Comments By RedBeard

Hey welcome to the site Parrothead66 and dont worry about asking to many questions i am pretty sure i have asked so many they stop reading my post but still have ask some. So Reformed Squid i know your on dedicated routes and not sure if it applies to you or to the regional guys is it true that 70% of the loads are pre tarpped i think it would really be around 50% but just wondering. Oh and do you know about how many miles some of the regional guys get i know the guys your way will get more due to straight and flat roads nothing like the southeast kentucky and the vriginias like ill be running.

This company has great retention most of the drivers I have come across have 5+ years and the rest have 2+ I've only come across a few other rookies so far. Are you looking at coming to work here?

Not looking i am i going start orientation on monday ill be getting down to cuba alabama sunday and really hoping to get the same room that one of my classmates is staying in he started his orientation this monday. I am just asking you a ton of questions cause you are driving for them and know whats really going on. Thanks a lot for answering them i really do think i made a good choice on my first and maybe only trucking company but who knows what the future will bring. So do you know if there are a lot trainers in middle tennessee around the nashville area and can you really park at any lowes if the truck stop is full?

My trainer lived in Athens so it was about 100 miles for me to drive so not bad. Anything over 200 miles they reimburse you for and if it's over another mileage they will offer you a hotel there. My week usually starts with a load I had taken home Friday from Nashville, Ar. And deliver to Houston Austin or like this morning I'm going to frisco tx. Then I will either shoot back or if I can deliver early I can grab an extra load working my way back to Nashville. I have only pulled 2 lowes loads but I have grabbed some Steele and a couple lumber loads after dropping one of these dedicated loads. I forgot to mention the lower paid dedicated stuff is for the guys who are home every night and they are pulling 2-3 loads a day that are min pay of $85 and they get the empty back. The training was a much more detailed version of driving school we're really big on smith system here. Depending on your trainer you will get some phenomenal experience and knowledge so far from the tx trainers there is only 1 I have heard anything bad about and the few times I met him I was not impressed.

thanks for the info it really helps. So i heard there is not a lot of turnover there well compared to the trucking industry as a whole, is that true?

All i can i say is wow! Well thanks for insight ill keep that in mind when i start next week. Hope tommorrow is better than today good luck out there and be safe.

You are ALIVE! LOL

And a few months ago you were so bummed about not fitting into that OTHER company that does not even matter any more. You stepped in a pile of **** and came out smelling like a rose.... Now your kids can say.... "My mama is a trucker!"

-Pat M.

And you know what? I'm starting to run into my buddies from that "other" company and it's really cool. We're all still friendly, they recognize me, we re-introduce ourselves, I'm really happy to see them, and they're seeing me really happy. I had nothing against any of the drivers and I'd made some decent friends there. It was a couple of trainers/administrators who made me so miserable.

My company treats me so well, I bet they're wondering what it's like "over there" with my people.

And yeah, the kids do say their Mamma is a Trucker. LOL!

-mountain girl

hey mountain girl i was wondering what company hires a student for p/d and line haul that is not that "other company". I read how you got treated with that "other company" and that sucks. I am pretty sure you have said what company you work for and i must have missed it sorry.

I got my CDL through a local college using the G. I. Bill. Having your CDL in advance might give you more options.

The company I drive for does not train to get the CDL. There are two phases to training. First phase is with a trainer for 5,000 miles. The second phase is teaming with another trainee for 40,000 miles. You are paid by the mile during training.

sounds like PTL? If so yea they hire rookie teams right out of school and so does Crete/Shaffer trucking.

Started my weekend on a good note. Yesterday I went and took my hazmat double/triple and tanker endorsement test. Passed all three on the first try. This morning was our final driving pretrip and backing test. Passed all three. Look out world here I come. Its no longer safe to walk on the sidewalk lol. Thanks everyone here for all the advice. I'll be heading to covenant along with a fellow student from school on the 18th of May.

congrats good luck hope you keep the wheels rolling

I have been solo for one month with them and I love it so far. Of course there have been those rough days where you sit and they load or unload slower than molasses in winter. I have gone through 2 trucks and I'm on my third one now, not very common. Some of the dedicated will pay .44 however most of what you do will earn your min pay and you will just get the empty miles back. I have been running mostly Nashville dedicated and that will really test your abilities as a driver due to some of the job sites you will deliver to. I had to have a forklift swing my trailer for me because there was literally no possible way to get out. It's a great company it really is. Good luck to you and see you on the road.

well thats good to hear really good to hear about them, as usual with most trucking companies that hire students you hear a lot of bad and good things about a company on the internet but with Mcelroy i hear good things from people who are actually working with them and not just people who have got fired from them or just quit cause they didnt like them. So i live near nashville are you running dedicated just out of texas or from texas to nashville? How was training and did you get paired up with a trainer close to you?

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.

all good points thats why i chose them over other good companies. As for for their trucks and transmissions; 100% stick shift trannys the recruiter said they had to many problems with the automatics and almost all of their fleet is international prostars they have bought some freightliners for their top drivers in seniority to test them out.

Hey robert b you still heading to mcelroy this weekend to start training? Just wondering cause ill be getting down there a week from sunday so hell i might be able to see you down there.