Not much time and only one shot at this. Please help.

I'm gonna run with it and see what happens. I gotta start somewhere.

 

Will do. Thank you for all the advice. I have paid attention.

 

My US Xpress Orientation Experience...

I'm back home after attending only the first day of orientation at US Xpress in Jacksonville, FL The post previously by @Turdzthaword was completely accurate and then some. This will be a lengthy post, but I want to warn others about what happened to me there so they can make informed decisions. I will not be going back. They want me to, but no way.

Recruiter: "You'll be on Southeast Regional non-dedicated based out of Jacksonville. That's north as far as the Carolinas, west as far as Alabama and south into Florida. You can count on 2,000 miles per week at .46 cpm to start and about $1,200 per week gross pay." (already the math ain't mathin' )

Day 1 - Getting there.
I asked if they'll provide me with a rental car to get there and the answer was "We don't provide rental cars, but we will put you on a Greyhound bus." I got up early on Tuesday morning because my wife had to drive me 1 hour west of here to the bus station in Moultrie, Ga because they said "that's the closest one". There's one half that distance closer. I did not eat or drink anything that morning because I did not want to have to use the bathroom while on a bus ride to Jacksonville. The trip took 2 busses and about 4 hours. When I arrived at the Jacksonville bus station, I clicked a link they provided on my phone and an Uber picked me up there and drove me about 10 miles to the La Quinta "hotel" (LOL!).

The "Hotel" (LOL!)
It was a La Quinta and it looked very nice on the outside, but on the inside it was just as bad as any of the 1 star side of the road roach motels I'd ever stayed at. It was being remodeled and the hallways were blocked off with curtains, stacked boxes and construction material, so much that you could barely get by. There was 1 elevator and it looked like a service elevator, not a hotel elevator. It was slow and on the inside the entire door was rusted, holes in the walls and the floor. It was dirty and smelled like someone had just been smoking pot inside of it. My room was on the 3rd floor. The room had doorknobs missing, holes in the walls and big sections of flaked off paint and mold in various places.
I was hungry, thirsty and dehydrated. I needed food and drink and fast. There were no vending machines, so I went down to the front desk and there was something like a vending "room" next to the front desk with no prices on the items. I grabbed a 12 oz can pf Coke and a round single-serve frozen pizza (about 4 inches in diameter), took it to the counter and she said "8 dollars." I said "Are you serious?" She was. The can of Coke was $2 and the tiny frozen pizza was $6. I picked them up off the counter and put them back where I'd gotten them. I asked here where I could get something to eat and she said there were some fast food joints across the road. The problem with that is that the road was about 1/8th a mile away on the other side of a huge lake with evil ducks hanging out all around it. It was almost 100 degrees and humid outside. I was tired, hungry, thirsty and dehydrated still, so I had to set out to find somewhere to fix that.
I called the ducks evil because they all tried to attack me when I walked toward the lake to go around it to get to the road that could not even be seen from there. I made it around the lake all hot and sweaty and to the major 4-way intersection there. Both sides had 3 lanes and 2 turning lanes with a median in the middle. It had a crosswalk, so I pushed the button and waited. The cars stopped, but the turning light let all the turning lanes turn and then it let the cars go again without letting me cross. It was broken and I had no way to cross that road because it was very busy. So I walked down my side halfway to the next red light and played Frogger trying to cross 10 lanes of traffic. When I made it across, I discovered a 100 foot wide canal there that ran parallel to the road from one redlight to the other. So I had to walk back to the intersection I'd just came from to get around it and head towards the McDonalds there.
By this time I was about to fall on my face. I went to the door and it wouldn't open. I thought it was locked. I saw one person inside playing with a cell phone, so I knocked on the window and they ignored me and walked away. I tugged hard on the door one more time and it came open. It wasn't locked, it was stuck. No one was at the ordering counter but me. I saw 3 workers and the manager over by the drive-thru and the fry machine gossiping away. I stood there patiently waiting for someone to come take my order. The manager looked directly at me at least 3 times and did not come over to me, but kept gossiping with her coworkers. After about 10 minutes of that, I walked out and went to the Zaxby's next door. They quickly took my order of chicken strips and fries for $14 and I headed back out for the trek back to the "hotel" (LOL!). The trip back was just the reverse of the trip there, except by this time I'm dangerously close to needing an ambulance.
I barely made it back to the "hotel" (LOL!) after trying to avoid the evil ducks and went to my room via the rusty, holey, pot reeking service elevator. I sat down to eat my chicken strips and fries, but something was wrong. The fries and chicken tasted like a whole container of salt had been dumped on it. The entire meal may as well have been a salt lick. It was not edible, but I was so hungry I ate it anyway and then I had that taste and feeling in my mouth for the rest of the night like I had eaten 10 tablespoons of salt. I was already dehydrated, so I gulped down copious amounts of tap water out of the bathroom sink. Then I laid down to go to sleep at about 9 pm feeling sick. (To be continued next post...)

