K&B Transportation: I Should Have Known Better

Overall Experience: Poor
I will first highlight the pros and cons of this position in a short form for those not interested in reading the post.

Pros:

• Decent Pay
• Fridge and APU (although there were problems with this)
• Mid-America driving, no North-East
• Modern trailers

Cons:

• Bizarre Sleep-Deprivation Tactics
• Extreme Micromanagement
• Questionable Pay Policies
• Illegal Logging Practices (this may be a pro if you'd prefer to run it this way. More info in main post)
• Generally Poor Treatment From Dispatch
• Constant Relays
• Counter-Productive Rolling Logs
• Dispatchers Have Never Been Drivers
• Dispatchers WILL talk over you constantly

 

I'm from the Detroit, MI area and I hired on with K&B Transportation out of Sioux City, IA in August of this year, 2017 (five months prior to this post). I had read all the negative reviews online and also had already seen the infamous YouTube videos highlighting their driver abuse. Nonetheless I decided to sign-on anyway as I was in need of cash quickly and they were offering a sign on bonus and a good starting pay rate of 45-cents per mile.

I spoke back and forth with a recruiter and it was decided that I would fly out and start the orientation on a Monday (it was a Tuesday or Wednesday when we spoke, I believe). They soon called me back and asked me if I would be willing to fly out the next day in order to join the orientation they already had going for that week. First they offered me $200 extra for each of the two days of orientation. I had to arrange a ride to the airport so I called them back and then they told me it would be $200 extra total. Not a big deal. Still 200 extra bucks. So I flew out next day, and after a delayed flight I got to the hotel in Sioux City at about 2 a.m. We arrived at orientation at the time we were told to be there and waited for appx 30-45 mins for a K&B employee to show up.

Orientation was fine. Same usual orientation of sitting and listening to people talk for hours and signing papers (they have a lot to sign). Next day was the road test. Easy peasy. I got my truck and it was a 2012 Cascadia and it was all beat up on the outside. 500,000+ miles on it but it ran fine and was decently clean on the inside. Got my first load and I was off.

So as a driver for K&B you are expected to send what I thought was an excessive amount of Qualcomm messages back to your dispatcher every day. You have to send:

• Daily Check Call (literally just what trailer you have and what load you're on, in case you forgot overnight.)
• Temp-Check Twice/Day
• Arrived (shipper)
• Loaded
• Arrived (consignee)
• Departed (Empty Call)
• Appx. 3-4 miscellaneous messages that your dispatcher will send to you.

Each of these messages include basically the same information about the trailers, load numbers etc. This quickly became tedious.

In addition to this, you will receive a message that says:
"I have your next dispatch. Please call in ASAP."
So, yes, you have to call your dispatcher every time you get a new load. He will tell you what your load is, then you will receive 6-10 Qualcomm messages that say the exact same thing that he just told you. Makes total sense, right?

You will also receive URGENT! messages every day saying:
"Are you rolling yet?"
They typically send these 10-15 minutes before you need to leave.

IN ADDITION to all of these messages, you will receive random URGENT! messages in the middle of the night (or whenever you are on break). Often these are messages from the dispatch crew change when they were too lazy to read back through the last 2 messages of your Qualcomm history to see that you are well aware of what you're doing and haven't forgotten in the last 4 hours.

IN ADDITION TO ALL OF THAT you will receive literally non-stop phone calls. I mean they will blow up your phone at any time. They will send you multiple Qualcomm messages while you are driving that are impossible to respond to unless you stop the truck, and when you don't respond they will call your phone back-to-back-to-back until you answer. They will do the same thing on your breaks. If you are sleeping they will call your phone back-to-back until you answer. If you don't answer they will send you back-to-back URGENT! messages to the Qualcomm.

I wish I was overstating this, but sadly I am not. They have absolutely zero faith in drivers to be able to perform the basic duties of our job. It might not seem like all that much just from reading it, but a telltale sign of the excess is that every driver I spoke to related the same frustration. It is constant.

