Schneider National Kept My Employment Record For Over 10 Yrs

Old School,

I embrace UBI, but I still want to work if anyone will hire me. These companies can find stupid reasons not to hire anyone if they look enough.

Lots of lazy, layabout folks are probably in the same boat as you, Chris. Why work at all when the government handouts (pronounced Those That Do Contribute: TAXPAYERS) will carry you instead? Anyone that supports UBI was probably a supporter of UBL, too. IMHO of course.

Schneider and any other company can hire or not hire anyone it chooses. That still leaves more than 100,000 other trucking companies to choose from.

Sorry, what is UBL? Most of what I say gets censored so I don't put much effort into my posts. ;)

UBL: Usama Bin Laden. He was anti-government, so maybe you two would have differed.

If you were getting paid $9.50 \ hr to fix electronics for the USAF, does that mean you were enlisted, or a contractor?

If you were enlisted, then it surprises me not that your pay, by the hour, was $9.50. But your housing, medical, dental, and meals were paid. If you wanted to accept them.

My first twelve months in the driving career I averaged, gross, about $575.00 per week. That's using about 60 hours each week on duty / driving. About your USAF money, but my meals werent paid for by Uncle. It was a rough year, fortunately my bride stuck with me. I did it knowing that I was making an investment in my SKA. Knowing that "paying my dues" would pay off. It did. Based on much ofnthe comments you've made here, I couldnt in good conscience refer you to an outfit, even one I didn't like.

I truly hope you find happiness in a career, but am willing to go out on a limb and predict it wont be as a driver, because everyone else is either wrong, or has it in for you. The bad attitude you talk about, and are so proud of? In my previous career, those folks were called opinions. There are already too many bitter, know it all, "time to dump these dodoes" drivers, why add any more.

Hospitality and Restaurants are losing 3% of their employees per month. Maybe look there for the pot of gold?

Good luck. This thread has set my head to spinning with the rationalizations, justifications, and prevarications...

I drive for Schneider, and I’d just like to say on behalf of everyone working for Big Orange, “Whew!” You pretty much exposed all there is to know about your personality by coming on here looking for support with your query of suing Schneider over it’s HR policies & standards. Rather than work or earn your way back into this industry, you seem more interested in making a quick/easy dollar by suing one of the major players in this industry. … … Also, you don’t need to repeat how Schneider unfairly terminated you 12 years ago… we already knew that. 99.99999% of the time, it’s not the driver’s fault who was terminated… it was the fault of negligent training, another driver, the four wheeler, faulty equipment, a full moon, the tides… that you still cling to that notion 12 years later reflects that you have not changed (matured) one bit, and whatever reason Schneider gave 12 years ago for firing you and recently for not re-hiring you, they were undeniably correct in their assessment of you. You’re the guy who sues after slipping on the floor because there was too much wax on it, or not enough. Schneider and the rest of the workforce needs workers, not excuse-makers.

Perhaps David and Chris should sue each other. It would be as absurd and productive as suing the company.

Yes, it's possible to make 80k in the first year, not likely, but possible. Almost impossible though with both of the attitudes displayed. I will be short of it slightly my first year, by my choice, I've taken more time off than I probably should have, but I have great memories and am ok with it.

Both these two are the only thing blocking their own paths to success. It baffles me as to why people would not use the resources of this community and instead fight it. Following the advice here has certainly worked well for me and many others. Guess some folks just would rather do it the hard way.

"The American work ethic left when Americans stopped being paid well when adjusting for inflation"

I say this with all the respect that deserves and that I can muster.....Oh BooHoo, cry me a river 😢 🎻. There's NO excuse for crap work ethics. You asked for the job, if they hire you, do the best you can.

One of the main reasons I'm interested in truck driving is because you can still make decent money at it. I will try my best if anyone hires me, but I've had enough jobs making less than 30k a year that leave me too tired to do anything else the rest of my day. Also, you can be a wage slave if you want to be. That's all I see when you mock the death of the American dream.

Bwahahahaha, wage slave? Hahaha hahaha, and just exactly how many of those jobs did you apply for hoping to get even showing up for the interview versus how many were you forced into? How many did you know the pay and what they did before accepting the job? Wage slave my a$$.

I am not mocking the American Dream, I am mocking YOU and your lack of work ethic. You see, we have terminology here in the trucking industry that perfectly describes people like you. TERMINAL RAT. You sir are the typical terminal rat. You complain to anyone who will listen about how the stupid employer is taking advantage of you, underpaying you, nothings ever YOUR fault, your being taken advantage of, making a slave wage in a slave job, you'd be doing better if it weren't for that faulty equipment they force you to use and on and on and on. From your own posts it seems you've been a terminal rat at every job you've ever had, just didn't know it. Life must be exhausting being a victim of capitalism I mean, how dare you have to be responsible for your own actions instead of being able to blame everyone and everything else for your failures. As the typical Terminal 🐀, you may be able to do this job but you'll never be happy doing it and the only joy you'll get from it is bringing others down with you. Why you gotta be like that?

