Faith' we must have faith
 

Patrick; you must have faith my son. :?: 8) I want you to suceed at this. There should be no more doubts in your mind. Put your back to the wind and face a new horizon. This is the time; this is the time. Press on man; press on. If I hear of you bailing out; you will not live it down. You and I are going to have dinner somewhere down the road. You will be wrapped in Steven's blue and I will be wrapped in US Express red. Lets do this man. Go safely; see you on the big road :rock: :asta:

dtrain, my intuition tells me you're gonna become a "chicken hauler" within the next couple of years. :lol:

Ain't no feeling
like chicken mobiling!

Hey Dtrain - even though they haven't been willing or able to respond to my questions I still haven't changed my mind. It may not sound like it but I still have a reasonably good attitude going into this.

Chicken Hauler? Doesn't that refer to the big trucks with lots of lights?

We have to get in here!
 

Lady18wheels; we must speak to you first. :o Miss One I do not plan to be no chicken hauler. :shock: I am not the one. I plan to drive dry van and dry van only. 8) No yard bird here. :roll: :roll: I would love to do dump and run. Drop a box and pick up a box. I know the reality is that I will sometimes have to sit with the load; wait for it to be unloaded and loaded. So be it! Go safely; see you on the big road :rock:

Right.

dtrain, being a "chicken hauler" (in the sense I'm using it) is a state of mind. You gotta have a big fast truck; lots of lights and chrome; a big loud cb radio - and you gotta sound real cool when you say "dammit boy" in the mic. :D

Yep. It won't take you long to get there.

keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel!!
 

Patrick; big noise; do what you got to do. :idea: :idea: Do not give up the ghost. :o You are going to be a trucker young man. Stay the course. So you leave for Dallas on Friday. My hopes and prayers go with you. You probably have butterflies up the.... You want to drive for Stevens then drive for Stevens. :arrow: :roll: :roll: Do this son; do this!! I've checked out your Boulevard Blog and will continue to read it. You have a good thing going there. Keep it up. Although you don't have to give us a daily log; keep us informed with your progress at Stevens. You're gonna do it. I'm gonna pull into a truckstop somewhere and see a Stevens Transport truck sitting there and your funny face will be behind the wheel. Are you ready for this? This may seem funny but in all seriousness; I want you to succeed buddy. You have what it takes to be a trucker. You need to stay focused. Stay the course Patrick; stay the course. You get thrown from the saddle; you get back up. Go safely my brother; see you on the big road :rock: :asta:

O-1 is over
 

:rock: O-1 is over :D Grizz is right! the same loud mouth(s)_ is down there now or he is sitting in the driver counselors office ect.... But now he has no audience and the fun of bitchin apparently has faded away.
The Orientation was good:) I don't know why the Instructors of the school tried to make the red shirts out to be prison guards, but it really felt good to be treated like a grown man again! :D :D :D (except when your in a class room full of smart asses)
I passed all my evaluations with top scores. About half of my class has gone out but I am a non-smoker (vast minority) and thanks to recruiting rushing my physical 1 week early I had to retake it at the last minute and missed my first trainer! Typical recruiter huh. That area is the same in any business.
I am once again feeling real good about Stevens. I have not had a chance to find Patrick there yet..I've been way too busy. With any luck I will go out either today or Monday. I won?t have access to my computer for 5 weeks. When I get back I will post a recap. :D

Stevens Transport: Worst company...Ever
 

Ok. You want to know about this company? 25 cents a mile. You have to call in when your unloaded you have to call in if you drive after midnight you have to call if you are going to bobtail. You can't drive the bobtail at night. you turn in paperwork and get paid 3 days later. Lumper fees are commonly taken out of your paycheck. I kept scanned copies of all of my paperwork and afew images of messages they sent me. As for thier yards? They only have one, and that is in Dallas Texas they use a yard out of Laredo TX but it's not thier yard it's a simple drop lot, much like all thier other lots. They turn off the Jake brake for 6 months to 'train you' which is from what I have found out illegal (If a vehicle has a safety device it is illegal to shut it off) They give you chains for the winter when you go into areas that require them like northern CA or Washington....but here is the fun part. They don't fit the truck and they tell you this in training. This is also illegal. And then there is the lovely Lease Op program. You lease a truck from them for anywhere from 500-800 a week and you pay for milage. and then at the end of the lease you have to pay a balloon payment of anywhere from 40,000 to 80,000 dollars on a truck you have driven for them for 2 years. If not you walk away with.....Nothing. You get 1 cent for every mile you drove in thier truck under thier lease but all that money you put up for the joy of driving thier truck? You might as well have spent on a hooker in nevada. Because you aren't getting anything for it. This company is honestly the worst. Swift for example maybe the joke of the undustry but even they don't use suck horrid practices not to mention the 4,000 dollars they hold over your head if you don't drive with them for a year. Aviod this company like the plague.