 

Strange Occurrence #1 (Pay Discrepancy)
The first few weeks of pulling their loads I was instructed to do multiple "yard checks" where I was to take note of the trailers in particular yards and report back about them. In orientation we were told that we would be paid for each yard check we were supposed to do. I ended up doing 4 yard checks without getting paid for them, so when I was asked to do a 5th yard check I inquired about whether or not we were supposed to receive extra pay.

Me: "So am I getting paid for these or what?"
Dispatch: "Uhhh, yeah you get $25."
Me: "Ok, I've done a few of these and have never seen the pay on my pay sheet."
Dispatch: "Well in the future make sure you remind us that you did them."
(??? It's my job to tell you how to pay me? Note that these are sent in through the Qualcomm.)
Me: "So I just don't get paid for the other checks I already did?"
Dispatch: "Well we don't have any way of knowing what dates you did them. If you can tell us when you did them then we can pay you for them."
Me: "Ok I remember what yards they were and I have all my bills in the truck so I'll let you know."

They call me back half-hour later.

Dispatch: "Ok we went back and looked at the Qualcomm messages so you'll get your pay on your next check."

So first they don't pay me. Then they have no way of knowing what work I did for them. Then all of a sudden they have the information and will pay me.

SOUNDS LEGIT

Nobody should have to beg to be paid for work they already did. This alone shows how compromised the morals of this company are.

 

APU Problem and Pay Discrepancy #2
Not very long after I started I was dispatched on a load going to Everett, WA which is up above Seattle. K&B does not allow their trucks to idle so they have APUs to provide heat/AC/electricity while the truck is off. On my way up to WA my APU developed a significant coolant leak and could no longer be used. I was told that we'd have to wait until a business day to get it fixed. No problem, I can go a day or two.

Dispatch: "There's a Carrier dealer in Boise so stop there and we can get it fixed."
Dispatch: "We need you to push through to Cheyenne to relay with another driver then we can get you fixed."
Dispatch: "That relay fell through we need to get you to North Platte so we can do this relay and get you back to the yard."
Dispatch: "Just deliver this load to Davenport, IA."

OK. So by now I am a week without heat/AC/electricity and I did hit some 35-degree weather in Cheyenne and Idaho. Aside from this I can't use my laptop or any of my cooking devices in the truck because I can't idle and I have no electricity. Keep in mind I am reminding them daily that my APU doesn't work. I deliver the load to Davenport and get word from dispatch:

Dispatch: "Ok we've got your next load so we need you to grab it and head back to Cheyenne."

At this point I lost my temper and screamed at the dispatcher through the phone and hung up on him.

So now after refusing that load back to Cheyenne they decided to set up a relay to get me back to the yard. It ends up being a double relay for some reason and I show up to the first location and complete the relay AS IT STATED IN THE MESSAGE SENT TO ME THAT WAS TYPED, BY HAND, BY THE DISPATCHER.

I don't have enough time on my clock to complete the second relay in the next location and tell them I can get as far as I can. As I'm leaving to the second relay location I receive a message to my Qualcomm and find out that this is actually supposed to be a TRIPLE relay. So I am supposed to relay with 2 different drivers at relay point #1, then relay again at relay point #2 for a total of 3 relays. This is not what the message sent to me detailed. I tell dispatch that I'm almost out of hours and they tell me to do an 8 hour break there and says: "Don't worry, we've got plenty of time on this load."

By this time I had refused to talk to that dispatcher on the phone as we could not have a civil conversation, and I figured that him telling me to do an 8-hour break was his way of "getting back at me" or just wielding power over me in general. So I did a full 10-hour break instead so that I'd have enough hours to get back to the yard and since this load would be late regardless of if I did an 8 or a 10. He gets all butthurt about me doing a 10 and says "Now this load is going to be late". Anyone who can read could clearly see that the load was late no matter what. That is, unless they pushed the delivery time out (i.e. 'we have plenty of time').

