As a whole I think Marten is a pretty decent company for being a large company. They have their good things and bad things. For me at least there hasn't been much bad at all. Right now my average length of haul is crap but I'm still getting good miles. Hopefully it will get better as the freight picks up this spring.
So far I get home on time regularly. Getting home on time comes down to the fleet manager. Some are better than others when it comes to this, overall most drivers get home on time. Their home time policy is one of the main reasons I started with Marten, 1 day off for every 5 out. I generally like to stay out for 25-35 days and go home for 5-7 days straight.
Most of the non-driving employees are pretty good people. My fleet manager and I get along very good. I communicate with him a lot and keep him informed over the Qualcomm and not the phone. Bugging the crap out of a fleet manager on the phone for stuff that is easily taken care of over the Qualcomm is a quick way to have the fleet manger annoyed with you. Anyways, other than my fleet manger I don't deal with anyone else on a regular basis so therefore many people at the terminals don't' really know me by name. Most of the non-driving staff are very helpful though.
Equipment is pretty good. Freightliner Columbia's, Volvo 670's, Kenworth T-600's, Peterbilt 379's and 387's. I have a 387 and thankfully the guy before me took excellent care of it. Too many drivers don't take care of their trucks and screw over the next guy. Marten usually cleans the trucks before assignment but you can only clean so much. I really like my truck except for the junk 9 speed transmission. For whatever reason they got 9 speeds in the 387's but 10 and 13 speeds in the rest of the trucks. Also, my truck is equipped with a Thermoking APU for heat and air with a separate 1500 watt inverter mounted inside the truck for AC power. Heat is achieved with a diesel fired bunk heater not requiring the APU to run. Some of our trucks have a Carrier APU which has to run for everything. Our trailers are really good. They get rid of them after 5-6 years. Most of the fleet has Thermoking reefers and the rest have Carrier. All the newer trailers have pneumatic pin releases to slide the axles.
As far as miles I do quite well. Like I said, my length of haul is in the crapper right now but my miles are there. I would have to say someone with a couple years good experience would start at about .37-.38 cpm or so. Half cent raise every 6 months. $200 safety bonus every quarter. $500 bonus every quarter you run at least 30,000 paid miles. Monthly idle bonus is based on the percentage of idle time every month. Since my truck has an APU my idle time needs to be below 5% to qualify for the bonus. $25 for picking up a Haz-mat load and $25 for delivering one. Detention is $12 an hour if the customer authorizes it. I just got an extra $120.00 last week waiting for a customer to load a trailer. I was sleeping and wasn't going to leave with it until in the morning anyways even if they did have it ready, so that was a good deal.
As long as trips are scanned in by Monday at noon we get paid for them that Friday. So far this Quarter as of today I have 20,509 paid miles. Here are miles for the past weeks I've turned in by Monday at noon working backwards....
2/25 -This Monday I'll have turned in 3,229 miles
2/22- 3,037
2/15- 2,826
2/8- 901
Home 6 days
2/1 -3,374
1/25- 3,152
1/18- 2,494
1/11- 3,137
1/4- 1,058
Home 7 days
12/28- 2,623
Depending on days home, trips delivered and such I'll wait to turn in a trip when I'm on home time so I get some sort of check that week I'm home to cover health insurance among other things. I've never really had a payroll issue. I always get whatever is supposed to be coming to me. I keep track of absolutely everything and check on the website my settlement every Friday to make sure it is accurate. That's about it for now, it's bed time for me. Let me know anything else you need, T.K.
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