Clodius, Congrats and Best wishes.

Buzz

I looked you up and I can't really comment on the CA thing, that's not my dept. I did see the reason you quit and all I can say is that you have had a few trucking jobs in the last year. I wouldn't say your experience is going to get you a lot of jobs because every time you switch jobs, that goes on your DAC. I hope you can find something that fits your needs because at some point companies won't hire you because it looks like job hopping. As most people say on here, there is no perfect company out there. It does no good to sit and complain about everything, it gets you nowhere. Not to start a flame but you consider yourself a good experienced driver, what makes you think that because looking at your app, I would say your experience is a little shaky. I'm on the outside looking in and I read your posts and then reviewed your app and wanted to add my 2 cents worth. I would suggest if your still driving, stay there for at least a year before looking again.

As far as hiring experienced drivers, I would say we try to be competitive and to prove that, we changed our pay package for experienced guys. As of yesterday this is the new package

$.37 starting pay with 12 months industry expeience
$.38 after 12 months
$.39 after 24/48 months
$.40 after 60 months

Plus add on the $.06/mile you can achieve thru bonus, this package is pretty competitive.

I must mention, there is still a % package and that's still the same. This new package gets the CPM closer to % now.

Like I said, I'm sorry it didn't work out for you here, hopefully you have found something that does. Just stick with it and that will open a lot of doors in the future.

Matt

Is it just me or are my posts being overlooked? It would be nice to hear why I have been avoided like the plague by the recruiter handling my application.

Hey great Terry!. 29% is tough to get to.

Not sure what the problem is. I just finished a driver that had 15 years experience. PM Matt ("TMC" here) to see what's up. All organizations have the 80/20 rule. 80% of the employees are great, 20% are not. I don't know Sheryl, maybe she is one of the 20. I always urge people here to contact Matt, who posts here. My trainees have told me that is is honest, solid, and follows up on his work. If I could give you the answers or get them for you I would, but alas "Mongo just pawn in game of life."

I wish you luck.

John

Jegzus

PM your name and I can get with Cheryl and pull the file and see what the hold up is. thanks

Ok sent you a PM Matt.

Von

Thanks, I try to be. The problem with this one is that Cheryl is in a different office than I so I'll get to the bottom of it. The hardest part about this job is that I can't get everyone hired on, so it makes life difficult sometimes. But I have been able to get people approved that may have been turned down. Not always, but sometimes.

Jeez Matt they hired me so they should hire anyone. :)

There is only one reason I can see any company not hiring me, and I have no problem throwing it out in public. My work history is less than desirable on paper. But what companies do not take into account is the reason a person may have had a lot of jobs. My wife and myself know the real reasons for why I was not employed over a year at my past companies but the new perspective companies don't want to listen to my side of why I left those other companies.

To be honest I am more than tired of having to change jobs after 8-9 months. But I also will not be a door mat for these companies and I will not do things I know are illegal. My past companies did not see things the same as me so I had to leave them. Although my last driving job ended due to the housing market crashing and small excavating companies just didn't have any work.

While I understand drivers not wanting to be door mats for companies, most have no idea how seriously changing jobs every year or so affects their "hire-ability" in the trucking industry. You'd do better IN THE LONG RUN if you just stayed with a company for a year or two before leaving. A lot more doors would open up with better companies and chances are you'd get a job you would like. It costs a small fortune in time, money and effort training a driver, issuing him/her a truck and putting him "into the system". With several hundred applications received per day, it's often safer and makes more sense financially to hire someone who SEEMS a better chance at staying "with it". While student drivers are an unknown quantity, at least they have nothing NEGATIVE on their histories yet as the MAJORITY of experienced drivers do.
As far as TMC wanting students over "experienced drivers", that's absolutely FALSE. Every week I get a reminder email telling me to try and talk to more experienced guys if I can. The problem here is that a lot of experienced guys have experience with more than just DRIVING. They have been good at getting tickets, having accidents, doing drugs, job hopping, having a "know it all" attitude, getting injured, abandoning their truck, posting damaging remarks about their former employers, having a poor reference given to them when their past company was contacted and much more.
Working at TMC requires much more than a CDL and sometimes a great DRIVER, may lack someting else which prevents TMC from hiring him.

