Complaint Review: Trucks For You - Muskogee Oklahoma

I drove for Trucks For You out of Muskogee, OK about a year. I considered them to be among the best of the OTR companies out there. I was dispatched by Muskogee to Laredo, TX terminal. I arrived at about 2am on a Tuesday morning and signed in with the guard as usual and went to bed. Got up that morning and went inside to the dispatch window (they don't have a night shift dispatcher) to see if I could get an idea of how long it would be before I got a load. The dispatcher asked if I was team or solo and I told him solo, he said to just wait in my truck and they would dispatch me over the qualcom when they got something. This is standard procedure and I didn't think a lot about it. I did notice some Trucks For You team trucks arriving, getting loads and leaving over the next couple of days.

Thursday I went back to the dispatch window to see whats up, he asked are you team or solo, I told him solo and He said they still didn't have any freight and to just wait in my truck and they'd dispatch me over the qualcom. Now I had concluded awhile back that Trucks For You dispatch don't really care for a bunch of drivers hanging around the window mouthing and nagging them about freight so I figured I'd stay out of their hair and try not to make anybody mad. After all, Muskogee knew where I was at, Laredo knew I was there, if they looked out their window they could see my truck even. I had sat in Laredo for 7 days once before over a Thanksgiving holiday (which Trucks For You said they paid a $200 bonus for being out Thanksgiving but I never got mine and assumed that it must have been because I wasn't under a load but never said anything about it).

Anyway I was supposed to be making $50 a day layover so I didn't panic. Come Saturday I go back into dispatch and same stuff, you team or solo? Solo, wait in truck, at that point I said "You know I been here since Tuesday" dispatch said "I'll tell em ya been here since Tuesday" I said "That would be great" I also said "Look, I don't don't wanta be a nuisance to anybody or get in your hair so what ever you want me to do, then thats what I'll do, now do you want me to check back with you later or wait in the truck till ya get something or what?" He said "just wait in your truck and when we get something we'll send it to you on the qualcom" I said "OK, I won't be back in here then till I come in to get the bills for whatever you dispatch me on" He said that would work and I did exactly like I was told!

Now once up close to Michigan I tried to get Muskogee to dispatch me without going thru the Dearborn terminal (same setup as Laredo) and was told that anytime I was in the Dearborn area that Muskogee had nothing to do with it and they couldn't go over Dearborn and dispatch anything, that I was under Dearborn control anytime I was in that area and the same thing went for Laredo and Charlotte, NC, that was Trucks For You s policy.

The following Friday (a week and a half after arriving) I went to McDonalds (just down the street from Trucks For You s yard which is perfectly acceptable practice and in line with Trucks For You policy) and ate breakfast. Muskogee sent me a qualcom message asking where I was at, I told them Laredo, TX (which Trucks For You paid lots of money for the qualcom, makes you wonder why they have to ask, right!) Next message came back saying, your not at the yard, take the truck to the yard immediately! Few minutes later got a message that said to call Muskogee when I got to yard. After all this time they must have gotten a really hot load or something right? Wrong! I called, they wanted to know what was going on and I told them that was a real good question and they needed to ask dispatch in Laredo that question cause I'd really like to know the answer to that myself, they told me to give them 20 minutes and call back. I said ok and went back to the truck.

About 10 minutes later the terminal manager walked out to the truck and said that Muskogee just called and told him to tell me to clean my truck out. I said, "Just exactly what reason is it that I'm gettin fired for?" He said "you been here for 10 days". I said "just who's fault is that? What was I supposed to do? He said "you shoulda called somebody" I said "who was I supposed to call, Muskogee knew I was here, Yall knew I was here and yall are the only ones that can dispatch me according to Muskogee and yall kept telling me to wait in my truck while you dispatched teams and your buddies around me for 10 days!". He said "All I know is they told me to tell you to clean out your truck" I said "thats fine" and thats what I did! I had done exactly as I was told to do and this is what I got for it!

