My experience wth Knight Transportation

This will be an honest exit review of my experience with Knight Transportation. I left their employ on 02/01/13. I started with them in March 2012. They were my second OTR job. My exit was nothing dramatic, just merely "This will be my Final load for Knight Transportation" via qualcomm. Now to the Review:

Overall, the equipment was fairly new and pretty well maintained by their shops. I had a 2012 Volvo with the Volvo engine and was satisfied with the truck's performance and durability. The trailers were NOT air ride and the Knight drivers tended to Pass-the-Buck on trailer defects, tire inflation, and sweeping out.

This outfit has somewhere around 30 or so Terminals. Most have shops and some have fuel. Some have decent ammenities while others weren't much more than a place to park.

Operations were a disappointment and inevitably the reason I left. This company is not Central dispatch. You are dispatched out of your home Terminal. Yet you are planned by the location that you find yourself in. Thus your FM has a quite limited amount of control in your miles. There were some regions that it seemed I could get decent runs out of but there were other regions that you would consistantly get the shorter runs. I should say that this company does declare itself a Short to Medium haul carrier. And overall I turned an average of 11,850 Hub miles per month in my 11 months with Knight. But we are not paid Hub miles so the Paid miles averaged about 11,200 miles per month. To acheive this volume with their approx 430 Average Length of Haul dispatch, I found it necessary to work 14 hour days almost every day. The days of running 650 miles in 12 total hours were pretty rare. So in the end, I reasoned that for me it was a burn-out system. I believe with a true Long-haul OTR carrier that I can acheive an equal volume or greater in less hours equating to less work. That is why I chose to move on. I do appreciate the the opportunity they gave me and being Non-Forced dispatch was useful at times when I got fed up with a stretch of short runs. It was nice to be able to say: ENOUGH! , without losing my job.

 

Funny thing is I bought a house in SW Montana (the beautiful part) back in 2005. Spent the spring and summers of 2006 and 2007 out there. Been trying to sell it for 4 yrs now. People used to pay a good price for a Summer home. Not these days.

 

Had a pretty good bite but that buyer ended up buying up in Helena.

 

Close but no cigar on that deal. That guy ended up buying up in Helena.