STEVENS HAS ZERO, NO ABSOLUTELY NONE DRY VANS

I was at Stevens for 1 1/2 yrs. THEY SUCK! I just stuck it out and was able to pick and choose my next carrier...they ALL know if you can survive Stevens, you can do anything!!

I don't have the space or time to list all my problems with them. The only good is they run good equipment and will run you into the ground. If you are married, or attached...BRING A PICTURE OF YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER BECAUSE YOU'LL FORGET THEIR FACE! 6-9 weeks out was what I experienced from Florida.

They were a good company when I worked for them 6 years ago. Seems like things have gone down the shitter since then. :?

They were a good company when they ran Cummins engines....now they run CAT's...coincidence? :wink:

My husband drove for Stevens for about nine months. He did not get his CDL through them, so he wasn't stuck in a terrible contract.

His reasons for choosing them were varied, not that I can remember all of them:

The extensive newbie training. My husband had driven trucks 20 years ago in the military, and knew that he could do it. He also knew that he didn't know everything. The six weeks out with a trainer and the three out with another newbie would offer him the chance to put into practice what he had learned with some guidance. Yes, it did chafe at times but he knew he had to put up with it.

Yeah, that low mileage Kenworth that was only a year old that they gave him was pretty.

We looked on the four weeks out at a time as a good thing in our ignorance. We thought that it would mean that they would give him long runs from Los Angeles to Florida since they didn't have to worry about getting him home every two weeks. Also, being out longer meant that he would have more time at home when he got here, so we wouldn't be in a rush to get everything do everything.

We stupidly thought that since they were keeping him out so long they would keep him moving, so the lowest pay in the industry didn't matter. Better to be moving and not making much than sitting and making nothing.

He left for lots of reasons:

They didn't keep him moving. He spent so much time waiting for loads that he watched all the movies he had in the truck and had to buy more.

They expected him to defy the limits of time and space. He likes to run hard, but insists on running legal. He was sent to pick up too many loads that were already late when he was dispatched and then was given grief for his inability to turn back time. My personal favorite was the load he was given on a Thursday. It should have been delivered the day before, Wednesday. He got the load, arrived at the shipper on Friday and they were closed until Monday. No repower possible, so he got to sit over the weekend and instead of getting an "attaboy" for dealing with the mess, dispatch gave him a hard time for its being late.

I live in the woods on a huge piece of property. I could park fifteen trucks here and nobody would see them from the street. No zoning issues either. He couldn't park his truck here though, since it's not surrounded by an eight foot high fence topped with barbed wire. Instead, he had to drop the trailer 50 miles away, and leave the tractor at a tow yard 35 miles away. The tow yard was only open Monday through Friday, from 8-5, so that was limiting. Wouldn't have been so bad, except that his recruiter had said he could park it at home, without mentioning needing to put up an ugly fence. He had to be picked up from and delivered to the tow yard since he couldn't leave a car there. That's always convenient...

If he was going to California, he had to call and get the "California talk". Same thing with driving after midnight, driving bobtailed and if he wanted to brush his teeth with his left hand instead of his right. Before going to California he had to get his truck washed, since Stevens was of the opinion that clean trucks don't get pulled over as much as dirty trucks. Hey I don't know if it's true, it's what he was told.

No Jake Brakes and no cruise control. I forget the time frames involved, might have been nine months for the Jake and six for the cruise control. Ridiculous in any case.


To sum it up, he chose them for the training, but left because they treated him like he was four years old even after his training was done. Yes, I know, learning never stops, but c'mon. Amusingly enough, when he gave his notice they bent over backwards to try and keep him. It was too late though, he went with a company that treats him like a responsible adult rather than some loser they found outside the methadone clinic.

TransAm
 

go with TransAm. I am sure u will be happy u did. i work for them. I see alot of Steverns mostly hauling meat, chicken. That means u got to wait in those plants than driving. I tell u from my experiences. Stevens got nice truks but i hear bad about the company......good luck...

Re: TransAm
 

And you'll be HAUNTED BY ALL THOSE CHICKEN GHOSTS!!! Cow Ghosts, FISH Ghosts :shock: EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW :shock:

Golly... Sounds scary! Me no haul no reefer! :shock: