My 16 Week Experience with TRANSAM

Hello,
I got a CDL like so many others because my 30 years in the construction industry came to a halt without my being independently wealthy and able to retire. I had hoped the CDL would allow me to make a decent living until the economy recovered and I could go back to managing woodworking shops. I have come to the conclusion that the trucking industry (as it is presently set up) is nothing but a scam. It seems to be based on the principle that another sucker will be along after the present sucker is used up and discarded.
When I reported for orientation at Transam Trucking at Rockwall, TX I had a totally open mind about the industry and the company. They did push the leasing program very hard, and the employees of Transam who are training you will make money if they are your sponsor into the leasing program. That is why they push it so hard. They will tell you all sorts of things about the lease, but they do not know how it really works because none of them (that I met) have ever been lease drivers. They will tell you to expect 2700 to 3100 miles per week as an average. This is baloney. They will tell you that it takes 1500 miles per week to pay the costs of the truck. This is a lie. They will tell you that the fuel surcharge will cover most of the costs of the fuel. It does not.
I had no intention of becoming a lease driver for Transam. When I got off the road with my trainer and tested out, I was going to be a company driver at least until I learned how to make money in this industry. I was 20th on the list for a truck. The guy who was first had been waiting 2 weeks for his truck. If I had known that $350.00 per week was more than I would average as a driver, I would have sat there and waited. I let my desperation and general destitution overcome my reason and signed up to lease a truck for 6 months. It had 10,216 miles on it. Someone else had already gone broke in it in less than a month. I was dispatched on my first load and picked up and delivered every load I was given on time for the whole time I worked for Transam. My average settlement was $265.00 per week. I had 3 checks over that amount and 1 that was a negative $312.00. I was dispatched an average of 1800 to 2100 miles per week.
I complained and #####ed through their approved channels. I sent in updated eta's like I was supposed to and averaged 3 to 4 days a week sitting somewhere (usually at a meat house or in the middle of nowhere without even a truck stop available). I drove 600+ miles per day when I was dispatched on something. I got good long loads when I got them, but never got enough. I learned that no matter how perfectly I performed, I could not make any money if my driver manager did not fight with the planners to get me dispatched. He didn't.
The secret that no one will tell you is this: Neither Transam nor any one else at that company cares if you make any money. Drivers are the diposable element in the system because another 10 will come out of the CDL mills to replace you next week. The companies that train have you by the short hairs until you get one year of experience. This is not an arbitrary amount of experience that is required. It gives them a long time to make money off of you before you wise up and move on. In that time, they will get their loads delivered at a discount. In return you get the experience to cash in somewhere else(assuming that you do not screw up somehow and end up with accidents or tickets or some other disqualifying event). This means that you will not make much money for at least a year no matter what you do unless you are lucky(and some are). I was not lucky.
To make money as a lease driver you will need all of the following:
1) Pick up and deliver every load on time.
2) Treat every load as a profit center (ie do not buy too much fuel)
3) Get at least 3000 miles per week.
4) Do not have an accident.
5) Do not have any tickets.
6) Do not log illegally.
7) Drive creatively and at least 600 miles per day.
8) Do not take home time.
9) Do not refuse any load or swap.
10) Do not drive faster than a company driver.

