JTI (Jacobs Transportation Inc) Walbridge, OH

For NW Ohio guys who want to run local stay away from JTI if you A) want to make money, B) want to run legal, and C) want to operate decent equipment.
This company runs dry bulk tankers, some vans, quite a bit of container work out of CP Rail in Detroit.

They have a graduated pay scale, meaning that when you get trained running all the bulk loads, including double trailer bulk, from soda ash to plastic, you reach their top pay scale, @18/hr. All of their loads either pay by flat rate which figures up to about the hourly pay (IF everything goes PERFECTLY) or by mileage in the case of the van loads, 42 cpm loaded and 35 cpm empty. They loved getting the van loads back hauls, I get it, they make more money if the truck is loaded but the driver gets screwed with those because the difference in pay between loaded and empty does not pay the driver for the extra waiting time to get the back haul. On average, the driver makes an extra $14 to get a back haul which adds at least 4 hours to his day. Get stuck sitting up at the rail yard for a couple to a few hours, too bad, it's still paying $60. Get stuck at Morton Salt in Rittman, OH (5 hours driving RT) for a few hours because the crappy trailer won't hold pressure, too bad, it's still only paying $118.

I hired on with these clowns last October fully expecting to be trained in the month or less because the dispatcher/hiring manager told that's the way it was to be done. Well, I was trained on the basic bulk loads, no doubles, no plastics which would have bumped me up to the top rate, not great but livable. I was making ok money because I was running 70+ hours/week until the end of February when the dispatcher called me on a Friday evening. I was offloading at a customer 45 mins away from the yard, into my 12th hour on duty and he tells me he needs me to go to Joliet, IL to offload. I say, cool, I'll be there first thing in the morning (Saturday). He then tells me that the customer needs the product asap and I need to leave when I get back to deliver yet tonight. I tell him no can do because by the time I finish the offload I was currently doing and get back the yard, do my post trip I'll be up against my 14. And besides that, I'm tired, I've already had a long day, it wouldn't be safe for me to drive anymore this day. So he tells me in his usual arrogant tone to just go home and get my sleep. Well, in the weeks that followed, I got less and less work struggling to make even $700 gross.

So I started looking for other local jobs in the area and finally found one that paid decent, $1000 gross/week for 50 hours and paid hourly, with OT from day one so I get paid for any snafus that may happen. I get through the interview on a Monday, March 17th. The general manager told me that pending my back ground check (spotless) and my past employer stuff (spotless) I was hired. He did tell me to not put any notice in until he heard back from him. So, that Thursday, March 20th, he calls me to tell me I'm officially hired and has my corporate classroom training set up for March 31st so I can give the current employer a little over a weeks notice. I only had been assigned a short van load that Thursday and when I got back from picking it up the dispatcher told me that the company owner wanted to talk to me. Well, the company owner decided to have me go 3 hours early to try to deliver the load I just picked up and he would talk to me when I get back. I'm thinking that they received the past employer fax from the new job and their going to fire me when I get back. I luckily got into the Heinze in Fremont, OH early but still had to wait a while, for free, so I got all my stuff in the truck ready so all I had to do when I got back was load my stuff into my pickup if I was being fired.

I got back to the yard as the owner was pulling out onto the street. I go inside and the operations manager has me meet him in a side room in the office and tells me they received a fax from my new employer and wanted to know what was going on. I told him that the lack of being fully trained to get to top rate, the loss of runs because I refused to run illegal, the less than stellar equipment (newest tractor was a 2006 all the bulk trailers were from the 80's and before) and the low pay were reasons that I was leaving and that I was giving notice that the following Friday was to be my last day. He says sorry it didn't work out and that dispatch had me set up on a short local run with a medium run for me after that for Friday and we go our separate ways. So, Friday I go do the short local run, go into the office to have the dispatcher tell me that he doesn't have anything else for me and next week, my last looks really slow too. So I told him, I'll just turn in my fuel card and company issued equipment then and there and not finish out my last week, he seemed relieved.

So if anyone's looking for local work in NW Ohio and you want to run illegally and not make much money doing it, this is the place for you .