Udate on stupid mistake.

[morningstar55ny]

While I agree with a lot of what you said, some of it is pure crap. E-1 is responsable for putting us in the truck while knowing of this guys history, we called them and asked if they knew any good owners who needed a team, the recruiter vouched for this owner, yet we later learned that he has a long history of stealing from drivers and they knew that, they knew that he is basically running a scam where EVERY DRIVER WHO QUITS DOESN'T GET PAID! That makes them at the very least complicit in his scam, they should quit putting drivers thru orientation for him until he pays what he owes, let alone actually recommending drivers into his snare.
And now for the inevitable BS that is sure to come about a contract, people who swear by that are fooling themselves if they believe that a contract will be of any help getting money from a thief, they aren't stupid, this one was a lawyer at one time and has set his business up in such a way as to make him bullet proof, he shows a loss each year, he doesn't own the trucks he leases them, there are no assets. The best you can do is get a judgement but since his father is a lawyer he will bankrupt you with legal fees before you get there and he still won't have to pay you, and the judgement will be against his business, not him. The fact that E-1 knows this and does nothing makes me sick. We actually enjoyed E-1 and found them to be a great company to work for, but turning a blind eye to a wolf flying their banner is just wrong.
I made davidritchieisathief.weebly.com to at least create an opportunity for a driver to learn the truth about this thief before they get led by the hand by E-1 right to him. I know that for legal reasons this forum can't allow names and details, but I stand behind every word as truth, I sent a link to my site to the thief and dare him to take action, it's not libel if it's true, and it is all true. I take full resposability for every statement.
Express-1 is a great company, even after all we've been thru we signed our van on with them a drove, and they would be my first choice if I was gonna drive again, but they are wrong about this. I can certainly understand a handsoff policy in driver owner spats, but when you knowingly recommend a driver into a situation where you know they are likely to be screwed, your hands are all over it.

.. ok didnt see this when i posted.. lol ...... was just seeing the comments on the spelling bee thing..... heh
i dont understand why E1 and some others companies keep scum like that on...... when they know how bad they screw drivers over....

 

[fastrod]

i dont understand why E1 and some others companies keep scum like that on...... when they know how bad they screw drivers over....

Because all E1 cares about is that they have exclusive use of that truck with a warm body in the seat to move freight.

 

[Yesteryear]

LOL You are so right Morningstar! That should have been the first red flag. Just like I said, WE or I should say I was at fault not my carrier. They had absolutely nothing to do with it. Here is why we chose this truck owner and was very lax. Some other drivers (2 teams we know) recommended them to us. We actually started to go with another truck owner but was told how great this truck owner was. Now in all my infinite wisdom, did I think to ask this team how long they had been driving for this truck owner? lol NO! I can laugh about it now that it is over. Wasn't so funny at the time. Right after we started driving for him we found out the one team had gone over with another owner. Then we found out the team that had actually talked us into going with this guy was getting a $200. bonus for signing us on with them and had just started driving for the truck owner also. lol (Ya know, one thing we can say, we have never accepted a sign-on bonus for getting a team for a truck. We have asked the bonus be given to the team signing on but never took one for ourselves.) That same team quit driving for him also and went back to big rig.
Now as for whatever FTP000 is talking about I have no idea. When I posted last I was simply saying I had not been on in a while and had no idea this thread was still ongoing. I found it to be highly amusing it was still open after all of this time. I will admit now I am curious as to what he is talking about so now will have to go back and read the 100+ post to find out what I have missed. (time consuming lol) I will say in MY particular cause I can blame no one but me! I was at fault and will not blame my carrier for my own stupidity! I will also still say there is not a carrier out there that is better then E-1. In our situation we found E-1 to be very supportive of us and they did have our backs. They showed we were not just a warm body in the seat but a valued driver. That is our experience.

 

[x06col]

Actually, I could see/anticipate ftp being a flasher in this business based on his early posts concerning this line of survival. No surprise to me that we are reading the tale of woe after a few months of exit.

