Complaint Review: Stevens Transport

Yeah, Stevens Transport is a real gem, NOT!!! If you go to work for this outfit, keep your senses tuned to finding a better company to work for. I made it through their training and their driver trainee ordeal in a fair state of mind. It's a bit of a financial strain to be paid $200 a week for the week of in class training, followed by 5 weeks more of that pay rate in a driver trainee status, and then 3 more weeks of that as a trainee team. That's 9 weeks or more of $200 a week and you never see $200 during that time, more like about $165.

Well, I finally get assigned my truck, cool, I'm started and on my way. Funny thing, every time I get a good run, I get it repowered and taken away by a lease driver. When lease driver botches a delivery, I have to repower his load and clean up the mess. But I persevere, even though my finances are getting seriously stretched. I keep getting stuck with a series of short runs, constantly having to wait 8 to 24 hours to load or unload. Cell phone bill is high cause nobody at Stevens ever answers the phone. Paychecks are pitiful. Finally come to the realization that I cannot afford to work for Stevens. Call dispatcher, tell him I want to return the truck to the yard, can't afford to continue. He gets me to take one more run and then says he will route me to yard. Get done with that run, assigns me another run in the wrong direction. I reiterate I need to turn in truck and employ elsewhere. He says he will get back to me, leaves me hanging for 4 hours. I start the truck and head towards Dallas. I get a call from some rude dude named Skyler or something similar. He tells me to turn the truck around and take it back to Montgomery, MS where I dropped the last empty trailer or he will have me pulled over by the Missouri state police and taken away in cuffs for "illegal movement of a commercial vehicle".

Well, that sounded bogus to me, but I agree to do so. I don't want to leave the company with hard feelings, just don't want to be charged truck recovery fee so I want to return the truck. But in the spirit of cooperation, I turn the truck around and go back to Iowa Beef Producers (aka IBP), park the truck in a remote parking lot on IBP and await instructions to proceed. A tow truck driver and local police officer arrive at the lot, ask me to remove my possessions from the truck. I asked why the officer was present and was told he was requested to be there so I can't cause a problem. I told them I wasn't causing them any problems and removed all of my personal possessions from the truck. I couldn't handle moving the load locks, meat lock so I had to leave them in the truck. I even had to help the tow driver start the truck. Well, there I am, out in a parking lot, seven miles from town.

I have all my stuff, sleeping bag, clothes, luggage, odds and ends, more than I could carry. I call Stevens and update them on my situation and what do they tell me. "Call a cab". Montgomery, Missouri has no cab company, no rental car company, no bus station, no train station, no airport, not even a ferry service. No transport available closer than 50 miles. The police officer sympathized with me to the point of returning after dropping the truck to the tow yard, and he gave me a ride in his cruiser to the section of town near the freeway. I was left to my own devices to use my cell phone, battery running down by now, to call Enterprize rent a car to come "pick me up" and drive me to their business so I could rent a vehicle to get to St Louis to rent a car at a better rate. I had to pay extra for Enterprize to come that far to get me. Then I had to rent their vehicle to get to St Louis and then rented another vehicle at a cheaper rate to get me home from St Louis to Pennsylvania. And the icing on the cake, Stevens charged me a truck recovery fee anyway and other miscellaneous fees which consumed all the meager funds in my T-card account and sent me yet another check for $0.00 at the end of it all.

Yeah, they are a fine outfit, full of liars and cheats and frauds. You can tell if they are lying though, if their mouths are open, you can bet it's a lie. All of you who are happily employed with that bunch of carpetbaggers, good for you. You're living proof that you can be happy co-existing with the bottom feeders of the transportation industry. But if you decide to move on, take the truck to the yard no matter what if you don't want to be charged a recovery fee and ripped off on the way out the door.

Martin
Scranton, Pennsylvania
U.S.A.