Comments By Ben

Hi G-Town...Thank you for the link! I was hoping to hear from real life drivers who work there right now or who have worked there in the past.

Does anyone know anything about Western Express? HOw are they as a company? How do they treat their drivers? What's the pay like?

I should mention my hours for 7/30 were. I get a bad feeling my hours will really take a hit on the next check.

Regular: 79.770

Overtime: 3.520

Hi everyone,

Not sure how many refer drivers are out there. I have to ask this though because I really do feel demoralized over this. Last week was awful for me. I came down with heatstroke 4 stops in to the route because of the heat and humidity we have here in Minnesota. The owners at a gas station in Wyomming, Mn tried to pump 2 bottles of water in me and I threw them both up! It took 2 bottles of Gatorade before I started feeling better.

I digress...A pilot out at the airport who is an owner operator was telling me to be be honest I would try to wait it out and try hang in there until 1 year. It's just hard to make ends meet on $15.50/hr.

Any thoughts or word of encouragement?

Take care

Ben

Thank you Brett. It's all intrastate

Hi Everyone!

How's it going? Well just wanted to send an upadate. I have been with Farner-Bocken now starting week 4, and I'm slightly sadden that all I am making is 15.50/hr and for 80 hrs of work and 7hrs of overtime all I get is $811. Here's my question does pulling a 28ft refer trailer count for truck experience?

Take care,

Ben

Morning Gravybird....... I did talk to Brenny a number of weeks or months ago, and I guess time got away from me, and at last check they were not looking. Thank you for taking the time to reply to me.

Morning everyone,

Brett A...all good points, and thank you replying to me. The more I start to think about the risks the more, I'm starting to think maybe I should just steer clear of them. For the very reasons you are citing. One less thing to worry about you know?

Thank you for replying......@chickiemonster & @devan jensen- I didn't ask I'm trying to remember if he said something or not. That's my fear that I might not understand the securment part of things. I still struggle with shifting, and backing right now. I'm led to believe that I really ought to start off with just worrying about driving the vehicle right now. I sure you guys will agree there's alot of crap going on when you drive, and then to worry about the load?!?

Hi everyone,

How is everyone doing? Did everyone get the chance to go to a memorial day service to honor our fallen? Anyways, as you can tell by my title I am really torn about what to do.

I met with that flatbed company in princetion this morning, and he said their insureance company would be willing to by in to the idea of me working for the company. Towards the end of the interview he said well now it is in your hands. Convince my why I should hire you. I told him that if anything my bus driving experience should say is that I'm reliable. He also said that flatbeds are generally for the elite drivers.

I also talked to another trucking based in St. Michael, MN and he said based on our conversations in the past to be honest with you with the issues that you have you MIGHT be setting yourself up for failure. The people in both clear lake and St. Michael want to meet me. They both deal with both dry van and reefer.

Now I am not in anyway trying to turn this into flatbed/stepdeck vs dry van/reefer. I am questioning whether someone with 0 experience with 0 schooling should jumping into the flatbed scene. I'm not affraid of the work at all. I am asking myself are you really ready at this point to tackle flatbeds.

I also want to mention that Performance foods in rice,MN have turned me down. I have an interview with Farner bocken on Monday.

any thoughts please?

take care.....