Knight port and intermodal

Fajo · Jan 26, 2017

TB John said: ↑

I figured the containers belonged to which ever shipping company they hauled for. It was the chassis and their condition that I was concerned about. I've read plenty of stories about the terrible condition a lot of the chassis at the shipping companies were in. Deplorable ( I like that word) in a lot of cases.

It looks like they keep the tractors in good shape, the dry van trailers, maybe not so much? Or am I just taking into stock too much what I've read on-line?
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Again, this area I just don't have alot of experience in. As for the condition of the chassis I would assume they have to keep them "Legal" as they travel thru both AZ and CA on a constant basis and which are both inspection ##### states.

Reptar310 · Nov 6, 2017

Fajo said: ↑

All megas are going auto, Knight was around the 80% mark when I left, Hardwired inverters are factory installed and only come in the newst of the trucks. Refeer side when I left were the only one with built in fridges tho I was told that would also be going to the transportation side later on. No APU's they nix trucks to fast for that to matter. Volvo's, Prostars and the crapcadia are the main rigs. There is a few KW 680's and Pete 579's but I think only like 10 of each throughout the entire company.
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Can anyone else confirm that number? I didn't realize it was so high already. I'm considering Knight and am look for an auto fleet driving in Los Angeles.

Sad_Panda · Nov 11, 2017

Reptar310 said: ↑

Can anyone else confirm that number? I didn't realize it was so high already. I'm considering Knight and am look for an auto fleet driving in Los Angeles.
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I had one of the last manual Prostars and that was a couple of years ago.

bigblue19 · Dec 10, 2017

Do you really want to haul containers on E-Logs?

Blackbob · Dec 18, 2017

Fajo said: ↑

Please excuse the long winded response but I want to give as much context as I can incase anyone else has this question and needs a more in-depth answer.

Dispatchers:

Short of it.
Driver Managers / Dispatchers had there power gutted

The long of it.
Your dispatcher used to be the one to grab and assign you loads off the board. You used to be able to have a few options and if lacking in miles this would help as he could grab something with some distance.

Dispatching was replaced with a computer algorithm to plan loads out and if it failed to plan you on a load the "Planners" would step in and give you a load. The planners had no communication with the driver (It was planned that way) Knight even went as far as to move them out of the Phx terminal to the corp offices where no one could talk to them. The communication was thur email between the planner and your DM (Driver manager) and if the planner felt that there was a more "Important" load that needed to go somewhere you were SOL regardless of what DM or you felt.

What this caused was kind of chaos as getting home become a horrid chore and you could be left sitting for days in some areas due to the computer not planning you or the planner having a "important" load that they wanted you to take regardless that you would have to sit 2 days to wait on it.

Good example:
Knight got a month worth of macy's loads that paid Knight a little over 1100$ per load round trip to go 150 miles. The problem with these loads they were live load and live unload, so you would pick it up one day then sit until the next day to get it unloaded. They would keep drivers on this getting no more then 150 miles per round trip and the PHX terminal would not plan trucks on anything else. We had one of our drivers stuck down there for 12 days doing these. Everytime we tried to pull him out the response was these loads pay us $$$$ i'm not losing a truck to haul them. That driver got screwed out of his hometime and stuck doing this for almost 2 weeks.

Miles.

Knight's goal on both Refeer and the Trans side is 2250-2500 miles per week per driver. The system is tuned this way so if you some how hit this goal (which was rare) the system would back you off onto smaller loads and dedicated the longer runs to lower mile drivers. Your DM could do nothing fix this please refer to above.

Driver Cam.

Knight as of this year has got 80% of its fleet with Driver camera's. These cams only face outwards but they are mic'ed they record 1-2 min of data per activation. 1 min before the event up and 1 min after, this can extend depending on the activation.

The cam's them self are no so bad, Knight did not opt for the inner facing ones (as of yet) the problem with them is the events they record. Knight has what they call coaching events.

Examples.
Stopping to hard, accelerate to fast, cornering, sliding, speeding, stop lights, stop signs, rocking (truck side to side or bumping a dock to hard). These are all events Knight will call you to find out why you did what you did and how you can improve your self based on what was seen on the cam.

Termination events on cam.
U-turns, Cali rolling thur a stop sign, lane departure, tailgating, speed over 70, Bendix activation (Radar on the front of the truck) and Accidents. The U-turn one is a big one with them, the cam is set up to detect a u-turn and then sends it back to HQ the next day this one has a 90% term rate.

Zonar.

This is the communication device in the truck, its a tablet and detachable. You do your pretrip among other things on this device. There is Zonar tags all thur out the truck that need to be scanned and then on the tlr every day for pretrip. If you miss a pretrip on the zonar you will get a call from safety and if "missed" enough it can lead to termination

The back end, the part of Zonar that people don't see. This one records everything, more then Qualcomm, Peoplenet could ever dream of. It records everything form how hard you press the accel peddle to how you shift and take hills. It is a mountain of data they get from every truck and then the system scores and keeps track of the driver. They had not started to yet before I left but this was also to be moved into coaching events any driver with low scores would be given a chance to improve.

The rest.

As for the rest they are really no different then any other mega company, they do have terminals, they do expect you to fuel at them when close, they do have fuel solutions you must follow. The terminals are adequate expect for a few and normally always a safe place to park.

Depending on the terminal you get the staff you will either love or hate. My terminal was like a giant family we all cared what was going on with one and other and knew each and other by name. Then the bigger ones like Phx just end up being a cess pool of where everyone is a number and your DM is lucky to last a few months in his position.

Intermortal.

I don't have alot of experience with Knight and this side of things, just what I have heard from staff and drivers. The main complaint there was pay, you sit for way to long at the port waiting to get your load that you end up wasting most of your day there.

I don't know the pay structure there it used to be different then the rest. I know they no longer pay you for sitting at the port and that driver turn over in the port division has gotten pretty bad. Some places are better then others, I'm told Seattle sucks where phx - LA is better. especially if you live in the PHX, LA (Los Angeles) area.

Recruiters.

Becareful here, if its one thing I have heard a million times is they flat out lie to you, especially the ones from Knight. Recruiters at Knight are scored on drivers that they bring in and how many and consistently they do. There job is at stake if they dont keep a quota. This has lead just like anywhere to alot of what they spout off as being false.

The other thing with Knight recruiters is they use a metric, so if you talk to them one day then cant get ahold of them the next day then you did not fit into the metric they are looking for. Alot of them are very good at telling who they can get thur the hiring possess and who they cant. They have no problem ignoring those they think might be a issue and moving onto another application.

In closing, a good way to look at Knight is its all about Quantity not Quality. They will scrape the bottom of the barrel until there is no more barrel if it will get them just a few more butts in the seat. Policy at Knight is made with this in mind and rules are set for the lowest common denominator. Is Knight a total crap hole ? Answer is No but alot of recent changes and policy's are steering the ship that direction.

Sorry this post was so long, just trying to give you a view of different things there so you can compare to where ever else you are looking.
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Thanks for all the input, I think as a new guy its tough no matter who you go with.

Fajo · Jan 10, 2018

Blackbob said: ↑

Thanks for all the input, I think as a new guy its tough no matter who you go with.
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100% Agreed, Tho I will say with Time and Experience it gets alot better and there is a good amount of company's out there looking for qualified drivers once you hit that point.

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