The above are the most important, but I am sure that there are other things that will help. All of the above except for #3 are to give you credibility when you complain about not getting enough miles. If you do not get enough miles you will not make money. You are totally dependent on you driver manager to make money. No miles = no money.
Deadhead miles cost you more than you will be paid for them. The truck costs about $1000.00 per week for the lease by the time you add up all the expenses. Fuel will cost around $.35 to $.55 per mile at $2.50 per gallon (4.5 to 7 mpg). A new T660 will not average more than about 5.5 mpg loaded no matter what speed you drive, but slower is better. At 2400 miles per week the lease costs $.42 per mile, fuel costs ($2.50 per gallon at 5.5 mpg) about $.46 per mile. Add these up and you get $.88 per mile as costs. The fuel surchage that you will be paid at $2.50 per gallon is $.25 per mile. You are paid $.84 per mile as a lease driver for Transam. You can do the math, but at 2400 miles you will make $.21 per mile. The starting company driver will be paid $.32 per mile.
My conclusion and experience are that the lease program is a bad business to be in. The upside is so limited and the downside so unlimited (including death and incarceration) that I am better off at home back on unemployment. My opinion is that the industry as a whole preys on the new driver from the CDL mill to the training company to the eventual disassociation of the new driver with the whole corrupt mess. It was summed up for me by the response of Johnny Jacobsen (owner of Transam) when I expressed to him my concerns with what I was experiencing as a lease operator with his company. His response was "Well, So." I learned in that moment that his system works exactly like he designed it to. I voted with my feet.
I have been home about a week at this point, as far as I know, I will not get paid for the miles I drove the last week and a half (approx. 3600) Transam has not paid me and will not return a call to explain to me what charges they have come up with to not pay me anything for the last miles I drove for them. Just a last parting shot on their part (and not unexpected on mine) despite complying with all their rules and regulations about notice and etc.

 

TransAm is one of the few companies that actually checks your info before they bring you to the orientation. If you are approved for orientation and can test out of training, you will be put in a truck (if you can wait that long). A side note: if you do not want to ride on a bus to orientation, they will re-imburse a plane ticket up to the amount of the bus ride but you have to buy your ticket and ask for the re-inbursement. You must coordinate with your recruiter to be picked up at the airport.
The orientation takes place at either Rockwall, TX or Olathe, KS. I had it at Rockwall. You stay at the Super 8 motel. They pick you up and provide lunch. Other meals you are on your own and the super8 is not near anything. You will have a roommate unless there is an odd number in your class and you are the lucky one or the nonsmoker. Orientation is a class from 7am to 4:30 pm with 1/2 hour for lunch (delivered). It lasts about 3-1/2 days and then you wait for your trainer.
Your trainer will probably be insane. After all, he has learned to make money in an insane system. His main interest in you is not to teach, he wants your log. He will probably drive about 3/4 of your hours plus his own. He will make you drive through Illinois and Ohio where the speed limit is 55. He will drive 70 to 75 everywhere else if he is a lease driver. He wants to drive 4000 + miles a week and end all loads by Thu midnight (the end of TransAm's workweek). He is a coach to make more money by having your log in addition to his own. My coach would drive over 1200 miles a day if he needed to to end a load before midnight Thursday. You learn what to do by osmosis; the coach is not a teacher, he is a demonstrator. He will show you how to log legally while driving whatever you need to to get a load delivered on time. He will show you how to give lip service to the letter of the federal regulations while totally ignoring the spirit in which they are intended (to keep you safe). This is what the company wants him to do so they have deniability. You will have 3-4 weeks of this while living and working in a space smaller than the average solitary confinement cell (not my own knowledge, merely what I have read). At the end of your coach time, if you are still talking to each other, he will give you advise and send you in to test out where you will have 7 days to do a written test, a backing test, and a driving test. Then you sit and wait for a company truck or set yourself up to be screwed in a lease truck. That is the training program at TransAm.

 

Thanks for your info. I have no interest in pursuing any other jobs in trucking. I only have to get kicked in the head once to know not to pull on a mules tail. In talking to lots of other drivers in truck stops all across the country, I do not remember one who was delighted with driving in the present atmosphere and conditions in the industry. Many of them said how they enjoyed it in the past and how they raised large families and etc., but almost all said they would not start a career in trucking now. I can make more working in the fast food industry or staying on unemployment (since Bush extended it for 13 more weeks) than I ever made driving a truck and being out on the road away from my family for months at a time. I did not choose to drive a truck for the love of it, I turned to it in the absence of other better choices after being unemployed for over a year.