Theoretical question?

No. "Exempt trucks"? Really? You gonna run these trucks until the wheels literally fall off? Then what's your plan?

Doesn't sound like a place with a bright and long future.

 

Nope. It would sound like an anachronistic dinosaur left from a bygone era that brought us to ELD's and capacity shortages.

It sounds like a "make it up later" carrier that has condoned and promoted obscene wastes of a drivers time at docks. A carrier that requires the driver to falsify, and cover for inept customers.

In short it sounds like the same line of BS sold to drivers about hometime, insulting pay structures, and stagnating the industry.

 

A sign of a non business person trying to make a business of his hobby.

 

Yep yep yep

 

Between never-ending rattles, squeaks, and snow blowing into the cab around the door seals, and constantly losing time and missing appointments repairing and replacing this and that and having to pray it doesn't take a crap in the middle of nowhere, I prefer to deal with newer, more reliable equipment.

17s and 18s are much more reliable than trucks of 3-6 years ago. They've just about got all the kinks out of the emissions systems that plagued them for years.

Furthermore, I've gotten spoiled on eLogs. I run all the miles a care to run. Yes, they can be a PITA once in a while, but hardly worth all the drawbacks of exempt equipment and paper logs.

 

When it's about 132 on the pavement in death valley in Nevada you will find the strong air conditoning inside the new freightliner 2001 century can only produce about a 87 degree cab and sleeper interior.

That's not bad. But when you examine the reefer set to -20 with icecream in that situation it's REALLY working very very hard.

all things break eventually. I hope by then you have earned mountains of cash ready to fix on spot or buy replacement equiptment. If you are not a very good business person, your business whatever it is will fail when a big enough cost breaks your ability to continue on doing what you have not been doing while you had the chance to.

FFE was big enough and stong enough financially to do whatever needs doing at a moment's notice to our trucks and trailers with whatever going bad, broke or needs work now. And they have also shown generosity to me and spouse when it's October and we pull into Lancaster asking for a full set of 10 new retail tires to put onto that bobtail tractor to make ready for the coming winter. Our estimates is that several times they have spent close to 5000 dollars for these 10 tires that are what I consider preminum and never really had any trouble with them with the exception of one steer with a factory side wall defect which showed up as viberation all the way up both the seat under you and also the steering column which increased to the point of infliction of actual pain and damage to the people until it was replaced pronto.

You can have all the theoraticals you want. But when it's time to open your wallet and come up with 50000 dollars for a burned up engine sitting 1000 miles away and still 700 short of delivery that appt time is now busted.. you have to have the money, other trucks and people to solve that problem to keep your customer.

No customer, no income. No income = no trucking company period. Drivers are incredibly sensitive to equiptment that is not maintained. Cutting costs or ignoring things that could be put off once, twice, three times and so on and ignoring your defects listed in your driver vehicle inspection reports means a carrier is on it's way to a day of judgement at some point. You should already have a orientation date lined up and on your way asap before it all blows up leaving you on the unemployment line which are pretty tight fisted anyway.