K&B Transportation. HONEST review!

I know this is a late post to this thread. I have been with the company for a little over a year now and this is my experience. Pretty much most of what was said at the beginning of this thread is true with some exceptions. They have some good but the bad outweighs the good in my opinion. They will fly you out to Omaha and have a minivan take you 1.5 hours to the hotel in Sioux City. Orientation is 2-2.5 days. Depends on each driver’s abilities and history. If you are new to trucking with 6 months under your belt then this might be a good fit to get some experience in but if you have years under your belt...RUN AND DON’T LOOK BACK! They will put stuff on your DAC when you quit/retire that is not true just to keep you from getting hired on at another company. They do pay a $1250 guarantee (before taxes and deductions) for OTR drivers as long as you stay out and are not late for deliveries. They do have some dedicated positions and salaried drivers but not sure what the pay is on those. I have only gotten the guarantee and nothing more except for orientation and safety bonuses. They do not pay detention, layover, or breakdown (no driver to date has ever gotten paid for that). You will get one of two trucks. You are either going to get a new automatic or a used high mileage (700k+ miles) 10 speed manual. The older trucks have refrigerators and inverters whereas the new trucks do not (at least not yet). When you switch on the headlights in the new trucks then the cruise control gets disabled. You do a lot of night driving so that would suck. All trucks have APUs, PrePass, Tolls, CB radio. If the APU does go out they will put you in a hotel on your 10 hour breaks until it gets fixed. There maintenance department is hit or miss. They have some really nice personnel in that department but also have others that have no business being there or interacting with people period. Same goes for the rest of the office staff. They have the load before your life mentality. Unless the truck/trailer will not physically move or the refrigeration unit on the trailer is out then it gets put on their back burner (even clear DOT violations) unless you are not under a load. Night staff is a freaking joke. They will hound you to be 3+ hours early to a delivery that will not let you in more than an hour early (i.e. Walmart, Target). Some customers will let you park on site and K&B prefers you do that whenever possible. They will call you all hours of the day and night (even on your federally mandated 10 hour rest breaks). Should you refuse to answer too many of these phone calls they will then proceed to send another K&B driver or the police to knock on your door for a welfare check. They like you to do relays smack dab in the middle of your 10 hour breaks and falsify it on your logs so that load can be delivered on time. I have the Qualcomm messages to prove it. They do not like to send you back to shippers to get reworked if you’re overweight. They would rather route you go around the scales on a old dirt logging road than go back to the shipper. Anything to avoid getting reworked. I’ve been told you have to follow their route no matter what (even if there are road closures or your GPS says otherwise) or you get charged out of route miles. I have never been charged but heard other drivers get into arguments about that because a road was closed on their route. What dispatch wants you to do and what safety sends out in their daily messages are two different things entirely. You get a safety message at the beginning of the work week plus every morning at around 5am but it must fall on deaf ears of the dispatchers and other office staff because they do their own thing. Home time depends on where you live. If you are based out of the Midwest or Washington state then you could potentially go home once a week or once every two weeks. However if you live anywhere else then you might have to beg to get hired and then plan on staying out at least 1 month at a time. It’s an okay company but I would not recommend coming here unless you plan on staying here forever

 

This is their ad on Houston Craigslist


Freight Moving and We Need You!
We have orientation on Monday and we really want you here! As an essential food hauler we are busier than we have ever been before! In April and May many carriers had their worst months ever, WE JUST CAME OFF OUR BEST TWO MONTH EVER! We have the freight to move getting our drivers solid checks even in these tough times! The fact is if we can't get you 2500 miles in a week, WE PAY YOU THE DIFFERENCE!

Join K&B Transportation and Enjoy the Following

• 50 CPM Starting Wage With Raises Up to 54 CPM
• Top Miles! We Guarantee 2500 Miles, Run Up to 3000 Miles! $1250 Per Week Minimum Guaranteed!
• Freightliner Cascadias! APU's! Refrigerators! Automatic and Manual Tractors!
• Midwest Freightlanes--YOU WILL SEE NO NORTHEAST!
• Exclusive Orientation! Flight to Orientation! Single Rooms! 4 Star Hotel!

If you have a Class A CDL and 6 months experience lets talk! Start Monday and get a fast paying $1000 bonus that pays $500 your first check and $500 your second check! Call Recruiting today at 800-851-8651 or CLICK HERE TO APPLY.

Check out our newly designed website, visit www.drive4kb.com.

 

Yeah, they run about 3 ads a week on the local CL.

 

That may be, but it's what it doesn't say that is disturbing.....

 

What are the trucks governed at?

 

Well June will be 2 years with K&B. I forgot to add a few things to my thread and for that I do apologize. They do run fresh produce from Washington state and you will run some stuff to/from the northeast (usually bananas out of Wilmington, Delaware). I’ve seen NYC and New Jersey a few times but that’s rare. You will see parts of the country you never get to see running dry box freight. You get a $500 safety bonus every quarter as well as bonuses for clean inspections. Trucks are governed at 65 on pedal and 62 on cruise. However I’ve been told the cruise doesn’t work on the new trucks when the headlights are engaged. Hope they fixed that bug

 

And the waiting time at the meat plants is paid at what rate...?

 

Crickets...........