My KLLM company driving experience so far...

The new truck has been good so far. Have had a couple of good runs after the issues last week with whoever is in charge of scheduling (Burkhalter?), delivering 43k's of Mac and Cheese to a Kraft plant in Bethlehem, PA tomorrow.

This truck is governed at 62, which is a 1 mph increase from my last one. The horsepower however, has been reduced. Very obvious climbing hills in WV/PA today when having to go down to low 8th, high 7th. Everything is exactly the same as the older Cascadias, except for the Elogs and CWS system, which I have a hard time trusting in the rain because where I'd usually coast, it wants to hit the brakes hard. Oh well, still getting used to it all. No apus or inverters either. Making my lunchbox cooker work overtime, and still getting used to hearing the motor running and feeling the vibrations while trying to sleep.

One thing about us KLLM drivers that is getting under my skin is the dirty trailers dropped on the yard. The other day I had to swing up to Portage to one in the shop due to tandem issues, and every single empty trailer was dirty and had little fuel. Talk about annoying...it was the same way last week in Jackson when I came back from hometime. I don't get it. Beacons right by the terminals, yet nobody usues them. Lame.

All for now. Tired and ready for some extra sleep tonight. 4 hrs from receiver and its a 1800 appointment. Yay snooze button!

 

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. Ever since they upgraded the website, my droid browser hasn't been working with the site so much.

Things have been kind of a nightmare. I've been averaging a whopping 1600 miles on my first two paychecks since coming back out two weeks ago. Seems like every load that I'm getting dispatched on has issues with my elogs and I have to call in and explain myself all the time. The biggest reason is because its taking these ####### receivers 3+ hours beyond appointment times to get me unloaded and i can't get resets, deadheading, and such done in time for the next pickup. Getting swapped out like crazy because of this and I'm losing out on miles big time. All I want to do is drive, yet it seems like I've been sitting far too much lately.

I miss paper logs. Badly. Not much I can do about these things though, and people need to realize that my hands are tied with these elogs. If my clock is showing under an hour, its time for me to park - i cant risk getting stuck in traffic or at a shipper that doesnt allow overnight parking because i get multiple safety points for the violations, not to mention if i get caught by dot then that screen is a blatant tattle tale on me.

Going through Jackson tomorrow to talk to some folks about this. I just want to drive and make money out here, not be away from home and broke.

 

Another week of less than 2,000 miles. Getting beyond frustrated as I've spent 3 of the last 4 weekends sitting.

This time it's because of another driver. Did a drop/hook yesterday - I dropped a shiny 90k numbered trailer and pick up a trailer that had no license plate light, a busted wheel hub, and a recapped tire that was falling apart. Roadcheck week, so I bring it to the T/A to be fixed.

Problem 1 - this load was due to deliver at 830am today.
Problem 2 - I wasnt dispatched on this load until 2pm yesterday.
Problem 3 - I sat at a receiver yesterday for six hours, using up almost 7 hours of my day.
Problem 4 - It took the T/A guys a good amount of time to get me in the shop and to fix the problem.

After they were finished with the repairs, I had one hour left on my 14 so I decide to stay at that t/a and finish a reset. Woke up at 1am, ate breakfast, hit the road. Get about 400 miles in and the message comes across the qual that the appointment has been pushed back to Monday. F*%#ing MONDAY. Had the previous driver not dropped off this trailer in this condition I wouldn't be sitting here all darn weekend, and I'd still have my wheels moving and making money!!!

So here I sit, again. Three out of the last four weekends I've been parked, and five out of the last six weeks I've had less than 2,000 miles. This all goes back to what I posted about the condition of the trailers - there is no accountablilty system here. Dump the problem on the next driver and nothing will come of it, except they will get screwed if they want to run legal. The common response is "the yard dogs are doing it". I wholeheartedly disagree. Yard dogs don't leave bad tires, busted hubs, unclean interiors, and blown out lights. Sad.

 

Just a little update - I put in my resignation last week and no longer work for KLLM. So many factors going into this decision that I just got fed up and left. That last outing that I went on I was gone for 7 weeks and only made 13,000 miles - including 1 week of 3k miles. So that left 6 weeks with 10,000 miles. I was sitting entirely too much and every weekend I was parked due to poor load planning, crappy trailers, or just customer service screwing up appointment times repeatedly.

I'll post a much longer update later, and I promise that it won't be pretty. I've heard some horror stories from the likes of Werner and Swift - and my experiences over the last two months that I worked for these clowns is not much better.

 

So here's why I left, and if you notice this is almost parallel to what Blackshirt has said already.

Miles are gone for solo company drivers. Preplans are a myth of the past - you'll never get one. If you luck out and do manage to get one, it will be one of two things - too good to be true (which results in it being taken away and given to lease) or just an awful, awful run that they will give you on a Friday at 4pm as the dispatchers are leaving the building for the weekend. Many times I've had to call up and argue with dispatch about my next load because it's like it never occurred to them that you are on e-logs, and scheduling a pickup at 6pm after finishing a delivery at 9am might not be that great of an idea and that you'll be out of hours. On my last run with these clowns, I got 13,500 miles over 7 weeks. One of those weeks was a little over 3k miles, leaving 10,500 miles for 6 weeks away from home. My paychecks averaged $395, not including the one amazing week.

Liars run that place and will screw the company driver in favor of the lease driver. If you get a 1k mile load, expect to be swapped out. If you get a preplan that will keep you busy, expect to be swapped out. Honest to you all, I had 1 load during my entire time working here that was over 1300 miles. Last time I had a decent run was from Amarillo to Ottawa, IL and was swapped out. Dispatch told me "we are concerned you might not get there on time" which was complete bs because it was 850 miles for two days of work. I had plenty of time to get it there but it turned out that a lease team from the midwest refused to take their load to Dallas, so I had to stop in Joplin to swap. My load had 850 miles over two days, their load had 450 miles left OVER THREE DAYS. That's the way it works here, company drivers get ##### on in favor of lease drivers.

