mine. I don't understand that one at all.

 

When I started with Knight in 2003, all they had were Freightliner Centurys. They had a deal along with other big trucking co.s (Swift, Schneider, Crete, etc.) where Freightliner would buy back trucks if maintained according to schedule and having less than 300K miles (?) and then credit toward a new Freightliner. The program was so successful that Freightliner's used truck division (Superior?) was over loaded with truck inventory and they ended up stopping the program. Knight & other trucking cos. felt jilted and protested by not buying any more Freightliners and started buying Volvos.

Problem with used Volvos is that there was no market for them because of their history of having multitude of problems, and so Knight started mixing in Peterbilts, which cost more than the Volvos but maintained their value as used trucks.

Dont know the deal on International Pro Stars that Knight made (maybe they piggy backed off of Walmart as they have Walmart grocery?), and the Pro Star deal may require a stringent maintenance (oil change only) deal for resale back and is driving the overall 7500 mile reqmt for Volvos et al.

The 7500 mile reqmt doesnt just hurt the driver, but restricts Knight dispatching and also takes the truck out of service....

 

Knight probably cant deal with the logistics of separating out Volvos & Pro Stars scheduling and in their shops---or if the drivers knew that a Volvo could go 25K miles between servicing but a Pro Star only 7500, they would fight for a Volvo!! Would result in some unhappy Pro Star drivers..

 

Aren't all Pro Star drivers unhappy anyway?

 

Also Their stupid new policy of if you're needing anything like to fill your windshield washer fluid jugs or your oil bottles you have to get a trailer and come to the inspection line or they won't do it….That is completely asinine

 

I agree completely. Asinine. I asked for a handful of glad hand grommets.... told to go through inspection.

 

Sounds like they want to 'enforce' maintenance & must hijack drivers to run the company's equipment thru (on their own time, of course!) for maintenance visibility. Remember folks, Knight is ALL about the bottom line!!!

'Back in the day,'I used to go up to the parts counter in Phx and get bulbs, head lights, air hoses, oil (needed your own container), etc. and install myself to ease the work load on the shop and get going---many Express drivers parked their trucks when they got back and didnt put in the shop for probs---lazy & inconsiderate drivers. Just about every time I got back after my time out I had to write up the truck I was in and put in the shop. Then Knight reqd 3 levels of signatures to put a truck in the shop (taking it out of service), where I then learned to time my return when the main ofc was closed (and so was the inspection lane!) and dropped the ppw on the tractor seat and parked it in by the shop (leaving my DM a Qualcom msg for the next morning)!.....bet Phx shop is a 'constipated' mad house now.

 

What's so dumb is I went through the inspection bay as o/o in phx with a trailer to check into shop and the mechanics said I don't care about the trl...so what good is it to pull thru with trl if the shop don't care... But then again it goes back to "you get what you pay for"… They pay bottom of the barrel way just for their shop text so that's exactly the kind of work they going to get out of them

 

When I was there Phx hired several Bosnian/Serbs in the shop who could barely speak English! With all the theft of driver's personal stuff in their tractors that went on around the Phx shop, drivers believed it was them as their heritage is full of 'gypsies.'