USA Truck Inc. in 2012

What are you doing now? I'm keeping my eyes open for a few sand can companies right now... One of our old drivers is doing it for a lower end company and is bringing in about twice as much as my best week at this company lol.

 

David from Heartland is gone. He tried to sell the whole regional model to the USA board, the USA board bought the whole idea but what he failed to account for is load and unload time. Thus putting USA into the situation that it currently sits. Honestly USA needs to get back to its basics as Cliff has been preaching in his CEO messages, drivers need to put forth better Customer Service, LCs need to account for load time and unload time better, communication in the office needs to be better, and I could go on and on about the issues that could easily be fixed but I don't work in upper management so I can't implement the fixes but I can suggest them. I am also a firm believer that all FMs need to take a ride with a driver for a few weeks and first hand see what goes on. Also a thought that I had about Night and weekend dispatch, we have our 7am-5pm FMs why not have permanently assigned night and weekend dispatchers that must report first hand to our FMs thought email or end of shift reports so communication can be established and maintaned, it would also aid with familiarity for drivers (i.g. I have Joe S. for my main FM my 2nd shift dispatcher is Joe Q. and so on and so forth).

 

If any of you newbies haven't figured it out yet, if you seek out even the most basic of information from 10 drivers, 1 or 2 will give you an answer to your question, the remaining 8 or 9 will treat you like garbage. You're walking into an industry overrun with negativity and sour attitudes about every subject imaginable. You don't have to be like that to be successfull, but you WILL need to know how to deal with those who are. A truck stop without any parking is a full scale a-hole convention. If anything, time is only making it worse.

 

It's interesting how some people hang around and put up with us. Hmmmmmm. Maybe they're like us.

 

It started out in my late teens and early 20s as "what do you wanna do with your life, boy?!" and my answer was "drive truck."

The number of bills I have to pay has gone up since I started driving, and I haven't had any luck with applying for normal non-driving 40 hour a week jobs where I live. The job market is a lot more employer friendly than it used to be and they're a lot more picky about who they hire because so many people are looking for work, and if you don't have experience in something you're pretty much screwed.

So, here I am.

 

Interesting perspective. I've seen a bunch of students getting placed with companies who are willing to train them. There are a bunch. So my perspective is different than yours.

Are you saying that with experience, if you don't have endorsements like HAZMAT that it's tougher to switch companies?

 

If any of you newbies haven't figured it out yet, if you seek out even the most basic of information from 10 drivers, 1 or 2 will give you an answer to your question, the remaining 8 or 9 will treat you like garbage. This is true, but conveying wrong information. A newbie or for that matter an experienced driver should seek out their information from either the wealth of information available from the internet or official information in written form , or get this from your carrier. As for as (on the road info) your better with the school of hard knocks, the lessons learned stay with you. You're walking into an industry overrun with negativity and sour attitudes about every subject imaginable. You don't have to be like that to be successfull, but you WILL need to know how to deal with those who are. I could not agree more, and it's a shame most drivers can't figure out most of our misery is self inflicted. A truck stop without any parking is a full scale a-hole convention. If anything, time is only making it worse.

 

Read the entire post from that user... I believe he is talking about 40hr/wk non-driving jobs. He isn't talking about switching to another company and drive.

 

I've been around the country several times. I don't believe another trucker ever treated me like garbage. Is this a "Vent"?

 

I was not venting, I was just saying that asking fellow drivers is not the best source for information so getting angry when dissed by them is pointless.