Night dispatch - I refuse to be yelled at, cursed at, and hung up on by another employee. My parents didn't even do that to me when I was a teenager. I had an instance where I was told to do a drop and hook in York, PA but couldn't find the yard where our trailers were. Our qualcomms were down so I had no directions and called Jackson to ask if I could get local directions sent to my truck. You'd have thought I spit in the guys face and dumped a bucket of crap on his mother by his reaction. It resulted in him cursing at me about how "That's not my god d*mn problem, and you need to be a big boy and find your own ######## way around." Honest to God, that's a direct quote.

Equipment - I already made a post on here about the condition of the trailers. You can see that instance on June 8th where I sat in Indianapolis for an entire weekend because some dummy with a cdl dropped a trailer in piss poor condition. What I didn't get to say was that I also sat that Monday, then was given a 500 mile load that didn't deliver until Friday. The suits in Jackson will say "Safety is the only way", but when you actually are given horrible equipment and decide to be safe - YOU WILL BE PUNISHED IF SAFETY AFFECTS YOU GETTING THAT LOAD DELIVERED ON TIME!!!

Hometime - I can not stress to you guys how annoying it is to be constantly called by your job when you are on hometime. It is unbelievably annoying and frustrating. Last time I went out with this company, I ran for 7 full weeks and came home on a Monday. I swear by noon on Thursday they started calling. "Hey, just checking to see when you're coming back." "Hey, you got only four earned days off, need you back on Sunday!" which of course is a lie because I had earned 7 days. They will call your phone AND your emergency contacts phone to harass you into coming back to work. That's no joke there - they actually called my parents house looking for me.

Communication - This has just got to be the most frustrating thing in the world to deal with. Last time I came home, I put in for a repair on my truck to be done when I got back to Jackson. Got to the yard, fueled up, wrote up the maintenance ticket. Went home for a few days and came back to find that they hadn't touched my truck for the week it was sitting on the yard. Whoever it was that was writing up the tickets that day didn't give it to the shop guys only 100 yards away. Customer service frequently screws up appointment times - happened 3 times during my last run with the company. Says deliver on Friday, actually doesn't deliver until Monday and you get to sit and not be paid until then.

Tattle tales - It's gotten to the point to where I just ignore everyone. I backed into a TA one day and there was another KLLM driver there. He saw that I had a steering wheel knob and called Jackson to report me. Didn't walk the three spaces over to say "Hey, that's against company policy.", instead he ratted me out. I wonder what he got out of that? A promotion? A spot as safety directors special guy? A cookie? I never used it while driving, but loved to have it when backing. But hey, if it's against the policy then I'll get rid of it. Just don't whimp out and call the suits while leaving the truckstop.

Tuition Reimbursement - disappeared one day without warning. Was not told why until I made at least 30 calls to Jackson wondering why they stopped paying. They said that I never got my hazmat endorsement, which I did have and they did have on record. Hell, one of my last runs with them was a Hazmat load. I argued this to the last day I worked for them - they just refused to pay any more of it.

One of the last things that really teed me off to the point that I quit was when turning in my truck to the shop. The night shop window guy basically ignored everything I was showing him wrong with my truck because "YOU'RE JUST A COMPANY DRIVER." Let that resonate and it shows where the priorities are here. He ignored everything that I had said that was going on with my truck even though I was the one driving it for seven weeks because I'm not paying the notes on the truck. I actually do have a decent history in automotive electronics and knew that the On Guard system was malfunctioning and interfering with the cruise control which subsequently would not allow me to idle the truck - but hell, what does a company driver know. Those fools sent the truck to Freightliner because they couldn't fix it after spending three days looking for the problem.

So for the 7 days that I was at home helping my mom recover from knee replacement surgery, they didn't fix my truck. They were calling me two or three times per day wanting to know when I was coming back to work, but they never looked to see if my truck was being repaired. The kicker is that I was told by a night dispatcher that it was MY RESPONSIBILITY TO MAKE SURE THAT MY TRUCK IS BEING WORKED ON WHILE AT HOME. Seriously???? I just lol'ed, drove to Freightliner, cleaned out my truck and went home. I sat for another week not working and found a local job, and the sad thing is that I feel more respected at that job as a driver in one week than I did during my near year with Phlem. These guys gave me tools, hourly pay with guaranteed money each week, a clean truck, and top notch trailers to work with while Phllem will give you crap to work with and expect you to be on time during Roadcheck week with a trailer that would get you shut down if caught!!

Here's the funny thing - it's been a week since I put in my resignation with the company but I still am getting calls from these clowns wanting to know when I'm going back to work, if my truck is fixed, etc. Every time it's the same answer - *hangup*

So my final recommendation is this - do not go to work with Phllem as a company driver unless you're going midwest regional. If you're interested in a lease purchase deal that will result in you going bankrupt and your family being starved out for the last three months of the lease, then go for it. I'll never do it, and I will never go to work for a company that puts lease purchase drivers ahead of their company drivers like that.

This company has turned into a joke of the trucking industry with their reputation slowly heading towards Werner level, but what do I know...I'm just a company driver.

*edit* For those who might think that I was a bad employee - I had 2 late deliveries during my time there. One was because I had an overnight load from Alabama to New Orleans and the shipper took 6 hours to load, and the other was for that Richmond debacle with the trailer. Other than that, I was on time, every time for loads and unloads when I wasn't dispatched on a load that was already 6 hours late.