 

[LisaLouHoo]

Oh nice, a personal attack based on a false assumption. We have been involved in expediting since 2001, we did get out for a couple of years, but most of the last 10 years we were in. The reason we are back out of the business is due to my mother inlaw's onset of dementia, we moved here about 5 years ago for this very purpose, my wifes parents were approaching their 80's and would probably need help. We've worked the last few years trying to get ourselves in a financial position to stay home.
All that being said, are you saying that a driver who is new to expediting deserves to be robbed? Deserves to have over 2 weeks worth of hard work go unpaid because they decided to leave an owner because of the opportunity to own and operate their own Sprinter? Thanks for you useless input and defense of theft.

Oh, he attacked you too, huh? Thanks, btw, for telling your story and attempting to warn others. Whether you have been in this business steady for 20 years or off and on for 10, anyone can and will run into problems. It's nice when we look out for one another. Personal attacks on someone's attempt to help is pathetic.

Been there.

"Bruises fade and bones will mend-but a psyche can be ruined FOREVER" : LisaLouHoo, c. 2008

 

[ATeam]

My on-topic response was offered earlier in this thread (see this), but since a fair amount of this thread deals with spelling and punctuation, allow me to offer this.

When you interact face to face with people who have not met you before, they judge you by what you present. If you act abrupt or stupid, they will conclude (reasonably) that you are abrupt or stupid. If you present yourself as intelligent and polite, so too will you be deemed.

When you interact with people here in the Open Forum, you represent yourself with the written word. If you show disrespect to your readers by making your posts difficult to read and thereby shift the burden of being understood onto your reader, you should not be surprised to be misunderstood and thought badly of in turn.

It may very well be true that you are a good person who is unable or unwilling to write at a basic level, but when it is only your written words that other people have to go on, the difference between your bad writing and your good heart will not be easily seen.

When you drive by a garbage house, do you conclude that a good person lives inside? When you see a junker truck do you conclude that it is owned by a good driver? When you see or smell a slob driver, do you conclude that he or she has a good heart? As it is in life, so too it is with the written word. If you write like a slob, people who know nothing else about you will conclude that you are a slob. The benefit of the doubt is not as freely given as a bad writer may wish to believe.

We are not writing for The Atlantic Monthly here. Excellence in writing is not expected. But writing at a basic level -- like putting together a full sentence, using periods where appropriate, and knowing when to start a new paragraph -- will help your readers know that you respect them and understand about you what you want understood.

 

[LisaLouHoo]

No matter what anyone posts, to be personally attacked is inexcusable. Seems there is a faction here that takes great pleasure in typing inappropriate personal jabs.

True, there are those with poor writing skills and those who, when worked up, type faster than their minds work. Asking them to clarify is fine. Jumping to a conclusion without explanation and turning it into an attack on the author is not.

Just for the record, it doesn't make the thread author look stupid...just the ones who try to pose as big dawgs.

"Bruises fade and bones will mend-but a psyche can be ruined FOREVER" : LisaLouHoo, c. 2008

 

[ATeam]

... The only way he got us, the way that none of all of your due dilligence would have stopped was that because of what day we quit, it ended up he owed us 3 pay checks, we returned the truck and thought we parted friends, but when the next payday rolled around he stopped answering his phone and hasn't answered since.

This thread is difficult to follow because people are all over the place. I don't even know that people are talking about the same fleet owner or various ones.

Nevertheless, ftp000, you seem to be articulate and have things well documented. If Diane and I were in a circumstance (hypothetical for purposes of this discussion) where we quit a fleet owner and the owner withheld three weeks of pay that he was not entitled to withhold, and if documented requests for the money (not phone calls) had gone unanswered, we would head straight to small claims court, with a detour through OOIDA.