Couldn't have said it better Fred. You hit it on the head.

It was either TMC or Werner flatbed division. The Werner recruiter at my school tried to convince me to go with Werner b/c of the ability to switch over to dry van during the winter, not dealing with the cold.

Also, he claimed that flatbed companies can 'run-out' of freight, but Werner doesn't because it has different divisions. I'm sure this was the normal pitch to students looking into flatbedding. It seemed like a 'scare-tactic.' lol.

It's hard to help someone who can't help ME. I told you you needed medical documentation regarding the issue we spoke about. Your application is NOT declined, just "filed" awaiting more information from your doctor/surgeon. TMC needs more than a DOT physical. Hell, in NYC I can get a DOT physical without even taking my shirt off or having my pulse checked. The DOT physical is almost worthless.

Werner's where you go when even the morgue won't hire you.

Thanks Fred. I'm glad I chose TMC. Yeah, it seems like Werner has very few restrictions on hiring, which trigggered a red-flag in my mind.

Fred, I have read in past posts that people can chose Des Moines it they are assigned SC. It it is about a 300 miles more to Des Moines from my location, but I would prefer to go their for orientation if assigned SC b/c it is the headquarters. Is that possible?

thanks.

Yes you SHOULD be able to switch to Des Moines if you desire.

While I understand your view point Fred, I can not agree in my position. As far as my driving jobs go here are MY reasons for leaving.

Swift: I was there for 4 months plus 3 weeks for their CDL school.(which as I posted in the past is a joke) I left there because 1. they kept me out for a month straight with 2 days of home time, not acceptable to me. 2. I was getting VERY small weekly checks, to the tune of 100-300 per week. You can not pay bills and live on the road for anywhere near that amount. and 3. On a few loads I told my DM that I could not do it legally and was told if I did not take the load I would be fired. So why would I stay there for a year? I would have gone bankrupt and could have very well have lost my CDL for running illegal for them.

Kholler Concrete: I worked for these guys for 7 months right after swift. I started out driving a front discharge concrete truck and filling in pulling tanker and dump trailers. There was always something wrong with my mixer truck which I wrote up in my pretrip book that I turned in everyday. They would not fix my truck, then one day my front sway bar fell off going down the road at 55mph with 8 1/2 yards of concrete turning in the drum. I almost flipped my truck after hitting my head on the side window and blacking out for a second, but I was able to regain control and get off the road. Passers by who stopped to see if I was ok told me that through out the incident I had both sides of my tires up to 3 feet off the pavement, that's how close it was. The company then blamed me for the incident say I didn't tell them the truck needed work. I then pointed out my pretrip book and they let that go. After that I told them I wanted to go to TT only, which they let me do, however the truck they gave me needed tires which I wrote up over and over again. Also every trailer they had was a DOT violation on wheels, which I also wrote up. Then day I finally got popped by DOT and got 7 tickets and was shut down till the truck was fixed. Now I asked the state trooper who is responsible for the tickets as he made them out to the company and not me. He told me that it is the companies responsobility to pay the tickets because I did my job as a driver and wrote all the problems up in my pretrip book going back over a month.Well needless to say the owner of the company told me that I would have to pay for half of the tickets and they would be taking it out of my weekly checks, so I said I don't think so and quit. Again why would I stay here for a year just to make it look good on paper? I was almost killed or hurt seriously and they did not care in the least.

DLC Excavating and Construction: I worked here for 7 months as well, I drove a tri-axle dump truck and most days hualed a 30ft equipment trailer hauling heavy equipment, pipes ect. I really enjoyed this job and had no intentions of leaving. Howerver one week my wisdom teeth were bothering me really bad and my boss told me to take the week off and get them pulled and to come back the following monday. Well I came back that next monday and the other drivers truck was broke down so he was driving mine, so they told me they didn't have any work for me, even though I was the senior driver there. I kept showing up to work every morning for the next few days only to be sent home. They finally told me that when the other truck gets fixed they will call me to come back. So I waited about a week and gave them a call because I had seen the broken down truck back on the road. They then told me there was no work right now and they would call me. So I waited 2 more weeks while calling them every now and then but this time they would not answer my calls or return my messages. So I left them and went to work as an EMT because there were no local driving jobs at the time.