I arrive to the next relay and through talking to that driver come to find out that this load has been late for 3 days while they fumble around with relays trying to move it across one state. Regardless on my next paycheck I am denied my weekly guarantee. I call to find out why and the reason is:

"Botched relay"

So this load that was pushed back for 3 days, botched by my dispatcher, and impossible for me to get there on time is my fault. I called and spoke to the manager and he agreed that the dispatcher messed up. While speaking to him, the manager, the phone call mysteriously "disconnected" and when I called back (immediately) he was "busy". I gave up at that point and just ate the $300 loss. Technically my case wasn't watertight because I did a 10 instead of an 8 (which in reality made no difference) and you've got to pick your battles.

This whole ordeal made my head spin, and I'm sure that was intentional on their behalf.

 

Other Problems

K&B likes to make you do your breaks(or parts of your break) while you're in the door at a delivery. Sometimes those are 8 hour breaks that they are fond of, and sometimes they are 10, but either way that's YOUR time you are spending working. During this time they are still calling you and sending constant messages, you are going in and out of the receiving office for paperwork, sometimes watching to see when your light turns green, and then you are expected to leave out for your next load when that's done and you have a fresh clock. So sometimes you are getting maybe 1 or 2 hours of uninterrupted sleep before running a full clock again.

They do not give you 34-hour resets. They will keep you on a rolling log. This means that you will end up driving at night a lot because you will gain hours at midnight. This would make sense only if you didn't sit for more than 34-hours in an week. Unfortunately, over the course of a week, you will end up sitting for more than 34-hours total between all the wasted time waiting until you are close enough to leave. I guess all the guys with the BIG BRAINS in the dispatch office can't understand that, or they use it to disguise the fact that they don't have enough freight. I'm not sure which.


FULL DISCLOSURE
I eventually got sick of their garbage and put my 2-weeks notice in. They told me how good of a driver I was and offered me a raise to try and keep me. I refused that on principle.

During my 2-weeks they continued to treat me like a child so I refused their loads. I asked to be routed back to Detroit and was told that it was "impossible" by one person, even though another had told me:

"I can't send you home to empty your truck out and then have you just leave the truck."

So it wasn't impossible, they are just full of ####. I called them out on it and they told me I'm a "horrible driver". OK buddy. I had every intention of returning their truck. I didn't want an abandoned truck on my record, but ultimately that's what ended up happening.

I told them I would take a few more loads to get me back to their yard, but as that wouldn't really help me out at all and it would help them by bringing their truck back, I refused another load and started driving back to Detroit from the Chicago area. They didn't like that and had the police come stop me. I'll hopefully be getting my stuff out of the truck (which got towed to a nearby yard) on Monday, unless K&B was able to get to their truck after business hours and already drove it back to Iowa, which I wouldn't doubt.

So long story short
Typical company full of know-it-all desk jockey tough guys that have never driven a day in their lives. They get to go home every night and get weekends off and then like to #### with drivers most likely to compensate for shortcomings elsewhere in their lives.

I honestly almost forgot how much better it was at some other companies. After a while you just get used to the abuse and say, "Well I guess that's the way it is." I feel bad for the guys who have been there for years.

The money isn't even all that good. usually around $1100/week, but that's over your sleep-deprived, micromanaged, 80-hour workweek.

#### company. #### people.

AJ, you were ok. Get out of there while you're still a human.

 

I forgot to mention the classic issue from "The Truth About Trucking" video on YouTube. My dispatchers weren't quite as pushy as the dispatchers that can be heard in that video, but I was dispatched on very short loads (4-5 hours) and expected to do an immediate 10 hour break and start driving again. I never refused these loads (believe it or not I'm not really one to complain) so I don't know how dispatch would have reacted if I did. I do tend to get sick fairly often and when I was sick( 2 or 3 times in 5 months) I would ask for extra time before my next load and was usually given an extra night (10-12 hours) to sleep it off.