Good and bad companies

Companies that I've enjoyed, let's start on a positive note.

Bridgeport Tank Trucks (BTT)

What I loved. They train people, no prior oilfield experience required.

Good pay, if you work hard you can make $100k+ a year

Everyone in the office started in the truck and are required to maintain their CDL. Anyone in the office can be pulled and put back on a truck at anytime. Don't have to take orders from some office lady who never had a CDL.

Good maintenance, zero issues getting maintenance done on the truck.

Black Ridge Operating

Small fleet, fast trucks, owner is a former driver and is always on the yard greeting the drivers. Equipment is older but well maintained. I had a pre DPF tractor which I liked. No dpf, no down time for DPF issues.

Sand Revolution

Fast trucks, manual transmission and fast unload times.

Detmar Logistics

Not a fan of automatic Volvo's. Capped at 75mph but that's fast enough I'm not going to get ran over. Hard workers can make good money. All trucks have APU's and refrigerators as well as inverters. No issues getting maintenance done on the truck.

I used to like the dedicated accounts at Swift until they installed driver facing cameras and got dumb. Definitely wouldn't recommend them to anyone today or any mega for that matter.

The bad

My first company was Stevens Transport. The CDL training was really good training. My trainer was awesome and I still talk to him today. He took training very seriously so I experienced the opposite of all the horror stories I hear about trainers. However 62mph and .26 cpm doesn't pay the bills. Then them constantly trying to get everyone into their ridiculously expensive lease program wasn't good.

Southern Refrigerated Transport

Do their regional deal if you like sitting for hours at chicken plants making barely any money. Honestly worse than Stevens. Weekends off? Forget it! You're not getting home on the weekends.

Sandbros Logistics

So I got hired on by a truck owner. Guy never had a CDL so not an OO, just an O. He didn't operate anything and didn't care to. His idea is to just buy trucks, hire drivers then lease them on to a company to run his trucks. He basically views trucks as a passive income investment. Nice guy, I'd definitely have a beer with that dude but he has no business running trucks.

FBGM LLC

Same deal like the last one. Actually the owner is a friend from the army. He was our unit supply clerk. I helped him prepare for the promotion board while on the road. Great guy, good soldier but doesn't take care of his equipment. Getting work done on the truck is like pulling teeth. He's all about making money but not about spending any money. That's a no go. He taught me why people say not to do business with friends or family.

LinQ Transportation

Really nice trucks. Equipment is top notch except for just that one crappy International that I got stuck with. Everyone else had really nice Peterbilt's. I got one of those Peterbilt's up to 85mph on I-20 and decided to slow it down. Not sure where it tops off at. My International however could barely pull its own weight across a parking lot much less a load up a hill and was always breaking down on me. Pay is a hybrid hourly/CPM system where they decide somehow which loads get paid hourly and which loads pay CPM. Somehow it always worked out that I had 40 hours on the clock, some mileage pay and zero overtime after a long week of very long days.

 

Since 2013