LJ Kennedy, bad career, maybe a good temp job......

I worked for LJ Kennedy for 1 year(more on that further down) and called it quits a couple of weeks ago.

The people that you work with such as dispatch and maintenance are decent enough, but the equipment is JUNK.

I went through 12 trucks in a year, and i surely feel that most of you out there are thinking I am hard on trucks. I would be too. However, LJ Kennedy does not spec out their trucks in a way that is conductive to long term reliability, as they use to trade them in on new equipment back before they turned into a bottom feeder outfit.

I am sure their system worked well when they had constant money for equipment, but if you do not have money for odd/and or expensive newer high tech equipment, at least get RELIABLE equipment, such as regular 10 speeds that ALWAYS shift, not just when it feels like it, and duals that even if they blow out, don't take out an airbag/air hose. Most of my breakdowns were directly attributed to the automatic transmissions failing to shift.


they run mainly freightliners all between 3-5 years old now, and a few old volvo's and mack's as well. they ALL have automatic transmissions, and are all underpowered. Most are also equipped with super single's for drives, in various stages of baldness.

The Trucks are also equipped with that IRRITATING Vorad system that beeps at you when you are "too close" to someone, such as when you are in NJ or NYC in traffic. since you run the northeast exclusively, thats pretty much beeping at you all the time.

The Auxillary Power units are also hit or miss, mostly miss, with constant overheating and other disruptive problems. Which is a REAL bummer, because the A/C on ALL of their trucks is all on its last legs as well, which means you get to tarp a load and then climb into a truck that is usually hotter than outside on top of the load. However, if you ##### enough, they will put you in a hotel.

Their pay, like most other OTR companies, is all smoke and mirrors.

.40 cents per mile works out to be less, more like .35-36 cpm, because they have some voodoo computer system that will only pay you for 90% of your miles.

Tarp pay is dismal at 10 dollars per tarped load, I guess it used to NOT matter as most of the drywall that they used to haul was pretarped, but they have lost a lot of their drywall business and are now just operating as any other flatbed carrier.

BTW, they only have 8 foot drop lumber tarps. NO steel tarps, and there are only two sets of eyelets for your bungee's. The top row has permanently attached bungee's that are usually gone/cracked beyond use/hookless, and the bottom row is usually ripped to shreds with many eyelets missing. These tarps are fine for what they do, but they are all in tatters and i have not seen a kennedy tarp in good shape in a few months.

You get 15 dollars for every live load you get, but they screw you on the pretarps, because they won't say anything to anyone still willing to preload our trailers, about what a bad job they do.

Gypsum OH must have handicapped sloths do the tarping, because its usually a " pull out of the plant, go out and retarp and restrap the WHOLE load, and NOT get paid for it" kind of deal.

They do pay 25 dollars cash every night you are out, and you get it at the beginning of the week on your fuel card. If you are out over the weekends and can't get you home, you get an additional 150. I think this was personally the only reason the job was "sort of" worth it for a year, because whatever money i made at the job, never got touched, and i just lived off the layover pay that was doled out every week.

They are not strict at all on logbooks, and as a matter of fact, i had not turned in logbooks in almost 6 months when i put in my 2 weeks notice. I kept up on them, don't get me wrong, but the only thing they care about is the bills of lading.

I put in my 2 weeks notice on 07/05/10, and was going to take my week of paid vacation from the 19-23. They(My driver manager, who was a good guy, Dave H, and the recruiter/operations manager, Matt H, also a decent guy) told me that it would be no problem for me to get my week of paid vacation since my anniversary date would be during the vacation time. That was not the case.

I checked my acct, for when i usually get paid on thursday, and there was nothing there. I call Dave, and talked to him a few times throughout the day, and eventually get Matt involved too. They call up the main terminal in Kearny NJ, and go back and forth in e mails on thursday and friday morning. All of a sudden on friday afternoon it was IMPOSSIBLE to get ahold of anyone, and i had to dial the sales extension to get ahold of someone to connect me with Dave. He then informs me about Kearny's decision to renig on giving me my vacation pay, without telling me about it.


From what i heard from what senior drivers were left, Kennedy USED to be a good company to run for. Good miles, good pay, no BS, good benefits, a good retirement plan, etc, etc.

Now, their benefits are a joke, they are expensive and crappy, Their "retirement plan" is AUTOMATICALLY enrolling you in a 401k with NO company match, and taking 2% of your gross every week towards it, and then PENALIZING you on it when you quit. I just received a notice that they took 25 dollars out of my acct after i quit.


I guess when the last original Kennedy brother died from the business, the little brother that wanted nothing to do with it handed it over to some douchebag named Mike Krohn, a guy rumored to have been fired from Schneider and USA truck for poor treatment of drivers. He is the reason there are almost no Union drivers left at Kennedy, even though a big chunk of their business WAS union jobsites in NYC.

