Seeking info on System Transport (flat bed)

Why wait? No minimum drive time requirement listed.

Successful candidates must meet the following requirements:

• Be at least 21 years of age
• Have an acceptable CSA score
• Possess a valid Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) issued in the state of residence
• Have a current long form DOT physical and Medical Card
• Successfully complete Orientation
• Pass a DOT pre-employment drug screen
• Pass a Physical Demands test
• Pass a mandatory road test
• Perform all essential functions required by the driver’s job description

 

Weekly pay will vary with mileage, which will depend on factors related to both the driver and the loads.

My current info from a SysTrans recruiter is $.43 for me. I have no skateboard experience, with 9 months OTR dry van, 2 months dry bulk regional/local, and 1 month straight van truck local. 0 points on CSA, 1 minor non injury preventable with no citation, 2 clean inspections, 1 inspection with a maintenance violation, again, no citation.

I'll be getting paid better to sit through System Transport orientation and training class than I'm currently making delivering soft drinks and beverages locally in a straight truck dry van.

I start System Transport orientation this Monday, November 5, in Cheney, (Spokane,) and I'll try to share my findings on this necro or a fresh thread.

I haven't really found a lot of current information on System Transport. What I did find seems to be the typical bell curve, with the exceptional outliers.

It sounds like a pretty good outfit to me, I'll let y'all know.
I'm going to Flat bedding simply for the the very valuable experience. System Transport does have some specialized flat bedding divisions that a person can transfer into after a certain number of months, I think it's 3 months, in the the lower 48 standard flatbed division.

 

Well I think I'll go ahead and share my experience so far with System Transport in this necro'd thread.

I live about 220 miles or so from Spokane. I drove my own personal vehicle and will be reimbursed for my fuel costs. I'm sitting in my single occupancy motel room. The company is providing breakfast and lunch for us. We do have to provide our own dinners. I don't know I mean that's a pretty sweet deal having your own motel room during orientation. I lucked out and actually ended up in the motel right across the street from the from the yard but that's not the usual case with the normal Motel being downtown, about ten miles, but I scored.

Also we've been told for those of us that have either just graduated from CDL schools or are still paying on their CDL cost that the company will be reimbursing some of us for those costs, not everyone apparently but hey that's a pretty sweet deal if you ask me. I don't actually expect to get reimbursed since I've actually been out of CDL school for over a year now even though I'm still paying it off but I'm going to give it a shot.

Also I will be getting paid for orientation and also for my first week before I'm really putting many miles on.

System Transport calls it transition pay and I'm not going to say how much it is but I will say that I'll be making more for sitting in orientation for four days than I made for humping soft drinks on a local route for a local Beverage distributor.

Yesterday, Day One, was mostly the standard, you know, the introduce you to the company and HR and all that kind of stuff.

We started with 20 potential drivers in our orientation class. I think we might have one or two that were fresh out of CDL school but everybody else had at least some Class A experience, I think besides the couple of trainees that were fresh out of school I think the least experience was something like 3 months, and we have a few drivers with many years including even some flatbed experience and we had one rehire.

We spent some time doing paperwork and then we did our road tests.

I've got a little over a year of CDL experience, about 11 months of that in class A, and my road test was about 5 miles. I was admonished for floating, company policy is to double clutch, so I have to double clutch.

I'm going to be honest, my double clutching is pretty horrendous. Over the summer I spent not quite 3 months driving 4 axle trailers on 4 axle tractors, hauling wood chips, a hundred four thousand max gross with18 speeds, and I floated all the time. In fact that's what they pretty much insisted on.

So anyway I'll be spending the next week or two fine-tuning my double clutching. I really prefer floating; it's just so much easier and smoother. Double clutching really throws off my timing but I know that once I've been doing it for a week or two it's going to be no problem because I will have adjusted to it and adjusted the timing of my shifting but yeah the first couple days probably will be a little bit rough.

The last thing we did at the end of the first day was go downtown and take a physical means test I think they call it when you've got to lift some weighted crates and pull on some fish scales and climb a ladder, that kind of stuff, while your pulse is being monitored. It was no big deal it's pretty easy. I passed even though I'm 56 years old and definitely in just about the worst physical condition of my life.

Day Two, Tuesday, consisted of first thing in the morning we did Smith System training which is like an hour or an hour and a half of classroom and then we went out in 9-passenger Vans and took turns driving around Spokane practicing the Smith System.