 

My US Xpress Orientation Experience (cont'd)...

Day 2 - First day of orientation
I got up at 5 am because the "continental breakfast" at the "hotel" (LOL!) was served at 6 am. It consisted of soy bean turkey sausages and a small cheese omelet made from the kind of eggs that are poured from a carton and some chemicals they call "cheese". I gulped that down because I was starving and because the shuttle leaves to take us to orientation at 6:15 am. That gives you about 5 minutes to eat.
There were 10 of us that rode about 10 miles to the US Xpress terminal where the orientation is held. When the shuttle dropped us off it was still dark outside, all the lights were off and the doors were locked. No one was there. We all waited a little while and someone came and let us in. We all went to a back room where the laptops were set up for us to watch the videos and stuff.
About 3 hours into that, a guy came in who said he was the SE Regional driver manager. He asked everyone to raise their hands who were going to be SE Regional and several of us did. He said we would be driving to all states east of I-35 and specifically mentioned New York. I immediately raised my hand and said that's not southeast regional, that's otr. He said I was right. "It is otr, we just call it SE Regional." I told him my recruiter said I'd get 2,000 miles per week and make $1,200 gross pay per week. He said that's not right. I'd be luck to get 1,700 miles per week at .46 cpm. Then the guy sitting next to me told him that his recruiter told him that he'd get paid a $1,200 per week SALARY! Everything went downhill from there because others had been lied to also. That guy left saying he was going to "have a talk" with the recruiters about all that. Suure he was.
Then they took us all downstairs to pee in a cup and get locks of hair chopped off for the drug screens. When we got back upstairs again, the lady who was in charge of the orientation told us to go outside and get in the van. She was going to take us 10 miles away to take a DOT physical. I thought that was odd because I'd just passed my DOT physical 4 months prior to this, but I didn't say anything and got in the van. When we got there, it was a walk-in Concentra clinic in a strip mall. She pulled up to the curb, told us to get out and then she drove away and left us standing on the sidewalk. We were all confused, so we walked into the clinic. The waiting room was packed and we walked up to the counter. The girls there asked us who we were and why we were there. They were shocked because they didn't even know we were coming. At first they said they couldn't see us and then said they would, but we'd have to wait 3 or 4 hours. So we sat down and started waiting. By about 2:30 pm, we still had not had lunch yet. One of the girls in the orientation class had the lady's number that dropped us off and texted her asking about our lunch. The text she got back in answer said "There's a Checker's down the street from where you are. Go eat there." And we were to pay for it. That did not go over well with any of us. One, they were supposed to feed us and two, if we left the waiting room, we might miss our name being called to see the doctor. No one went to get lunch. The TV in the waiting room was locked on to a cooking show and that was pure torture!
While we were waiting, I started talking to another recruit in our orientation class asking him what he had been told. He said he was put on a dedicated Dollar General account and that it was drop & hook. I laughed and told him that he'd have to unload those trailers himself and showed him a video of what he'd be doing. He was also lied to.
They called my name and I went back and had to pee in yet another cup and see the doctor. I have my DOT med card under the alternative vision standard that I just got 4 months ago. It's still valid and good. I brought all that with me just in case I had issues. The doctor had never dealt with that before and looked at my federal vision test form and told me that form expired 2 months ago and was no longer valid because it expires 45 days from the time it's filled out by the eye doctor. That's how much time you have to use it when it's time to renew your med card. But my med card is far from expired. It's still valid. She said that if I could get my eye doctor that filled out the form to change the date and fax it to her, she'd pass me through, but not if I didn't do that. I called my eye doctor in Georgia and they would not change the date. I didn't think they would to start with. They said I'd have to retake the entire eye test to get the date changed. That whole thing was ridiculous and unnecessary. So I went back to the waiting room and waited on the last recruit to get done. Then we waited on the orientation lady who dropped us off to pick us back up. It was about 4 pm by that time and we rode the 10 miles back to US Xpress.
