My experience with Knight Refrigerated

My problem is I'm not getting compensated, as promised, for school payments and my pay is less than what I was told it would be at orientation. They have sat me out of town and promised me layover pay, but failed to deliver. I was also denied pay when I was dead heading around with one of their damaged trailers, in attempt to replace it with one that had a good chute so I could grab a load and go home for Christmas. Not only was I 24 hours late, I missed dinner with my girlfriend's family and didn't get paid for all that time, because the shipper closed and Knight didn't have a load to get me home, so I had to bobtail back to Phoenix with just barely the time to get one night's sleep on a couch, then they wanted me to head straight back out. I would be a fool to keep working for this company.

If I work, I'm telling Knight that it's okay to blatantly lie to me and rip me off.

 

Maybe it's just the Phoenix terminal that sucks. I keep hearing good things about the Idaho Falls yard.

The Phoenix shop is a joke, too. They never do the work you tell them you need. I'm willing to bet I still have two bald drive tires on when I go in tomorrow to see if the work's done. They always forget to mark my service tags on my tractor and they usually forget to key it into the system, so then when I get a long run, I go to another terminal and they put me out of service for not getting my B Service done, thought it actually IS done.

Just seems like the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing with these guys. All this stuff just started during December, too. They gave me a different dispatcher that always wants "favors". Do me a favor and take this run... 400 miles or less... then sit for a day, then take another 300 mile run.

I'm just tired of not being paid for my time. I'm already making trucker minimum wage... now I never see layover pay and they have been conveniently "forgetting" to reimburse me for things... So I waste more time on the phone trying to figure out where my money is. Meanwhile, the bills are late and now I have to pay late fees on rent and utilities.

If I have to live on the road, I need to make a paycheck that makes it worth my time.

 

If you hear about a tractor going through the wall into dispatch. It was me

 

Knight was fine while I was in the Squire division. As soon as I got a new dispatcher, things got weird. Blatant lies... sending me all these weird qualcomm messages that don't make sense. They would send me a load assignment without my preplan approval. Then if I was unable to make it they would blame ME for the failed load.

That, and a lot of other drivers fail to care for the equipment, which is what started the fiasco with trying to get home on time for the holidays. If I would have had a good trailer, there never would have been a problem.

Instead of helping me, my dispatcher gave my phone number to the shipper, WITHOUT ASKING ME and he simply pimped on out the door to go home for the weekend and holiday. How nice! I was left with some jerk calling me yelling at me and calling me stupid for not being on time. Little did the shipper care to know, I was trying to find a good trailer, so I wouldn't destroy a whole load of bananas when my reefer couldn't cool the rear of the trailer!

This is what I get for doing my job... and pretrips and I went REALLY far out of my way to try to fix things.

The original plan was to do a dry load in the Los Angeles are and deadhead home WITH PAY. Instead, I was forced to bobtail home and only AFTER I got home did Knight bother to inform me that I wasn't getting paid a penny at all for all my efforts or my drive home. As if it was MY fault that a bad trailer was dropped on me. Meanwhile, that other driver got home on time with the good trailer that I had.

I already tried to explain what happened to one dispatcher. I won't mention names, but he's an idiot and EVERY driver that has ever been to the Phoenix yard knows who he is. He's a ####### that tries to tell you how to manage your time and how to do things... he has no room to talk. I bet he's never seen the inside of a truck or trailer.

After he called me a liar and decided to HANG UP ON ME.... my actual dispatcher called me and actually heard me out. He even tried to tell me that there would be fallout against me... whatever that means.

I don't know what else to say. Everything is always the fault of the driver. Especially the one that actually does pretrips and gives enough of a crap NOT to load produce and ice cream on a broken trailer.

I like to work, but I'm tired of doing it for free all the time. December's pay was a joke. I would have easily made twice the money if I worked at McDonald's (fine irish cuisine!)

 

Yeah. Trying to keep it together. I'll see what happens when I stop by tomorrow. Will post again.