No favorite company

agree with that my best job was pulling flat's for a o/o loved it made good money and new the few people that where in the office.
then he got a case of the ####### and pulled all his trucks togo on his own well few months later he went to the crappper.

 

In a nutshell, you are right. There is no Great trucking company. Just some that are better than others.

In my 25 years, I have experienced only good companies that are smaller... up to a few hundred trucks. I have only been with one large carrier, but hear all the time about the policies of the big boys. I really have no desire to be with a large carrier again.

What many drivers forget when searching out a carrier is the basics.... who are the primary customers, what type of freight, speed they dispatch at, what percentage of loads are preplanned, practical or short routing, etc. I have found that a lot of carriers are not bad in and of themselves, but they drop the ball on what they have for customers and freight, and the driver gets the short end of the stick on that. The fanciest carrier that promises the moon is no good if they don't have an operations/sales staff that knows how to do it right. I would rather be in a 5 year old truck and running consistent and steady than in a bright shiny new truck waiting at truck stops for another run. Take a look at any layover policy, I have found that carriers that don't even mention a layover policy usually don't have much of it so that it is an issue. But even those, will usually compensate if the a layover situation occurs.

In other words... look beyond the glossy truck magazine ads and research out a carrier. If they get annoyed that you are asking so many questions, or they give you "canned' answers or will not transfer you to different departments to talk with other staff people...... I avoid them. With my present carrier, I spent a solid 3 months researching them, made so many calls to various personel in different departments that they all knew me when I showed up to sign on. No one got upset that I was doing all this. And it payed off. Good carrier, good customers, good runs, good settlements, and darn good people to work with. Went thru a lot of carriers before getting to these guys. Virtually all of the others got frustrated or down right upset I was digging so deep into who they are and how they do things.

Dilligence does have its rewards.

 

I went to my first safety meeting at my company yesterday and met a lot of our drivers. They gave out longevity rewards. There were a lot of five, ten, or so years rewards given. That to me is a good sign. All but just a couple of veterans of our co I have talked to are happy enough here.