THE TRUTH ABOUT MAVERICK

[Snowman7]

[quote="motozeke"]

Your story is just like a million others, and there's going to be a hundred other guys, no matter what you or I tell them, who dive in head first to this OTR deal.

yeah thats true the human being is the most plentiful and easily obtained commodity. so it dosnt matter how they are used and discarded. The big companies know this and its just how it is I was never told when I took this job I would have tons of non productive non paying time I think that if I would have read my story when I got into it I would have tried something else so maybe its a folly but you can always try plus I love to piss off gung-ho dumb asses and company licks

Do some research on LTL Zeke. Get your doubles and hazmat. But you'll probably need at least a year of experience, some places 2-3. Great money, benefits, run legal, home daily or sleep in a motel at worst, and paid for all your time. Its a job, not an adventure.

[Evinrude]

Well I just quit maverick and now I can tell you starry eyed new guys the truth about what a typical day is like.
One don't be surprized after all the smoke is blown about how they operate professional and legal is blown and you will realize that no-one and I mean no one in this industry can run legal and make a living.Some do it to a lesser degree and It might not be told outright to you to do it and that is because they will not take that risk it will be implied tho and if you dont you will be punished and weeded out let me explain my typical day:
I would try to drop my load as early as the consignee would open say 7:00 I would arrive and usually wait for other trucks and lazy mill workers to get the load off average time 2-3 hours (maverick does not pay detention till after 3 hours and its 8 dollars and hour shows what they feel your worth) also figure putting equipment away takes time

Ok
now I have placed my empty call in and I wait and I wait maybe by 9:00
I get a message to drive 50 miles for a 2 oclock pick up at us steel which has a policy of half hour early to half hour late to load
so I drive the 50 miles and I wait and I wait till 1:30
This has been 5 and half hours already
I put my pick up number in the computer and I receive a load slip and I jump in the truck and scale where the scale man tells me what door to report to
well lo and behold there are 5 trucks waiting in line in front of me Well you know that there is 3 hours till I get that precious detention pay and guess what at 5:00 they are finally lowering my coil on the truck
well you might say hey thats 3 and a half hours you get 4 bucks right!!
wrong!! you dont get detention till 3 hours after your appoinment time and as soon as its on the truck you are loaded tarping and securement do not count
So... now I have to secure and tarp ill say an hour and a half with paper work and trip planning
ITs now 6:30 and you guess it I havnt made a cent yetbecause now I have to drive all night to get it there
and the process repeats
11 and a half hours to get a load off and on is typical in steel hauling I was in the regional steel belt route and all I hauled was steel and short runs average 350-400 miles a day
after all week of this then I would get home friday at midnight then have to leave sunday afternoon to start the process over
Oh yeah if you decide that you dont want to work 19 hours a day and try and run legal the csrs will give you a load at 8 at night to pick up after you onload and it will be for a 200 mile run they will cut your miles and increase your non-paid wait time they find great humour in this and really dont give a dam if you quit or not because they have a over 100% turnover rate and are grinding as many drivers through their orientation as they can its a revolving door company i met very few drivers here that had any substancial time with the company and the ones that did
Well... How do I say this nice possible brain damage....hummm limited education learning disability seems they were where they needed to be because there isnt much else they could do
oh by the way I stuck it out for 6 months thats all i could take
Just a warning that it isnt a bunch of roses

Good post brother....You hit OTR right on the head.

[ratface]

The odds of making a good living running legal with these OTR ***** offits r slim. Unless u have dedicated freight or your being pd close to union wages. The only way to change these co's is boycotting them 1 at a time. And also the shippers, receivers or brokers.. But that would mean we unite, but as Americans, we dont were split on everything!

[Weazz]

The thread should be called the 'Truth about Truckin'

I've run legal ....and I've run so hot I had to handle the log

book with oven mits ....and it makes little if any difference at the end of

the week.

Its a low paying line of work....my average pay works out

to be maybe 500.00 a week at best (bring home) over a years time.

It eats up my conscience to run hot...but if they need the freight

there and you can't produce and protect their reputation as a freight

hauler then the result is not to hard to figure out.

:wink:

Can i ask who you work for and are you otr?

[mbadriver]

You can be on line four 24/7/365. Just don't expect to drive. The 14 hour only applies to driving time.

yes but when you arrived that day you had burned 8 hours of driving and you are still in the same boat with 3 hours to drive and you will get a load that will be loaded after your 14 hour rule which makes you illegal

The 14 hour rule does not prevent you from working on line 4 getting loaded, it only prevents you from DRIVING. Once you are loaded you take the ten hour break. I also kept my Fleet Manager informed on how many miles I would have available to bounce empty. I would phrase my message to my FM like this "With my hours I will have 150 miles available to bounce empty, and can do 500 loaded miles by ten am tomorrow" This streamlined my FM's job and I was covered if they tried to give me a load that didn't work. I let them know what was possible and they gave me a load to match it. Of course that was with TMC.

o no you cannot load or do ANY WORK after 14 hours (and why would they have a seperate driving rule of 11 hours if that were true)I went rounds with this and night dispatch till he called safty and they told him do not let him load This is one law alotta people get mixed up on