Now before anybody gets any wrong ideas, my driving record was and still is spotless, I never tore up any equipment, almost always got my mileage bonus, passed every drug test I ever took in my whole life, don't drink, try not to cause any trouble and did what I was told to do. Kept my paperwork done right and the log dept was always bragging on how well my logs were done. Stayed out as long as 16 weeks straight and got 4 days off for it. Jack in Muskogee told me he couldn't let me have anymore than that without terminating me! (I wanted a week off) I live almost 400 miles from Muskogee and I had to leave the truck there so I lost a day going home and a day coming back so I really only got a couple of days that were usable. I live about the same distance from Laredo.

When I took my fuel card and keys up to the dispatch window the dispatcher said he'd have to have my Trucks For You uniform shirts! That was all I had with me and I didn't know when I'd see the house again, I turned to a driver standing there and said "Can you believe this guy! I just got fired because He didn't do his job, I'm stranded almost 400 miles from home afoot, my car is sitting in Muskogee and now he's wanting the shirt off my back" I turned back to the dispatcher and told him they'd just have to take the cost of the shirts out of my check because I wasn't going to give him the shirt off my back! He said that the shirt business wouldn't be a problem and He did say He was sorry about the job! The other drivers were advising me to fall down and hurt my back but I've never had a workmens comp claim and really didn't care to go that route.

So here I am with way too much stuff! TV, VCR, desktop computer, 1500 watt inverter, hot plate, 12 volt refrigerator, food, clothes, books etc etc piled up on Trucks For You s parking lot in Laredo, TX. I go to a payphone and called Robert Heath out of Lubbock, TX, explained to Jodie Heath what all just happened and the Lord looking out for me like He always has, had a truck picking up a load just outside of town so when He got loaded He came by Trucks For You s yard and we piled all my stuff into the back of the trailer and I was rescued. A rescue that I will always be grateful for but how many guys would it have worked out for like that? By the way they Trucks For You refused to let the Heath truck onto the property and He had to park out in the street for us to load all my stuff up. I thought that was pretty chicken too.

It's not quite over with yet tho, about a month latter I decide to get a copy of my DAC report just to see what Trucks For You put on it. They said that I was terminated for failure to obey company policy, Since I still hadn't received my final two checks I called to see about that and asked just what Trucks For You policy it was that I failed to obey? Jack in Muskogee said that Laredo didn't know where I was for 10 days, I told him that was a Lie, there was no way that Laredo or Muskogee either one could not know where I was, the trucks got a qualcom mounted on it, Laredo could see me everytime they looked out their window, except when I went to get fuel or Wal-Mart or McDonalds, the guards made a yard check everytime they changed shifts and I assumed they were writing down truck numbers on the clipboard everytime I saw them doing it, and Laredo dispatch saw me face to face at the dispatch window everytime I got the team or solo question. He said He found that hard to believe, I asked which part was so hard to believe and He said that I went inside and checked with dispatch. I told Him the truth was the truth whether He believed it or not.

So what happened here, I concluded was that Laredo dispatch messed up and instead of just admitting it, they covered their selves by blaming a driver for it and Muskogee chose to believe dispatch rather than a driver but what disappointed me the most was that Muskogee didn't even care enough to bother checking it out which would have been easy enough to do it seems to me like. But all desire that I had to work for Trucks For You was left in Laredo so I just decided to focus on my money. By the way, my DAC report has now been changed to NO SHOW as the reason for termination.

Now for the final insult! I figured I had about a $400 mileage bonus check from the month before I went to Laredo for the last time and $450 in layover pay minus the cost of the shirts. When I asked about my pay, Jack (can't remember His last name, never was too good at politicking) said that their records showed that I owed Trucks For You money! To tell you the truth, I was about half expecting something like this so I wasn't really shocked. I asked Him, just how do you figure that? and I told him about the bonus check I should've had and the layover pay. He said He didn't know about the bonus check (they put that in your mailbox in the log dept and I was having the paycheck direct deposited) so he went and checked and found my bonus check (a little over $400) and then explained that Trucks For You refused to pay any layover pay and I owed for half of my shirts (the other half was in my Muskogee locker) and I also owed for Trucks For You having to bring the truck back from Laredo! I told Him I didn't know how He thought He was gonna get by with that cause to start with I didn't abandon that truck, I was kicked out of it, I never had the opportunity to bring it in because TFY made that impossible for me, they would have reported it stolen if I had taken off to Muskogee in it.

