Welcome aboard. First, understand that sh*t happens. No one has control over that. Never make rash, spur of the moment decissions. Be honest with yourself, always, is there anything you can do yourself to improve the situation? Communicate with your FM. Let him know immediatly of any problems with delivery, whatever the reason. Whether your truck breaks down, unexpected traffic (always expect bad traffic and plan for it), unrealistic pick up or delivery times or the fact you overslept. Just be honest. Be on time, better, be there early. Build on your reputation for reliability. Soon, you will find the reasonable ones accepting whatever it is you say without question, because of trust. You have to have the attitude that your FM works for you, not the other way around. If you have any question, ask. If you think he can do anything to make your job easier, ask. Tell him what your revenue goals are. Remind him constantly when you don't meet those goals. Usually, it is the FM, Load Planner or Customer Service's fault when you do not. I could through in Road Repair into the mix also.

There are several things you can do to increase your percentage:

Idle as little as possible. It doesn't affect your pay, but it does affect you fuel mileage, which does affect pay.

Keep your out of route as low as possible. I recommend buying a decent GPS system to do this. I keep my o/r lower than most experience drivers. Send me your email to [email protected] and I can tell you another trick I won't on an open forum.

Always request your PO# for your truck wash. Again email me.

Remember, for the next six weeks you will make at a minimum of $650.00 each week. Don't rely on that and do your best to reach your revenue goal asap.

Deliver as early as possible. You can arrive and park on the consignee's property to be there when the open in the morning. I rarely do this. I like to stay where there are facilites and food. There are advantages to being there first and early. Send in your empty macro asap. You can take a chance and send it in before you are unloaded to get a jump on the game, but be careful. If you send it in before you are unloaded and something prevents you from being unloaded you just screwed your honesty rating. FM's can be vendictive SOBs.

Those are a few thoughts for now. There are more experienced TMC drivers/trainers on here that can give you additional advice. If you have question just post them. If you need to talk you should have your trainer's phone number. If you didn't get along with him or just want to talk to someone with experience closer to your own just give me a call.
Email me and I can give you that info.

Good luck.

One big one I forgot is to turn in your tripack the same day. Get one of the tripack books that tells you location and pickup times and turn it in the same day. My first certification should have been to 30%, but it was to 29% because I lost 5 points for a slow tripack turn arround time.

Couple of questions for you guys:

How many guys are O/O for TMC that are on here?

Those of you that are do you make alot more than a company driver does, taking into account all the expenses, do you get better loads than you did as an company driver?

DO you get good hometime?


Being a TMC employee do you get an discounts on trucks from their dealerships (Black and Chrome) or do you pay the regular prices that i see on their site?

Starting out for TMC what are the chances of getting a 387 instead of a 379?

Does your personal credit score have any effect on getting a job with TMC? What about having a bankruptcy on the credit report.? SOme have told me it will limit who will hire me and who will not. Is this true or not??



Thanks in advance for the responses, and help.

Just popping in to say hellooooo!!!!! Hope all is well with everyone. Stay safe out there!

Flatbed Fred! Long time no see. How are you! You have no idea how much of your advice has helped me out here.

Glad to hear that. I'm OK thanks.

Woah! He's back! I was looking for your TMC site a couple days ago and couldn't find it. It's an interesting read, why not put it back up?

Gold's yea i wanted to read it too but its gone...be nice to read it

I too looked for it after I saw Goldie here but, NOOOOOO, it was gone! :cry:

His website was gone the day he quit TMC which made it appear as though he was not happy with TMC anymore.