We would not go to OOIDA to have them advocate on our behalf. We would go to have them look at the case we intend to bring and shoot holes in it if they could. If we felt victimized by an unjust fleet owner, we would be aware that our emotions may interfere with our thinking. We would bring in OOIDA, an objective friend, to help us ask questions about the contract (if one exists) like, what does the termination clause say, is arbitration required, is a venue for law suits specified, etc? We would ask OOIDA for help in shooting holes in our case, expecting them to ask things like, what documentation do you have really that shows the work was done, and what have you done already to collect funds?

Once we were convinced we had our ducks in a row, to court we would go. When a ruling came in our favor, we would have the public documents in hand and would have no problem publishing the documented truth about what happened.

If we were as concerned as you are about warning others, we would not accept a settlement offer from the fleet owner that did not include an agreed upon statement of facts that he acknowledges (documented, notarized) as true and that he agrees can be published without objection by him.

That statement of facts may be difficult but even if the fleet owner paid all disputed money directly to the court, that alone is a matter of public record as would be the case you brought.

It would be more detailed and involved than this but that would be our basic approach. No need to involve the carrier. Complicit or not, it is a difficult strategy to drag the carrier in. Keep it simple and fight your own fight.

If you win in small claims court, your path could be followed by others.

 

[ftp000]

I hesitate to respond any further as our situation has been resolved in the last hour. I will say again we really enjoyed our time with E-1, I hate it that it was tainted by this problem. They came thru in the end.
As for the poster above recommending small claims court, I will speak in generic terms. When you are on the road it costs money to keep running back to the owners state to work a suit, imagine the owner taking advantage of that and having his/her lawyer move the case out of small claims into civil court, this will require many more hearings and probably legal fees on your part, making it a useless exercise. Drivers kid themselves if they don't think that bad owners have a plan.

 

[ATeam]

Another option you have, ftp000, is to simply name the fleet owner you are having issues with. You may not be permitted to do so here for understandable reasons. If you asked me to name him on my web site, I too would decline if no easily verifiable proof existed that you were in the right and he was in the wrong (documents can be fabricated).

But there is nothing stopping you from establishing a web presence of your own somewhere and telling your story there. I would have no problem publishing a link to that site with the appropriate disclaimers of course.

It's just that you must be very, very careful if you do something like that. Truth is a defense against charges of libel but you must be darn sure that what you publish is true indeed. Even then, prepare to defend yourself because a libel suit could still be brought.

 

[ATeam]

Drivers kid themselves if they don't think that bad owners have a plan.

Bad owners do indeed have a plan and some are very skilled at taking advantage of the fact that they are dealing with drivers who can generate a good amount of gross revenue to the truck but have little or no money to fight. Then along comes a determined fellow like you, and see how even someone like you gets neutralized into silence.

Newbies beware. This industry has bad fleet owners in it and some of them are very good at separating financially poor drivers from the last few dollars they have on this earth. They will concede to a determined opponent, but if at all possible, not in a way that highlights their bad acts in the public spotlight.

 

[davekc]

That s why I say to find someone that actually has a verifiable history and reputation in this business. That includes talking to past and current drivers.
If they don't have them, then there is a likely reason.
Don't rely solely on the advice from the carrier. Their job is to fill trucks. Your interests may not be their first priority.

Remember,

Businessman first, driver second.

 

[LisaLouHoo]

Truth is a defense against charges of libel but you must be darn sure that what you publish is true indeed. Even then, prepare to defend yourself because a libel suit could still be brought.

This is why I don't name names publicly, here or on facebook. I had alot of blogging to do over on facebook, alot to get off my mind in the months following my late husband's death, and even then I had to be extremely careful about naming those who wronged him on his deathbed in spite of the eyewitnesses present.

Nope, no names go anywhere public from me.


"Bruises fade and bones will mend-but a psyche can be ruined FOREVER" : LisaLouHoo, c. 2008

 

[cheri1122]

If everyone followed DaveKC's advice, [of course they won't, even those who read it], then ATeam's advice wouldn't be needed, lol.
Not that it's bad advice [it isn't], but the time and effort would be better spent earning money, instead of trying to collect it.