Marten Transport

You can read it for yourself on their web site under yearly earnings reports, they were given over $500,000 in grant money to buy APU's. Randy Marten could care less about a drivers comfort and if you don't believe it look at their drivers lounges. And he lets drivers sit for days on end waiting for loads. He makes money because he takes it from the drivers, when will they ever learn.

 

wow i been driving going on 16 yrs now next month'and i sure has H#LL can tell if a axel is broken on the trailer'that is why you always do a check of everything on that truck and the trailer'this driver rings the stupid bell.and sit all day at the door'there is something very wrong with this driver.

 

I drove for Marten for a year and I have to agree that they are about like Swift these days. I don't know of anybody who was a company driver that got more than 2000 miles a week, and 1500-1700 is more the norm since they officially announced they are now a regional company with sliding scale, wanting to send most freight intermodal, and requiring you to be on the per diem program. I have a friend who I met thru Marten who actually quit and went back to Swift because he had more money there and Marten could never get him home (and he lived in southern Indiana). Almost all their hauls are about 600 miles and they give you 2-3 days to get their or you layover for 2 days before getting another load. When I worked there they were begging drivers to take loads to Canada and Mexico because a qualcomm message said that they didn't have freight in the U.S. anymore. I now drive for a company that gets me home regularly, pays better, keeps me moving, and has no hauls less that 1100 miles.

 

No freight in the US, nope nothing here!!

 

Yeah, this major shift in company operations begins today, and a lot of us are putting the screws to our fleet managers to get us better miles. Of course, the FM's have little to do with what loads we get, but since we're not allowed to talk with the load planners, the FM's are the ones who get dumped on.

I'm glad you found another job, most I know who have quit are not quite so lucky right now (mainly because they quit without first having the next job lined up). I don't remember any message about no freight in the US, or any pressure to take loads to Canada or Mexico, though it wouldn't surprise me any more, with all the changes going on.

Oh well, with the economy the way it is, and freight rates dropping faster than a politician's poll ratings, I suspect it's going to be a long and bumpy road before things get any better. Like I said, this is likely to be my last employer in the trucking industry. I'm sick of having to change jobs every few years and start over from scratch, so I'm just going to hang in there and see what happens.

 

And there will always be internet trolls who stoop to personal attacks on anyone who doesn't see the world as they do.

 

Well, fortunately the court agreed with me, that the employer behaved in a reckless and negligent manner. The equipment failure, in my case, involved the seat belt. They took a passenger side belt and mounted it on the driver side, which caused it to go slack (instead of locking) during an emergency stop when a homeless drunk stepped out in front of my rig. I ended up getting launched into the roof, injuring my head, neck, and back, while my legs were injured striking the steering wheel.

This is something I check, but there is no way to know it will fail for certain until it actually does. Since there was in fact a different seat belt in place, I could only assume it was the proper one and that it was properly installed.

And, yeah, I missed the drunk, and managed to get the rig stopped. I had more than two years of pain and physical therapy to think about how things might have turned out if I just turned him into a speed bump.

 

I was asked to provide a breakdown for a typical week, which is what I did. I'm sorry if giving someone the information they asked for bothers you. I would ask that you stop taking what I post out of context and twisting it to serve whatever agenda it is you are trying to promote here. It tends to distract from the actual topic, and makes you look petty and vindictive.

 

How long have YOU been a driver? Do you even DRIVE for them? Marten does NOTHING for the benefit of their drivers. MARTEN ##### on their drivers in the name of making a buck. If a driver even DARES to mention legallity in any argument, that driver will STARVE to DEATH. Then, if u mention that you see other marten drivers come in with later appts and leave BEFORE you to go pick up loads, or that you have the brains to look at other driver's trip paks and logbooks to confirm the miles they're bragging about, they will drum something up and fire you.

Fortunately, they're not very good about checking their facts before they fire you, cuz they're paying me unemployment until a company becomes desperate enough for a driver to overlook the ambiguous statement they put on my DAC report. They're not lying when they say I "caused damage to a vehicle within the last 7 years". What they're NOT saying is that the damage cost them a whopping $58.20 for a brake chamber on a trailer (that includes labor). They also don't mention that it happened in my first 6 mos. of driving, or that they retained me for an additional 3.25 years. The point is that Marten has really become a crappy place to work since Tim Khol came over from Knight. All the crappy changes that're making everyone angry are all from him.

So check YOUR facts Mario before you start a flame war, you (expletive).