The recruiter didn’t blindly tell you that you were eligible for rehire. It’s their job to make sure of that before hand. So it wasn’t till after the interview that they told you were in fact not eligible. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that maybe the interview didn’t go well. Did they ask you about this safety violation at the interview?

Something else to consider which I’m not sure if anybody mentioned is your dac report. This incident is probably on your dac and I’m honestly not sure how long it stays on there. You can get one copy a year for free. Gotta go to the hire right website.

Did David say what the specific “safety violation” was ? Might be helpful to know

What if it takes you four or five years to get competent? Will that 80K still be sounding good?

I hope it doesn't take me 4-5 years to get competent. If it does, I guess I just have to keep trucking. ;)

What if you find out the revenues you are producing for the company far exceed the 80K you are getting paid? Are you going to feel you are creating excessive value but not being rewarded well enough?

It wouldn't bother me that much. The trucking company is taking all the risks, and 80k is more than fair for the job, unless I keep getting fined for things out of my control or something.

80K is possible, but it is also way high when you look at the average truck driver pay. You will have to really be good to hit those kind of numbers. There are plenty of drivers here who make that kind of money, I hope you can learn a few things from them.

I was hoping to learn from you. I've asked about your book three times now.

Why doesn't your pride also come with an desire to not be exploited? Don't you have enough pride in what you do not to get used hard and fed little?

Chris, that's a fair question. Probably misguided, but I am going to give you credit for asking a fair question.

Tell us how you know or define when you are being exploited. Is there a magic number? You mentioned earlier about working really tough jobs where you made less than 30 grand. So, if those jobs paid 40 grand would you feel you were being treated fairly, or would you still feel exploited?

I think you could help us out by clarifying some of your remarks or feelings about not being paid a fair wage. There must be a number somewhere that makes you feel like you are being treated right. Can you share it with us? How do you come up with that number? How often do you up the ante and decide, "Wait a minute, that number is no longer acceptable."

Here's a true story...

I started my trucking career at 27 cents per mile. That is a number that would be laughed at today, yet that was only about nine years ago. I was in a group of about fifty people that started at that company in an orientation class together. After a year of busting my tail I found out there was only one other person from that orientation class that had stayed the course with me for our rookie year. I made fifty thousand dollars that year, and I was damn proud of the job I had done. I don't know why the other 48 people quit, but I am certain a lot of them felt they were being exploited.

You see, trucking has some strange effects on people. Most newbies think this job is way too stressful for the pay they make. I never felt that way. I always focused on learning how to be better at it. I never once felt exploited. I felt like I had a lot to learn, and I did my best everyday to learn how to be proficient at the job. If you are inefficient at a performance-based job you will feel exploited. That's because you will be expending effort that doesn't result in good returns. That is defined as inefficiency, not exploitation. Every rookie truck driver suffers from it, but many of them blame it on the company abusing them, or exploitation as you refer to it. You must recognize the real problem if you ever want to fix it. Blaming our poor performance on exploitation is a cop out. It happens daily in the trucking world. Get in line and be ready to join the throngs of folks who feel that way.

People are bad about underestimating trucking. You are doing it all the time. You gave me a good chuckle when you tried to tell us how dangerous cutting Christmas trees with a chainsaw was. It shows us just how juvenile your understanding is about trucking. There is nothing wrong with that and I am not even trying to be critical. To be honest I am trying to help you understand the career. I don't feel I am wasting my time with you. I am hoping you might learn something in here. Whether you do or not will be up to you. We try and we have been known to fail, but it is fun teaching you because there are so many other folks who are listening and gaining knowledge from our discussions with you.

I have an honest question for you:

When you consider the behavior of corporations toward the workforce, how do you not consider it exploitation?

Indulge me to provide some information on the behavior that I reference...

2017 while the economy was decent, corporations are given a substantial tax break. In response to the huge savings, most large corporations bought more of its own stock and laid workers off. Corporations always have a view of profits over people. That's exploitation. Going back to the 1950s (the point in time that is often seen as the most favorable for workers in the US), wages have not kept up with inflation. In fact, the overall quality of life of your average worker has decreased. In many salary positions, people are expected to produce more work for less pay than has been seen in years, while also expected to work more hours for that pay. That is also exploitation.

Those of us who think like Chris and I don't come up with such ideas because we don't work hard and are expecting a handout. No, it's quite the opposite.

Whenever people talk about government handouts, why is welfare going to corporations not referenced? There is no longer any risk for running a corporation now. If a corporation makes extremely poor business decisions, it can count on the US government bailing it out. This isn't a "R" or "D" issue because presidents for both parties have prop up corporations that should have been allowed to fail. Individuals can be allowed to fail when making poor business decisions, so why not corporations. The exploitation has been enabled by corporations and government corrupting each other.

That's my $.02.