[Instigator]

Wow, what a week I had! I recently went to work for SUNCO in Lakeland as a driver for an owner operator that had a lease truck with Sunco. Long story short, we have all heard about these company lease deals where you lease the tractor from them , blah, blah, blah, run for peanuts, and make no money. Well this guy fell for it hook line and sinker. He hired me last week and I ran a load of juice form Tropicana in Bradenton Fl to Cincinnati , not bad right? Wrong! The unload appointment was for Sunday at 2:30 pm, I left Tropicana on Thursday afternoon! Holly crap, 3 and 1/2 days to do 987 miles?

Oh well, I took my time thinking I would enjoy the ride, which I did. Get there on time (of coarse since I had 3 days to get there) go to back in and they say leave the unit running, well of coarse it breaks down and gets clogged filters so I have to unload right now, temp in box 41 was set for 32 so offloaded we get. Whew, close one so dispatch wants me to wait to get fixed on Monday, I say no way I am picking up a frozen load monday morning at 10:30 am in Indianapolis, I aint waiten, you fix right now, cheap bastards did not want to spend money for a service call on a sunday! So I notice some dropped Sunco trailers at this facility and swapped out for a better trailer and called it in, after I was on my way, they said np problem.

Get to Indy Monday morning for my drop and hook at Americold and guess what? Load was not ready and it was scheduled for a live load at 11:30. So I back in and wait till 4 pm that afternoon for the completion of my load. Eats up most of my clock so now I can only drive another 5 hours for the day, but wait it gets better, may appointment time to deliver back in Florida is for Wednesday evening at 1 am ! I was like really? Another 3 days to do a day and a half run? WTF! I think Sunco is raking this OO over the coals. I get back, make delivery, go home and find out the OO turns in the truck lease and walks away! Now the OO does not pay me either! Tells me he had to get an alternator for his truck and used his escrow money for it, Lied to my face, if you used your escrow money then what does that have to do with paying me?

He tells me he has a load going to Texas this week and he can pay me at the end of the week! What BS on his part! Now I have no money, cost me 125 dollars to be out for 7 days, and then I get burned to boot! If he does not pay me I am filing a claim against SUNCO and maybe they will pay me. Moral of this story, dont work for OO's that are broke! Dont work for SUNCO, they are a rip off can job that lures these guys in with cheap lease deals. Then they take the truck back and lease it to some other dumb ass fool. They pay 67% of load or .92 cents per mile and .75 empty with a fuel surcharge (not much) and if not on dedicated runs, the OO is responsible for refer fuel! I cant believe these dumb ass OO's think it will somehow work out for them at less than a dollar a mile!

If you get involved in a lease scam, and trust me they are all the same, then you need to get your head examined! If your not making 2 bucks per mile plus fuel surcharge then you will go out of business! Its that simple, your operating costs are at least 70 cents (minimum) per mile, so if you are getting 92 cents, duh do the math, you are losing money! Just thought I would pass along my story so no one else falls for it and stay the heck away from companies like SUNCO!:fire:issedoff::cry:

[Instigator]

Oh, happy to say I did get another job and I start tomorrow, running what else but refrigerated out of Florida. At least this guy has his wife calling in the loads and she mainly runs the southeast and does a lot of short hauls. The truck is nice, its a 2005 Western Star, and after road testing in her yesturday, I must admit, Western Star makes a pretty nice tractor. They were having trouble finding someone that could handle this truck becasue it has a 265 inch wheel base, yes its big but my last tractor was a 2005 Pete with a 275 wheel base! So I had no problem with her. Hopefully I will get paid on a regular basis with this new guy! Keeping my finga's crossed! Safe driving!

[Mr. Ford95]

Man, you have the worst luck of any person I've ever known when it comes to having a job.

Na he just has no use for luck, he's a supertrucker!

[Instigator]

Personally, I think its more of a Florida thing than anything else. When I lived up north I never had a problem getting or keeping a job. Florida sucks, but then again, we must have the sunshine at a cost I guess!

[merrick4]

We are a South Florida based company and are always looking for qualified drivers. We know the rep South Florida has, but we pay with a W-2, not 1099. We offer health insurance after 60 days. Run good equipment and you are not out for weeks at a time. We are still relatively small but growing rapidly. We do Transflo and payroll weekly with direct deposit. Most of the reefers are 2011 or newer. We have very little turnover, however we run a tight ship and get rid of the bad apples real quick.

As for Sunco their brokerage wanted a letter explaining our CSA scores so I sent one in and they wanted a more detailed one. I decided to look them up and their scores were worse than ours so I told them that I will not accept a load from them until I got a letter from them explaining their scores. Dispatch over there loved that one.

Anyway anyone looking for a South Florida based OTR job feel free to PM me. We run all states except Oregon and Washington. We have found they just want to harrass the drivers. We do run California seaonaly but as we have good equiptment they leave us alone.