Wind Gap Ambulance: I am only leaving here because I can not afford to live off of 350/week bring home. My wife and I are trying to buy a house and there is no way to do that when our combined monthly income is only 3 grand.

The jobs I had prior to trucking usually didn't last a year because in a small town the economy changes all the time and people come and go when the work is there, When you are young in a small town you have to do what you have to do to earn a living. So it is my belief that I am NOT a job hopper, it just looks that way on paper. But when in reality there is a reason behind all of it, and that's where companies need to take a closer look at the person and not just what they see on paper.

Just updated my site with the latest TMC pay program figures. Click the link below to check it out:

http://www.goldiesplating.com/flatbe...efits-more.htm

Also included there is a much better map of our hiring area.

Unfortunately, "What it looks like on paper" is the ONLY thing trucking companies can and WILL look at and in reality "it is what it is". Do some great people get passed up because of this? Most definitely. But it is the nature of the beast.

I guess that is why some great drivers drivers do get passed up on. Drivers are human not paper. Don't judge a book by it's cover.

Unfortunately, paper is all anyone has to go by in this day and age. All you can ask, and usuaully receive of most employers is work verification. Consistant job hopping usually, but not always, shows problems. The trend is your friend, or it isn't.

It is pretty depressing to think that in this day and age a persons character and word mean nothing next to a piece of paper.

Perhaps if the trucking industry would start looking at the person they will hire instead of that persons piece of paper, it would be a little better and just a little safer out there.

Jegzus

Just my .02, from your previous post of reasons you quit, another good possibility as to why you're not getting hired is you don't even have 5 month OTR experience. From what I remember, dump and concrete trucks don't count on the OTR level and ambulances sure don't. Someone please correct me if rules have changed and I'm wrong about that. From what I've seen on different company websites, most want at least 6 months recent experience and you don't have it. That's the problem I'm running into now. I came off the road in 1999 with a few years of flatbed experience and was a driving instructor at a school for over a year, but I don't have the recent experience that they want. I guess for me it's back to square one.

Yes... and no. In most cases, a guy with past experience AND a clean MVR and police record but no recent driving can get hired on with TMC if they agree to take a one week CDL refresher course. The problem with that is most people's pride (or finances) get in the way and they refuse to "submit" to a refresher course. Often it comes down to being willing to do what is required by a company you wish to work for.

I agree... for the most part. However I can see the logistical nightmare of trying to physically meet or talk to several hundred applicants per day only HALF of which are serious about being a truck driver, 25% of which are simply NOT hire-able due to their records, 20% of which look GREAT on paper and get hired without the need to talk to them and the last 5% who look aweful on paper but after a few hours on the phone followed by buying them a bus ticket and bringing them in for an interview you find that 4.5% really DO suck but THANKFULLY we were able to get that 1/2 of 1% of them who might have slipped through the cracks.
It simply can't be done by any reasonably sized company. Things are probably different when applying to a "Mom & Pop" outfit with 1/2 dozen trucks or a small company with 50 or so trucks.

I ain't never to proud to learn something new. Especially if it might help me later on. But I understand what you're saying.

i ain't never.............???? :shock:

Sorry, :oops:

I'm never above acquiring the latest knowledge, skills, and techniques needed for my choosen field of endeavor.

nice articulation!!!! .................................................. ...................:D

I believe navguy meant this "Tongue-in-Cheek". I only HOPE you knew that. lol :lol:

yes i got it............but thank you!

While I do see where companies are coming from when they say they want so much time OTR. But then I start to think, "well what the hell is the difference between driving a truck across the country or across town?" The answer is very simple, trip planning and time management. Perhaps I'm old school in my thinking but anyone with some common sense can figure those two things out on their own. It is also my personal opinion that having driven so many types of trucks in my short career that it has made me a better driver all around. When I drive anything I now use all the things I've learned in the different types of trucks in my everyday driving.

