Chicagoland.....?

Not every Chicago company is suspect.If you find one pushing a lease, or you have a language barrier, or they have a strange name, be wary.

 

It's just a broad general stereotype for shady fly-by-night trucking companies that are becoming more and more predominant in the industry. It seems that there is a large amount of these companies cloistered around the Chicago area and surrounding suburbs, however they seem to be popping up more and more across the U.S. and Canada as well.
Many of said companies are generally 1099 lease operations. They seem largely operated by foreign nationals of Eastern European origin and practice business unscrupulously. This is typically what drivers are referring to when they use the term "Chicagoland".
Not to say that there aren't also some decent trucking outfits that fit the demographic, but it seems you will hear more about the bad ones than the good. Being new to the industry I highly recommend you avoid any type of contractual obligations, or a 1099 company.
Best to get your sea legs as a company driver for awhile. Good luck!

 

They are talking primarily about 1099 companies in the Chicago area. There are good W-2 companies there to work for. The 1099 companies are there if you need to rehab your career. They will pay you high cpm but you will have to pay your own taxes. They hire drivers under that model to avoid paying benefits. I worked for a 1099 Chicago company when I was trying to rehab my career. I had to sign a contract to lock me in for 1 year. This company took money out my check to withhold for an escrow. They say you'll get it back once you quit, but you're most likely going to eat that money. You damage the truck or trailer, they will get it out of your pay. These types of companies love to run the northeast. All that being said, it wasn't a terrible experience for me personally. I was able to work there, solve financial issues quickly, and still keep my skills intact. Once my record got cleaned up, I left. They kept the escrow money and I didn't care. I had issues sometimes with how they did business, but I did what I had to do to provide. There are decent W-2 companies there, but the 1099 companies have all drivers thinking that any company in Chicago owned by Eastern European or Russian people are terrible. GP Transco, Triton Logistics, Cadence, HMD are the ones in that area you should look at. You could even go farther south and look at Nussbaum Transportation on Bloomington, IL. Is your record clean?

 

If you're looking for companies in a specific area I recommend you check out Motor Carrier Questions - The Inside Scoop
Also get in touch with @Chinatown, he frequently lists companies for new drivers on these forums. He's a very helpful member.

 

All you need to do is look up their MC number on the FMCSA website. If their numbers are terrible, that’s the first indication they’re sketchy.

SAFER Web - Company Snapshot

And, Google the company name, followed by “owner”. I’m using GP Transco as an example. The fact there is a CEO and president, both with foreign names of the same descent, and knowing there’s a board of directors because there is a CEO, tells me there’s a whole group of them. And, most Eastern Euro operations are unscrupulous; they play by THEIR rules.



You can do a Facebook search of owner and executive names. Their descent is usually in their profile or those associated with them.

 

Chicagoland encompasses the areas around Chicago Illinois. Lemont, Elk Grove Village, Bolingbrook and other areas. Chicagoland is mostly notorious because that city was the vanguard of Eastern European, predatory trucking companies. (They’ve been here for years, quietly ripping off drivers) There are communities where Russians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Polish, Ukrainian, Baltic Estonian, Bosnians, Croatians, Serbians, Macedonians, all relocate to. They come here either on work visas or student visas, they already have family here, family that lives in Chicago.

Getting into trucking:

Now to be fair, not every trucking company in Illinois or the city of Chicago is corrupt, but many are, and it poisons the trucking company pool. Once the word got out that there were truck drivers who wouldn’t read contracts, this created a sort of predator type of culture up there. It just became too easy to take advantage of truck drivers. Even if the Eastern European never had any knowledge of the trucking industry.

Put up a website with graphics of gleaming new trucks, offer huge paychecks, make it sound too good to be true, leave out the ugly stuff like $2500 escrows, then sit back and wait.

They either lease the trucks from Ryder or they buy old equipment and the driver (whose probably flat broke and destitute) decides to reluctantly agree to sign a lease agreement. They use the money they made off that driver to further their shady business.

Drivers end up being stunned that this could happen to them. “How can a trucking company get away with this?”

It’s all perfectly legal. That’s the beauty of it.