When we got there at about 4:15 pm, we had not eaten but there was leftover cold pizza on the side table that whoever had lunch there at 12 had eaten.
I told the orientation lady what had happened at the DOT physical doctor's office about my eye exam paper. She said "You won't drive any of out trucks until you get that done." I then said "Ok, get me my ride home."
The orientation lady told one girl that she had to have a sleep study done and that she had to pay for it. That's about $800. She quit. The one they told would get a $1,200 salary quit to go to Melton. The guy who was not told he'd have to unload the Dollar General trucks quit.
Another one quit when this happened. We were all supposed to leave to go back to the "hotel" (LOL!) at 4:30 pm. None of have been given any food all day. At about 4:25 pm, the orientation lady stood up from her desk, grabbed her purse and started walking toward the exit. Someone said "What about us?" She said for us to just wait for the shuttle. One of the female recruits said she drove herself and her car was parked outside and asked if she could go ahead and leave. The orientation last snapped back "No! You have to wait til 4:30!" The time was 4:27 pm. That female recruit quit.
On the way out the door to wait for the shuttle back to the "hotel" (LOL!), I grabbed a box of 5 hour old pizza that had about half a pizza in it, tucked it under my arm and walked outside to wait for the shuttle. A couple others who saw me do that did the same. No one said a word about it. I'm pretty sure they knew better if they had one ounce of self preservation. I took that pizza back to my room at the "hotel" (LOL!) and stopped at the counter and paid the #### $2 for a 12 oz can of Dr Pepper and went to my room.
When I got there, I got a text message that my Greyhound bus ticket had been set up to leave the station at 8:05 am the next morning, but there was a problem. I had no way to get from the "hotel" (LOL!) to the bus terminal 10 miles away. So I called the US Xpress "travel department". I explained the situation to the Indian call center woman who answered the phone and she asked me "What day is it today?" I said "I don't know. I'm standing in a "hotel" (LOL!) with my cell phone to my ear talking to someone who supposedly does scheduling and does not know what day it is! I have to be at the Greyhound bus terminal in downtown Jacksonville tomorrow morning before 8:05 am." She set up an Uber link for me that expires at 5:59 am the next morning. I told her that would have me sitting at the bus terminal for 2 hours when it's a 15 minute ride from this "hotel" (LOL!), could she please make it a little later than that. She said just click the link after 5:59 am, it will still be good. I told her it EXPIRES at 5:59 am, hence it WILL NOT be good! Then she said to just call them back if it doesn't work and hung up the phone. I was angry and right about that time, the orientation lady called me and said she set up an Uber for me that leaves at 6:30 am the next morning and said for me to come back after I get another eye exam. I said "Ok, I will". I lied.

DAY 3 - The ride home
I got to the bus station ok and rode 2 busses to get back to Valdosta where my wife picked me up. On the way home, we stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things. I waited in the car for her. I received an email from US Xpress in Jacksonville at 12:31 pm today, August 28th, that said they just set up a doctor appointment for me to go to on August 27th at 9:55 am. There are 2 glaring issues with that. One, I have no clue what that doctor appointment is even for because no one told me anything about it and it's not the DOT doctor nor Concentra. I have no clue what it's about; and two: THEY SET UP AN APPOINTMENT FOR A DATE AND TIME THAT HAS ALREADY PASSED!

Conclusion:
I took my wife and I to her favorite restaurant on the way home and we had a fantastic meal because I basically hadn't eaten in 3 days and I'm still guzzling water right now and still peeing dark orange... ie I'm still dehydrated.
More than half of the 10 new recruits including myself quit orientation on Day 1. That's just the ones I know about. I'm sure there's more than that.
Will I be going back to US Xpress? Hell no! I would NOT recommend that company to anyone!