Panther expediting - anyone have any info

I just heard a friend with about 5 years service quit them. He said it had a lot to do with thier paperless logs. His complaint was if he was in the back row of a truck stop at the time he went to sleep, when he woke up in the morning and there was a spot nearer to the TS, when he started his truck to move up a few hundred feet, his time would start on his log. No way to stop it

 

Seems like a very minor reason to quit a job.

 

That's not true. You can drive up to .7 miles without it changing your duty status.

 

Really it sounds like a very lazy reason to quit. I liked parking on the back row.

 

I had a truck leased with Panther many years ago. I left them because they were very dishonest in the way they paid.
In my experience; They had a policy of paying DH after 250 miles. What they would do though, is after delivering, they would move me several hundred miles....199 miles at a time to get out of paying DH. Averaging ALL miles, I figured that the paid/unpaid mile ratio was almost 1:1. Some weeks, I drove MORE unpaid miles DH than I drove loaded. Plus when we left them, they still owed us $1800, which they have never paid.

Plus, I doubted if any of their dispatchers ever studied geography or looked at a map. On a load from Grand Rapids, MI to Atlanta (US131-I94-I69-I65-I24-I75....right?)
Somewhere near the MI/IN State lines on I69, I was paged and stopped to call them. The dispatcher asked me "W-T-F I wasn't over in Ohio on I75?"

 

My mother-in-law recently went to work in their accounting office. From the sounds of the stories here they have been through a lot of changes lately. She has been talking to me about working for them once I get enough experience for a while now. With Panther the pay can depend on whether or not you can get DOD certified. They are doing a lot of DOD loads right now. Now she did say that driver retention was one of their main concerns, and that any info I found out to please pass along. It looks like they know thats an area to work on. But from what she tells me they seem to be pretty good.

 

my bf and i worked for panther last year around the time of the conway buyout. and we ended up quitting, mostly because of problems with our trucks owners and hometime. plus dispatch was very pushy (no forced dispach my ##*).

now we are with Express 1 and we are much happier. the ownr of our truck is great, dispach are wonderful, and our miles are great.

 

You might want to find more info on this venture at www.expeditersonline.com

This is a place that expediters go to.

 

I just finished talking to some friends who drove for Panther II as a husband and wife team.

They said overall it wasn't bad. They drove a straight truck too. They said the problems were the dispatchers, who had no concept of driving a truck from one end of the country to the other. They would be given expedited freight that was a 15 hour drive, but had to be delivered in 11 hours. If you missed the closing of the plant, you had to wait all weekend with the load and the company would get fined big bucks. Your bonus and any other miles for the weekend were gone too. They said they had more stress, driving in that job than any other. They were swift teamers before that and were thinking of going back, because it was just too much at times. They would blame you for the fines and being late, even though you had no control over it. They lasted about 6 months and quit.
I've seen some nice trucks though with panther II on them. I don't know if those were company trucks or o/o's or leases, but they were very nice rigs. Purty rigs don't pay the bills though. Keep asking around.