Trucker Forum - Trucking & Driving Forums - Class A Drivers

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.