McElroy Truck Lines

McElroy Truck Lines

For no particular reason, I was just interested in any opinions of this company. They are a flat-bed outfit based out of Cuba, AL. They hire recent graduates. They start out at .43 CPM (includes tarp pay). You are guranteed home on weekends. And my favorite part, they offer free health insurance! They were one of my top choices when I first graduated, but I chose a different route. I just never see or hear much about them.

Just to add to that, a McElroy recruiter stopped by my class yesterday. He was extremely professional and had a great powerpoint that almost answered all of our questions before we could even ask them. They don't pay any type of fuel or safety bonus or tarp pay for a few reasons, one is that they realized people were being encouraged not to report accidents and to drive in unsafe ways to try to win the bonuses and two they decided to just put it all in to the base pay. Which at .44 is very generous. 70% of their loads are preloaded and pretarped so they don't have a tarp pay.

As mentioned before you are home every weekend, I asked if you wanted to take a load across a weekend if you wanted to keep rolling and he said only on Saturday or possibly if you picked it up Sunday night but they just don't allow drivers to drive Saturday night in to Sunday or holidays except extreme circumstances. They have a solid account with Lowes stores so an interesting bonus is that if you don't have a place to park the truck during your home time you can use any Lowes or Home Depot parking lot as long as the manager at that site is ok with it. That is something they have specifically negotiated for their drivers to be able to do. Those stores don't need to be in your home town either if you use your home time to go on vacation. Keeping in mind they are a regional carrier so you won't be getting dispatches too far from home. I didn't write it down but maybe someone who is more familiar can correct me but I believe they are also going or are already all automatic transmissions in their KWs.

Congrats man, looking forward to your next update...So no video game and no high BP...was agility pretty much just getting on and off the trailer and lifting the tarps

yes tarps and getting on and off the trailer plus they put weights in a box and make you pick it up and move remember keep your head up it creates good posture.

3rd is spent all day in the yard doing coupling/uncoupling, folding tarps and throwing straps no chains that day. If they talk about a record for the fastest tarp folding time. just try and beat it you may not beat it but you should get a hat for trying. A couple of guys in our class did and one guys was like 10 seconds off. Also that day is the road evaluation test like squid said all turns in 4th and seriously i mean seriously check your mirrors every 5 to 8 seconds and you will do fine.

4th day is in the classroom all day doing map reading and log books. I loved that day i love reading maps knowing the states and doing fake trip planning (i am sure ill dislike trip planning when i have to actually have to do it for real). If you dont know how to read an atlas i suggest you start now, study every part like mileage directoy, legend, height restrictions and index. Now you dont need to know the distance between nashvile and dallas or how many height restrictions florida has and where small town usa is but just where to find them at. I am saying that cause the more you know the better and it will help you not to fall behind.

5th day they issued your employee id and gave you a hat and said welcome to mcelroy but that does not mean your in the clear i have read and actually talked to guys working there nothing is final till you take your first solo run so dont let your guard down ill still might the ax hope not but you never know. Also on that day you get shown the backing field and what they want from you we wont start that till sunday we got off for the weekend but have to be there at 11am on sunday to start that and start doing shift training with a fully loaded trailer.

McElroy Truck Lines

For no particular reason, I was just interested in any opinions of this company. They are a flat-bed outfit based out of Cuba, AL. They hire recent graduates. They start out at .43 CPM (includes tarp pay). You are guranteed home on weekends. And my favorite part, they offer free health insurance! They were one of my top choices when I first graduated, but I chose a different route. I just never see or hear much about them.

And you will not hear much about them cause I don't think anyone is working with them currently.

On a more personal note. I had to deal with three of their drivers in two days . All 3 drivers left a lot to be desired with their attitudes. Not saying it's the companies fault. All 3 drivers could have just had bad days......VERY bad days when I had to deal with them.

And you will not hear much about them cause I don't think anyone is working with them currently.

Do you know of any particular reasons why no one is working with them currently?

 All 3 drivers left a lot to be desired with their attitudes. 

"MTL is a family owned business with high Christian morals and ethics."...Sounds like the drivers are not living up to the standards of the company.

Nope. No reason no one is working for them. Could be they are much small than other flatbed companies and people are picking the large more well known companies.

I noticed they raised their training pay and starting cpm this year. Plus, they still offer free health insurance. This all seems like a good sign to me.

When I was in CDL school they had a recruiter come in. He was very straight forward, very informative. He mentioned they do a lot of loads for Lowe's and that the entire company shuts down on weekends because the family that owns the company attends community and church events on weekends. Benefits and pay seemed excellent. I remember seeing their trucks a few times on the road, but never had a chance to speak with a driver.

He mentioned they do a lot of loads for Lowe's

Lowe's Distribution Center has named McElroy "Flatbed Carrier of the Year" 11 out of the last 12 years.

I head off to orientation for them on the 9th of February. I have asked around and aside from the normal complaints that you will hear from some drivers; there was nothing but really good remarks in regard to this company. I talked to a couple of their drivers that run this dedicated Texas route and they love it, they are home most nights, never missed a weekend off, and they are still averaging 2200-2500 miles weekly. I passed up a couple opportunities with some other companies that would have paid a lot more to have this guaranteed home time. My only wish is that they did the Military apprenticeship like a lot of other companies do.

I just mentioned to Brett about adding them to the list of company sponsored training options. I was talking with one of their drivers a couple days ago and he clued me in that their own CDL academy is under construction. They pay pretty well, run decent and clean equipment and are also instilling a weekly guarantee of $600 minimum to their drivers in case there's a slow week and sometime can't get enough miles.

Correction on their CDL school. The new construction is for their safety and training facility which they've outgrown and wanted to update. They do however offer tuition reimbursement and have a good training pay schedule.

I just spoke with one of their recruiters to get more information and am keeping them in my list of potential employers once I get school underway. Nice people too from what I could tell, very polite and down to earth. Also, since they're a smaller company, the lady I spoke with was very personable and didn't come off as reading from a script with info.