After driving for the company, only 3 days shy of 6 months, (making a solid 2 years of driving truck) had picked up a load in Las Vegas Friday, after sitting a day and a half, supposed to deliver in Portland by Tuesday morning, got up to Chemult, OR on Hwy 97 (there's a pilot truck stop there) Saturday night. Decided to call it quits that night because of a bad snow storm and there were chain laws up all over the place (including metro Portland). Grew up driving on the East coast where there are no chain requirements, so I never learned how to chain up. They never taught us in orientation either, just assumed that we knew how.
Sunday morning, got ahold of weekend dispatch, told them the situation. They told me my two choices were to either hire someone to put the chains on, or call the shop and they would walk me through it. Now keep in mind, there were even senior drivers who were parked. It was a horrible snowstorm, and I was smack dab in the middle of the cascades in between Bend and Klamath Falls. I said no way, will wait it out until monday.
Monday comes around, still coming down, I said going to follow 97 to I-84 and go into Portland that way, by then chain laws were lifted for Hwy 97 as well as Portland metro. They said no way will they authorize an extra 100 miles detour, just do what I think was best. Which at that time, I thought was best. Got going about 10 miles, realized my trailer tires were dragging (axle froze up). So I called shop, told me to go another 30 miles to La Pine where there is a tire shop.instead of calling someone to save the tires, they let them go, resulting in having to replace 4 brand new trailer tires. Delivered my load on-time at customer Monday night and went to the terminal, which is also HQ for the company.
Tuesday morning, was called in to personnel, made me take a piss test which I passed with no problem since I don't do anything bad anyways, then called me into human resources and told me that they had to let me go, because I did'nt take the shortcut into Eugene like I was supposed to, (keep in mind that shortcut has a little well known pass called Willamette Pass with a 12,000 ft mtn to navigate through.) and because of the 4 blown trailer tires.
They told me they would provide the bus ticket home (which was Phoenix, where they have a small terminal there as well, actually the terminal I was out of), would'nt let me take the truck back to our terminal in Phoenix (also keep in mind my personal car was at the terminal in Phoenix, which is gated at night) and that I could only pick my car up during normal business hours. With no way to get to my car so I could drive home (I don't know anybody there), I had to hire a taxi to take me home after a 2 day bus ride (was laid over in LA for 6 hours in an overpacked Greyhound terminal). Then when I recieved my final paycheck, they charged me back the cost of the bus ticket. When I questioned them on that, they told me that they said they would provide the ticket, but they never said they would pay for it.
I would suggest never working for this company, not only did that happen to me, but I never made any money working for them. My average take home was never over $600/wk. Most of the time, I was only getting about $400/wk. All you do is run freight between Phoenix to Las Vegas, deadhead to LA, and take a run back to Phoenix. Sometimes just running back and forth between Phoenix and LA (So. Cal). Sat way more than I should have, and their equipment is very poor.in the 5 months and 28 days that I worked for this company, I was placed in 4-5 different trucks all over 600,000 miles. The trucks were always breaking down, left either sitting at a truck repair or at home.
So far, I've placed a complaint with OSHA and filed for unemployment, seeing how another company was going to take me prior to this happening, now I have to wait a year before I am eligible to go with this other company. So basically for trying to be safe, I ended up getting blacklisted from the trucking industry for 1 year. Also considering taking this to a small claims court, to recoup the money for the bus ticket.
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