were the megas always a poor place to work

i curious about the history of these companies. were the companies like Werner, swift, Schneider, JB hunt, knight, ect ect at one time good places to work? perhaps before they became publicly traded companies. i know today good advice is telling a new driver to stay away from these outfits, and for good reasons. was it always this way? i had a brief stay with werner, and from day one not a great place...... even in training it wasnt that great. i wonder if that was the case 30, 40, or even 50 years ago.

 

really its too bad, and the industry is almost setup where a new driver is forced to go with them. i know i had a heck of a time getting a start in the industry after school, no one locally would hire me....... its almost like the system is rigged. well i finally got into the local scene which was my intention from the first day i stepped foot in a truck. i wanted nothing to do with werner, but was coming up empty on a local job. of course i also finished school in the late fall so that didnt help matters.

its like allot of things in this country. its too bad these once great companies went into the toilet.

i had a friend of mine that suggested i go to the pumpkin after werner let me rot in a hotel for 3 weeks waiting for a training. i decided against it and figured they were all the same kind of trash.

 

i think insurance companies should loosen the restrictions on local companies and allow them to take new drivers, provided they have some form of a training program for new drivers. this nonsense where the local companies can hire who they want is nonsense. perhaps a local company would do a better job training them anyways. i know my training was a joke.

 

my friend that i am mentioning holds a CDL and drove back in the 1980's. he still has a CDL-A and uses it to drive a class B bucket truck, he is an electrician and keeps his class-A up because he figures he has it for life, he still uses it in a way.

he was the one that said i should have gone the pumpkin, but he remembers a time when it was a good company. he said the same thing about JB hunt...... back in his day these were good outfits to work for.

someone who has been out of the loop for 30 years really has no clue what its like today. things aren't even similar to how they were.

 

i bet the very thing that makes all of these companies bad is their training programs with a warehouse full of drivers ready to replace those that quit. i spent allot of time in that hotel in allentown PA and it was pretty easy to figure it out. they probably had 50 people in there at a time. i knew it was not company growth. ok, so if its not company growth, what is it? doesnt take long to figure out that they have drivers quitting at such a high rate they need a hotel full of "replacements".

the training program enables them to treat their drivers like trash because it provides them with ready to go replacements. the government aides them in their quest and even provides "grants" to train "replacements"

what a scam on the drivers that want to stay there and do a good job, drivers that go into it thinking they have a future with those companies. i knew i wanted nothing to do with it, allot of guys do want to work there at first.