Next thing was that I didn't know what the law was in Oklahoma and it didn't really matter cause in the state of Texas when you fire somebody your supposed to pay them within 24 hours and I was fired in Laredo, TX. and on top of all that it was a wrongful termination! He agreed to send my bonus check by overnight FedEx which he did but said Trucks For You still wasn't going to pay any layover, which they didn't. I've still got 6 shirts that I figure cost me about $75 each and I didn't mention what it cost me for my Wife and Stepson to drive to Trucks For You s yard in Muskogee get my car and take it out to Lubbock and leave it on Heath's yard so I'd have some wheels when I got in and then drive 500 miles back home. By the way, I did dispute the DAC report and Trucks For You refused to change the violated company policy lie (which they later changed to No Show). According to DAC's rules I was allowed to tell my side of the story and it be included with my DAC report but by the time they chopped it down to one little paragraph it doesn't even really make any sense so now when a possible employer looks at it He not only has to assume that I violated some kind of company policy but that I'm stupid to boot.

I had been hearing rumors about Trucks For You wanting to go with all teams, they had already offered any solo driver a $1000 bonus to team up with any other Trucks For You driver (which I turned down) and I had heard of and some other good solo drivers that were fired (supposedly for other reasons) and replaced with team drivers. I know my stepson called Trucks For You about a job and they told him that they were only hiring team drivers right then. So the question of, are they firing people to free up trucks for teams was lingering in the back of my mind while I sat in Laredo, (how do I know?) I do know that a lot of teams came and went during that 10 days and I didn't want to rock any boats and give them an excuse to fire me. Whether or not a team got my truck I don't know or even care anymore.

Bottom line here is if you abandon a truck and it gets on your DAC report, nobody would even consider hiring you that I know of. But it seems to be OK if a company abandons a human being hundreds of miles from home, they keep right on doing business and even have the audacity to expect you to pay them for the sin! Which I'm sure they probably feel real powerful when they do a man like that and may even laugh about it. This report is not about revenge, thats not mine to have, it's about the next guy that get's caught up in a companys greed or a dispatchers cowardness and a DAC report that stains His work record for life.

I've since developed a fear of being abandoned for no reason a thousand miles from the house and just can't handle the thought. I've applied to 5 separate companys close to the house that run pretty much local but none want anything to do me (because of the DAC report is all I can figure) and my safety and driving record are still spotless. Started driving in 1969 and still can pass a DOT physical so what else could it be other than the DAC report? I've about given up on the driving business now and started looking for some other line of work.

According to yahoo's mileage program my wife and stepson had to drive 1,491 miles to get my vehicle in Muskogee out to Lubbock and then return home. At 30 cents a mile for the vehicle and 30 cents a mile for the two of them together (15 cents apiece which is a lot less than Trucks for You pays) just the mileage comes to $894.60 plus eats and motel. They also still owe me $450 layover pay minus the cost of 6 uniform shirts!

That's really just the small change, what really cost me the most was 10 to 15 more years of a good driving jobs if there are anymore such things.

I don't recommend truck driving to anyone anymore, especially over the road where you are totally at their mercy and your whole career depends on the honesty of a "dispatcher" (we all know what thats worth!)(Their reputations were so bad they don't even want to be called dispatchers any more, thats why they came up with "fleet managers" and those kind of titles, don't sound quite so dishonest! When any lie that amy dispatcher or terminal manager comes up with is honored as if actually credible by DAC who only seems to be concerned with what their paying customers (the trucking companys) have to say, drivers are in trouble! No verification process whatsoever! No concern for truth whatsoever, only what the paying member says counts and the so called rebuttal is sick joke. Very similar to the Better Business Bureau racket!

Thats my ripoff report!