Now as far as driving an ambulance, I would have to disagree with you when you say it doesn't do me any good. A company may not see it as useful but I'm sure anyone who has driven an ambulance or fire truck will tell you it is much more stressful and demanding than driving a big truck. Not to mention that people who drive emergency vehicles are held to a lot of the same laws as CDL drivers.

Fred I understand what you are saying and I know for the large companies there is no fesseable way to do that. But if there was a way I just think the industry would be better off as a whole.

I know some companies want drivers to take a refresher course if it has been a while since they have driven, but in my case I still drive a car carrier for my uncle every now and then just for fun because I miss driving. My skills aren't rusty at all so if I was made to take such a class I would no problem as long as they payed me a normal weeks pay and not just 300 bucks.

my neighbor got his CDL in some way without going to CDL school and he cant even get a job with the local construction company driving cement trucks. not too bad a guy, but i gave him the advise to take a refresher class and he didnt take it. he was trying to get on with TMC and he was turned down. at least that what he tells me. im not 100% sure, but i would bet that it has to due to the background and driving experience. not to mention personal pride.

All the local companies around my area put you in a truck and take you for a road test after you fill out the application. If you can drive decent they will hire you as long as your MVR and stuff is good. In fact none of the companies that are truly local as in "mom and pop" companies even ask if you went to a truck driving school, as most of them know how much of a joke those schools are. Hell I would have had my CDL without going to school but I got suckered into swifts school even though I had my road test scheduled before I left for their school.

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with a refresher course. But I think it should only be recomended after a road test has been given to determine how well you drive. There is nothing worse than feeling like a company is wasting your time.

Isn't that all the companies are? Just paper. Come work for us, you can make alot of money, be home often and drive a newer truck. Almost all trucking ads promise these things and more. If a driver fills out an app and states in the "reason for leaving section" Job#1 low pay, Job#2 unsafe equipment, and so on. Even though it seems like job hopping couldn't it be a driver wanting to make the most of their career and NOT settleing for a low paying company or one with unsafe equipment or one that is run poorly. People can research a company all they want and say that this is the right job for me, but when they get there and are stuck with small paychecks that they can't live on, never getting them home, driving trucks they don't feel safe in, or dispatched by someone who pushes them to go over hours and threatens to punish or fire them if they don't do it. Why would anyone stay even if they only had that job 3 months nobody in their right mind would tell themselves "If I don't go bankrupt, get divorced, or get myself killed for the next nine months somebody should hire me because I am not a job hopper". Every case is different and if companies want to hire expierenced or qualified drivers they need to realize this and also work on driver retention.

Well said Jumbo, those are my thoughts exactly. It is sad to know that the companies only look at the number of jobs and not the actual reason for leaving. More times than not I bet they listen to the lies that someones former employer tells them instead of the driver.

Please don't think I am not symapthetic to your plight. Despite working for one company for 18 years, I had a few one year jobs and was essentially punished for it by potential employers for the same reason. However, I often think that TMC is too lenient in their hiring also. I can't do anything about any of it. "Mongo just pawn in game of life."

Von,

I realize that there is nothing you can do about it. It just is the way it is. But, it shouldn't be that way. There isn't anybody in the office anywhere that can say that "I make this company money" The only people who can say that are the people out there going up and down the road delivering freight. Not a recruiter, accountant, shop guy, or the CEO can say that. They maybe can save the company some money, but not make it unless they are performing some outside work for which the company gets paid. Driver turnover is one of the biggest problems companies have. Whenever the Green Bay paper does a story on trucking they run right down to BIG ORANGE to get the scoop. Last story they did was about the driver pool getting older and BIG ORANGES quote was "We have to bring in 50-75 new drivers each week just to keep up". I doubt that 50-75 drivers retire each week. The problem is they can't keep guys on. When the industry can figure out how to keep the drivers they hire the only ones not able to fill trucks will be the bottom feeders. Sorry to make such long posts.

I was on another thread reading and a guy was saying that TMC makes you take the trailer home too when you get days off. Is this true b/c TMC says the long-haul division has many drop & hooks?

If it is true, it shoudn't be a problem b/c my town allows local drivers to drop trailers in a rest area on the interstate. But would TMC allow it?

Note: I'll be OTR 48 state starting in May.

Thanks.