Marten transport gone bad

Awhile back I had a load from tn to ca and I swapped it with a guy so he could go on hometime. He got my real good load, I got his crappy 500 mile two days to get there load. What pissed me off was that this bozo didn't even thank me. In fact when we made the swap he didn't have anything to say at all, just a real piece of work. He was a little man who walked like a rooster. I always appreciate it when someone swaps with me so I can go on hometime, and I thank them for it.

 

Do they still leave it up to the driver to swapped loads or is it mandatory now.

 

Spot on. It's always important to consider the source. A poster's credibility goes way up if they use good English and there's easily discernible, consistent logic in what they're saying.

We're totally on the same page here too. As a Marten driver I was constantly on the lookout for things that I knew my fleet manager would regard as team-player-ish, that to me were no big deal. Being flexible about home time issues anytime I didn't have anything going on, was definitely one of those things. As a driver you definitely want to negotiate the give-and-take as skillfully as possible.

Mine certainly wasn't. A fascinating number I always wished out of sheer curiosity I could somehow magically know, is how much money Marten Transport saves annually by not having to pay drivers for things they either simply forget to ask for, or things they don't notice are wrong or missing on their pay settlements. The system is geared towards driver error, as drivers must request a PO for everything under the sun. You can be sure drivers are erring here and there. The questions are: how often, and by how much?

On average, about once every three or four months I'd have to phone up payroll to correct an error on my settlement. (I was at Marten for over ten years, during 1999-2010). It depended heavily on who my payroll person was. One in particular was really poor (after awhile the "I'm new" excuse begins to wear off...), another was excellent (she later become a fleet manager), and the rest were average or above average.

Normally the mistakes were in the company's favor, but sometimes they weren't...I'd still always phone in to let them know (been that way all my life...if the cashier at the grocery store undercharges me, I always speak up).

Even though payroll mistakes were fairly routine occurrences at Marten, all it ever took was a phone call to get them straightened out. Payroll was very responsive and always corrected any mistakes they made. Occasionally it was me who had things wrong - they were always good about taking the time to explain why.

My experience was exactly the same re the above.

It's possible this is an industrywide problem that depends mainly on the size of company (?) I can't imagine that Swift or Werner drivers are any better about this stuff. Flat tires is one of the more annoying ones for sure.

That's a bad one too. Restarting a reefer that's run dry is a pain. I've had to do it many times.

All too common, but less of a biggie than flat tires or empty reefer tanks.

This rarely happens but it can cause major trouble. The few times I remember this happening were with swaps.

One time a guy who swapped me a load somehow misplaced the BOL in his truck. When I saw him again a couple years later, he said he did eventually find it buried somewhere. I had to leave without it and hope night dispatch would do the necessary legwork to get a copy faxed to me in time for the delivery the next morning (predictably, they didn't).

Another time a swapping driver handed me a big bunch of paper he somehow mistook for the BOL, that was actually an old Marten fuel stop list! Not realizing that such a bizarre mistake could be made, I just grabbed the stack, stuck it on my clipboard and took off. (Okay my bad too - I admit it.) Didn't catch the mistake until I was 60 miles down the road. Rather than deal with faxes, night dispatch told me to drive back to the truck stop where he thankfully hadn't left yet.

A mischievous driver could experiment a little by always handing swapping drivers a bogus BOL to see how often they catch it before pulling out of the lot (without letting them actually leave, obviously). Probably at least 80% of drivers would have caught that fuel stop list sooner than I did.

Same here.

The good side of the coin when it comes to night and weekend was, just as they could - and would often - ignore you, they themselves could easily be ignored, too, anytime you didn't want to be bothered. I'm not saying that's a good system, but that was definitely how I approached it.

I didn't leave until five months ago, on June 2nd. I actually came to like the e-logs. One nice thing was no longer having to tense up anytime the PrePass gave me a red and I had to go through a weigh station. Another nice thing was you could now tell your fleet manager "nope, no can do" on overly tight loads you didn't want to run in the first place, without having to worry about her thinking you were just sloughing off.

After five months I'm about ready to head back out again. Definitely looking to beat what Marten has to offer these days, but if I really can't, I'll give some thought to rehiring if I can get back on with my same, longtime fleet manager. (At Marten, who your fleet manager is, is extremely important.)

You may not have heard much about Marten's current, forced per diem program or their so-called "fair pay" sliding pay scale based on length of haul. All of that is what drove me away. If they'd never begun screwing around with driver pay, I'd still be there today.

 

Its not forced, but I always do it for my regular fm. As for the night and weekend crew, I ignore them unless its to my advantage.

 

so what is a pay after traing solo

 

Marten is not a training school, and they do not hire from the schools. you need a min of 6 months otr.

 

Do not work for marten transport...unless you like ignorant companies who lie and steal from you.........they screw their drivers......they are like knight, usx, run through the mill and leave you dry