I'm going with Maverick: newbie trainee blog

Another thing they covered briefly today (or Sunday) and said the upper mgmt will cover later on is about the slowdown of freight. The housing bust certainly isn't helping. They said company-wide, Flatbed is averaging about 2500mi and it has leveled off . Mavericks books are still solid, but one of the main concerns of carriers are will they be here next year?

Oh, BTW, benefits update: 350mi minimum each load and 800mi minimum on weekends you cannot get home for the regional divisions (not long haul).

$10 to use steel tarps and $20 to use lumber tarps.
$30 for each additional stop outside the pickup and delivery stops, and $8/hr detention pay after first 3 hours, paid in quarter hour increments.

Gotta finish up the homework and get some sleep.

 

Morning: We did drug test/DOT physical and the abilities (agility) test. The abilities test consists of an occupational therapist going through your entire body's ranges of motion. If you've ever been to a gym, it was like an initial fitness assessment with a personal trainer. Then you have to lift a box with increasing weight up to about 100lbs. And a few other things related to the truck and trailer (nothing hard).

You also do an interview # corporate office. It's pretty much the same as the recruiter interview over the phone. But it's in person.

Lunch: Box sandwiches. Yesterday it was pizza.

Evening: The spoke to the director of Safety who showed those gruesome pics of drivers accidents (like a defensive driving video) but it was raw and some of those accidents were amazing people walked out with their life. Also spoke with the Vice President of [forgot, but he's an exec]. He talked more about safety, the "Maverick way" history of the company, why freight has slowed, when it may pick up, the current state of the economy, etc. We also had to stay and do 2 videos and test in the computer lab on qualcomm and CMV license minimum DOT requirements.

We lost 2 or 3 people. Not sure exactly why. But it looks like we are in good shape to be hired on fully on Thursday.

Went ahead and got our ID badges today as well at the end of the day.

Actually, I must admit Maverick is very upfront about what they expect and what to expect being a flatbed truck driver. It was just that "U" word hesitation that I never saw coming. But everything else they would elaborate at length.

They are definetely a one-of-a-kind company. Ironically, it has nothing to do with anything special that Maverick is doing that other companies cannot do. They just believe in doing things correctly. They carefully weight technology improvements (qualcomm, vorad,) with good maintenance, fuel savings, and keeping within the law but satisfying their shippers. They are involved heavily with the industry, and regularly attend congressional briefs, DOT briefs, etc. They do keep tabs on competitors pay, bonuses, trucks, etc and they try to stay ahead of the game. Their turnover for 2007 was about 80%, compared with 140% industry-wide. Somewhat "military", but it has to be run like that. Lots of people I talk to that work here. They are not worried about having lots of trucks but no professionals to drive it. They focus on getting the professionals first, they can always buy more trucks as needed.

The VP said that in 2001-2002 after sept 11 and the skyrocketing of diesel fuel, 10,000s of carriers went belly up. And he forsees the same thing happening with this housing bust of 2007-2008. Maverick is fully prepared to weather the storm and has already said diesel will easily hit $4/gal probably before summer.

 

Didn't realize you were currently in class. Perhaps in the same one. I'll probably try to look for you tomorrow. Class got out pretty late today, and by the time I got to go out, we were back after 9p