I went to a driver training school and soon after was out on the road with a company trainer. The first thing i was told was to forget everything i was tought at the training school. I understood that the trainer was getting paid team miles, so he was getting paid for the miles i drove as well.
After the 30 days out with a trainer and orientation i was finally ready to pick up my own truck. The truck they tried to give me looked like someone used it as an ashtray and trash can inside. When they finnaly cleaned it all they did was through out the trash and vacuum the butts and ashes out. It still looked and felt dirty and had other mechanical problems as well. The company wanted my to pay to have it cleaned but i refused to pay and it was left the way it was. I had refused the truck several times before they gave me a different truck. The truck that was finally given to me was turned in by another driver that hurt their back and was taking time off and the company made then turn their truck in. The previous driver told me the truck was running goodbut had a coolant leak and was causing it to overheat sometimes. When the truck went in to get cleaned the mechanics were told about the problem and it was anotated on the maintenance work order.
The next day the truck was ready but the maintenance supervisor said the night mechanics couldn't find anything wrong with it. I spent 8 yrs as a diesel mechanic in the Marine Corps so i took the truck out and run the truck up to normal operating tepratures which is 180 to 210 degrees F. I pulled up to the maintenance bay and called out the maint. Supervisor and showed him the leak it almost sprayed him in the face. I found out that only 1 mechanic per shop is a certified diesel mechanic.
Later down the line about a week or two, I had to get authorization for a lumper fee for $200. I called dispatch and got the authoization number to pay the lumper fee. Two weeks later I get a payment stub and it shows $200 taken out as a cash advance the day after my weekly allowed $160 cash advance. I called payroll and asked about the extra advance, the authorization number that was given to me was incorrect so instead of the money being put into my account then taken out as a cash advance was only taken out and not re-embursed until I called and said something about it. Company policy is if the drivers don't ask about missing money they will continue to take money from the drivers.
The weekend and night dispatch always have an attitude and are very unhelpful. I called to make sure I was doing the paperwork for multiple stops correctly and the dispatch asked why was I still filling out paperwork and that i didn't need to do the C-bills. I iformed him that in orientation that we were told to fill out C-bills every time we made a stop-off or delivery. All he could come back with was he didn't know because he never drove for USA Truck before. I had to call my former company driving trainer to get the right answers.
After being out for over 2 months on my own I noticed that my paycheck was still very skimpy, calculating the miles i drove to the miles they were giving me on the Qualcomm with the pay i was getting i found that I was being shorted somewhere, of course with the actual miles i drove and the miles on the qualcomm were different but the pay was still very short. I wasn't getting payed for some of the deliveries. I started to make some calls and found out that even though they give you a 2hr window on some of the pick-up and drop-off times that if you are late at allon sending your Macros, even 5 minutes the company reserves the right to only pay you for running 1 mile on that delivery. I argued the fact that a lot of the runs they gave me were late pick-ups and deliveries due to dispatch, but they just said I should have told them on the Qualcomm, which I did, that it was going to be late. When i told them that I did the just said they were very busy with other calls and needed to go and hung up on me.
I would send them a message and never get a response then when i would call i would be on hold for up to 20 minutes. And they tend to lose records of your drivers license. I was told that before I went to the school that I needed my passport or they would not hire me. So I spent $100 to get it and an extra $56 to have it expidited (rush delivered) so I could have it before i got out of training. They didn't even ask for it for their records when i got to orietation. They also said Hazmat was NOT required at the school and orientation, but they continued to send letters to my house saying that I didn't have the endorsement and that my application required that I have.
I talked to numerous other drivers that said everytime they did a Hazmat run there was always complications with the company losing records of their endosments upon completion of a Hazmat run and not getting the extra 3 cpm that recently started for Hazmat runs. Also the obligated 1yr for tuition re-ebursment starts the day you become a solo driver not the day of hire.
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