I have no idea how that will work if the economy ever picks back up, as they are now similar to an overpriced, poorly performing Western Express.

Good Luck to any Kennedy Drivers out there, your first 6 months will be ok, after that the miles drop off, it doesn't matter how many logbooks you have.

 

that was when they first started running out the union workers. being so close to nyc, they need just so many to cover union jobsites, so the new owners management has been whittling down the number to about 30 for the whole company. Which sucks, because this used to be a really good job, from what the old timers told me.

They just shut down their Stony Point NY terminal, because the us gypsum plant there shut down. They were down to 12 drivers anyway, but they were still running a lot of steel from Gouvenour NY down to there, to be taken to the WTC. I guess that is why the Kearny terminal, which has no room for ANYTHING, was so packed the last time i was there.

They "shut down" the Aliquippa Pa terminal because the drivers wanted to have a meeting with management before accepting any temporary concessions, from what I understand. They started going up the seniority list, until they laid off the last of the teamsters in November of last year.

The company tried to start rumors about it being a "small" paycut of .04 cpm, bringing them down to .40 cpm, like the non union system drivers. I actually got to ask an Aliquippa driver though, before he was laid off. He told me that the company was asking for 11 cpm, and the company wanted this to bring the costs of the union drivers in line with the costs of the non union system drivers, who have crappy benefits and no pension. That, is just what he said however, i was not at any of these meetings. I guess the vote was almost unanamous though, so I am leaning towards the side of the 11 cpm paycut, because of how this company treats its drivers currently.

Then the local took the company to court, and when it became evident that the company couldn't just break the contract while hiring non-union drivers at the same time, they decided to bring back a handful(i beleive 5 or 6) of union drivers, and it is rumored that ALL laid off union drivers are being made whole with an individual lump payment of around 8 thousand dollars.

There Is also a terminal in Florence NJ, and they only have a few union drivers left there too, and they are being ran into the ground with manditory 6 day workweeks, and lousy runs so they end up with a dismal paycheck. they are regularly forced to run illegally, and if anyone runs legal and makes a load late, they put them on NYC for a week straight, to "punish" them. One or two quit or retire every week, and they are not being replaced, and I don't think anyone is being called back from the layoff list, either.

Kennedy also had non-union terminals that it ###### over, as well.

Carrolton KY used to be a HUGE terminal, with a state of the art garage, a full staff of mechanics 24/7, and you could walk in there and PICK which run you wanted. The new management pissed off US gypsum down there, and since the terminal was on USG property, they basically told Kennedy to stuff it and handed the work over to Gypsum Express.

As the work dwindled off, they did the same thing to the non-union drivers in Carrolton as they did to their other terminals, they started layoff's, and giving them no miles for the week, hanging them out for weeks at a time. Its all gone now though, reguardless of what the sides of some of the older trucks still say.

Bristol Ct was another non-union terminal where ALL the drivers were ran out. The terminal is just a parking lot basically, and there used to be a little office up there for our paperwork. the office is now gone, and its just basically used as an inconvenient droplot for rebar loads coming out of wallingford ct.

The Bristol terminal is actually located on Firestone property, where an insulation panel factory is. Kennedy has lost almost all the business to George Hildebrandt, for reasons I don't know. probably couldn't get loads there on time, from all of our experienced drivers being cut. The drivers that ran out of Bristol were all paid by the hour, with OT after 40 and good benefits.

The terminal in Auburn Me, seems to be doing ok though, they are in a good spot for lumber, and steel coming out of Berlin NH. they are fortunate as a lot of the competition up there has gone out of business. Their drivers still aren't happy though, being hung out on the weekends in OH or IN when there were other drivers to cover the loads, and other ways to get them back home.

All in all, from what i understand, the ONLY thing LJ Kennedy currently has in common with themselves from a few years ago is the name. everything has changed for the worse, and if i was going to pick a flatbed company to work for, it sure would not be them. Dispatch is usually laid back, and most of the people at the terminals are ok, but I think that everyone is just easy going because the morale is universally low and no one cares like they used to.

I am definetly glad to be gone, The job itself is not bad, but LJ Kennedy is a crap company to work for anymore. I am sure I would be more satisfied with Yourga or P I and I or Nick Strimbu, some place where you have a CONTRACT that can be greived and enforced, instead of being told you are SOL, good luck. I actually enjoyed the flatbedding, just not the constant breakdowns and all over the place pay.

 

lol, yep, nothing like auto transmissions with 54k loads! gee, i wonder why it buzzing at me after the transmission just missed its own shift, lol.....