K&B Transportation. The real deal!

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I don't know how they've kept themselves afloat with all the accidents, drivers quitting, prospective drivers not making it through orientation, and money they've invested in flawed technology. It's my understanding the safety director is a retired DOT officer. If that's truly the case he should know better than anyone else about safety (unless he sucked at his prior job). None of the other leaders have any kind of experience around trucks. We all know how flawed the collision mitigation systems installed by the manufacturer are. Been this way for years and it just keeps getting worse. It's an industry wide thing that they won't do anything about. I guess we have people that have never driven a truck (i.e. politicians, lawyers, insurance companies, advocacy groups, etc) to thank for that. They have E-Smart systems in their trucks which law enforcement is now starting to eyeball because of its speed limiting design flaws. Drivers are starting to get tickets for impeding traffic and/or careless driving because the system thinks you're on a road with a low clearance bridge that you can't fit under. It reduces the truck to 2 mph and continues to operate at 2 mph until you're out of the geofenced zone (even after calling safety to "override the system"). It allows the company to control the truck remotely essentially not letting the driver have 100 percent control of the truck at any given time. Great for autonomous trucks. Not so great with a driver behind the wheel. It limits the truck to 55 mph in big cities (even around big cities where the speed limit is 70+). They'll limit the truck to 50 mph (give or take) in winter weather and still expect you to run a 600 something mile load (requiring a minimum 57-58 mph average) in one shot. Then there's the AI cameras that consistently tell you to slow down (even when you're not speeding). It can't tell the difference between the minimum posted speed and the speed limit at times. It also thinks the speed limit on an adjacent service road is the speed limit for the freeway. It'll tell you a rolling stop is detected because you went past a "stop for pedestrians" sign it mistook for a stop sign. They force you to install an app on your phone that will only let you make calls and run Google Maps for navigation. Speech to text and things like that don't work right while driving because of the app. I've had drivers tell me the tech installed in the trucks is just as much of a distraction as fiddling with your phone while driving because you're constantly distracted by what you could be doing wrong leading up to a potential bogus termination as we've heard from so many drivers over the years. There's still no cruise control when the headlights are on. There's still relaying of loads because they book loads designed for teams (especially the third party LTL freight) but the company doesn't have teams so they have no other choice but to relay. The maintenance department makes absolutely no sense to me. Major truck issues get fixed in Sioux City or Rochelle. They avoid the dealerships like the plague unless there's no other option. They prefer to get things fixed en route but if a load is too tight they'd rather get the load delivered and then fix it. If a shop has a wait or has no tech on duty they'll force you to keep going until they find a shop to their liking. This wouldn't be so bad except now you have to get the equipment fixed on break when you're supposed to be resting for your next reload. More oftentimes than not the driver gets popped for it during a random inspection before they can get it fixed. Now both the driver and the motor carrier have to pay for it. Then the drivers get blasted for it during the morning safety messages. This company seems to hold office staff unaccountable. They do still have a pay guarantee which seems to be about the only good thing keeping drivers here. Been employed with them for many years. Seen many changes over the years. It just keeps getting worse

 

I have no connection to K&B in particular, but I've noticed the trend you describe. Your generous collection of examples illustrates it well.

I'm a geek who's fond of tech advancement, but with that said, San Fran and Silicon Valley seem to have gone off the rails, putting not just truckers but the whole civilized world in a stranglehold, from which there may be no escape.