The Smith System training took us right up to lunch and then after lunch we started on securement and tarping. And I'm honestly right up front I'm just going to say I think that I'm going to have a blast with load securement. I know that tarping is going to be a real pain in the butt and I know load securement is too especially in foul weather and you know Wind and Rain or whatever but that's where the challenge lies in his job is figuring it out and getting it right so you don't put that freaking coil through the back your cab or whatever.

It's kind of weird to be in the position I'm in right now because I feel like I'm sort of in this weird limbo State between experience levels. I put out a lot of freaking applications in the last few weeks and I'm still getting emails for interview requests.

You know last time I was looking for work in this was in the late summer right after I finished driving chip trucks and I gave that up strictly because of the night hours it was killing me.

But anyway it's weird suddenly being able to kind of do a little bit of picking and choosing between jobs. That magic one-year Mark is, it's amazing.

On Sunday night sitting here in the motel room I actually found some I think it was on indeed or Glassdoor I found some really negative reviews from drivers that were upset about some changes that have been made after its management changes a couple years ago or so. Very disgruntled very very negative s***.

So anyway I started freaking out a little bit thinking maybe I picked the wrong job cuz I got to thinking about the negative stuff that were in those reviews and then I got to thinking about throwing tarps in Sub-Zero temperatures.

Anyway long story short I tried to sabotage myself for that physical means test by drinking Rockstar in the morning before the test but I still succeeded just fine so no problem there. You're not supposed to use caffeine or other energy boosters on the day you take that test because your pulse is monitored while you're doing it but I succeeded anyway.

Now in the last two days we've had geez I don't know I think three or four members of Senior Management come in and talk to us and you know people throughout the company from HR and dispatch and driver engagement, all kinds of stuff.

It's not going to be perfect. I mean these are all decent honest people and you know they're not painting it to be perfect, they admit that there's issues within the company but it's just like any company. Every company in the world is made up of people and there's no such thing as a perfect company cuz there's no such thing as perfect people.

And I think that's the problem with those bad reviews online. I think people think there's going to be some perfect job or something. Any company, any job is mostly about people and people are problematic.

I do think this is going to be a good job. From what I see so far System Transport and TransSys are a pretty good company.

They're undergoing a fair amount of growth right now which is going to create a lot of opportunities.

At least on the surface they very much encouraged an open door policy.

Systems Transport has 900 trucks or something.

As far as I can tell these are all really good people, I mean they're honest, upfront and frank, not trying to blow smoke up anybody's tail end or anything. I know recruiters sometimes do that s*** but I think I haven't seen anything that my recruiter told me that that wasn't spot on.

Another policy that's really nice is allowing transfers between between divisions. So TransSys has three divisions: System Transport which is flat beds including OTR, heavy haul, RGN and some other specialized flatbeds. TransSys is reefers and a few dry Vans and then there's also JJ Williams I think it's called, that's bulk, both dry and liquid.

I think flat bedding is going to be really good for me where I'm at in my life and my career right now. I think figuring out the puzzles of how do you secure a load make it safe protect the load from the securement devices and all that stuff I think that's what I need right now in my career. I think I'll grow into it really well and I think it's got just enough technical challenge to keep me interested.

 

@Odin's Rabid Dog Welcome to the TSI family. Dont sweat the double clutching to much. Once you're own your own you can go back to floating gears like normal. I'm over with JJ Williams and its TW Transport or TWT that's the dry/refer devision. Good thing is once you're in you can bounce to the other devisions without going through the orention again. Ive been here almost 5 years now and its gonna be a while before I leave. Where is home for you sense you said you drove in 220 miles?

 

Thanks Roberts450,.

I live in Hungry Horse, over near Kalispell and Glacier National Park. Doug is already good naturedly giving me tons of static about living over in the middle of nowhere, as he calls it. ;]

Thanks for the welcome and the correction.

I have good feels about what I'm getting in to. (Really hoping fir a T800 and not a T680!)

 

Nice. If you jump on the maxi fleet you will end up in an 800 as I haven't seen any new 680's on systems maxi fleet yet.

 

Today is last day of training/ orientation. I think I'm in the right place. We've spent a lot of time on securement the last couple days, and today is more securement and tarping.

I'm not kidding myself, this job is going to get me into the best physical condition I've been in for a long time.

Oops. Did I spell "I'll be working my tail off " wrong?

 

Keep us posted on your progress.