truck driver

trailer mechanic

local driver

diesel mechanic

owner operator driver

J.B. Hunt

I was forced to sign a paper stating production marks higher than status quo or be terminated, and if I failed to achieve those higher production marks, I would be fired. I took the sheet to the drivers lounge and asked a group of 4 drivers to give it a look and let me know what they thought. All laughed at desired quotas, all admitted they were impractical, adding they rarely met them and surely not regularly or at a minimum. They advised to take it over the supervisors head.

I tried doing so, but mysteriously, that supervisor was unavailable for several weeks, then replaced and by the time I got a meeting, I had been shuffled off on another driver manager.

As a driver your only point of contact with the company (other than the maintenance department for breakdown and truck repairs - I think I averaged about 1 a week) is the driver manager - not to be confused with other companies and the dispatcher position. If you are having a problem with a load, you are on your own. If the directions do not lead to the customer - you are on your own. What they will do is monitor your miles per week, your engine idle time, your hard braking occurrences, etc. and reprimand and write you up for as many infractions as possible. Why you may ask? Because they have as bad of driver turn over as most other large trucking companies and want documentation to fight unemployment claims when they inevitably arise. Also, the maintenance department is terribly slow. Expect to wait for days for any thing beyond the simplest repair. For simple repairs like trailer lights, expect to wait a couple hours - they want you to do it yourself, even though they went to riveting in lights to cut down on theft. The largest rail yard - adjacent to the terminal - has a repair crew detailed to it. But if you try to get them to help with flat tires  or lights or any repairs, they will ignore you, or run from you. There is a set aside service area that no "outside" trucks are allowed in where they are stationed. So you must park and walk at least 100 yards to go see them. They can see you coming and every time I went there, they 'just happened' to leave at the same time. The one time I drove into the area, I did catch them, but was scolded for driving an outside vehicle into the area. And again, they will make you wait at least a half an hour for any assistance in the hopes you will start carrying your own tools and fix things yourself in the future. Beware, JB Hunt says they will box up and ship your personal possessions to you if you are out of your truck for an 'extended' time, but they do not ship liquids, or TOOLS, so all those tools you bought just became some maintenance/repair department employees tools.

Those are some of the ways they are cheapskates, but it goes further to just the basic truck. It is about as no frills as a person can stand. The passenger seats are not air ride, the sleepers are shorter than most major trucking companies and so on.

I think they threaten that the worst 10% truck idlers will be terminated, but until there is no driver shortage, they do not enforce the threat. I do not recall passing any other trucks on the interstate in my assigned truck, meaning I had the slowest truck on the road at the time. I did drive other trucks when mine was in the shop and mysteriously they ran 2-3 mph faster. At first glance this may seem insignificant, but when you are paid on a per mile basis, 2-3 mph is a dollar or more per hour pay difference or or hundreds of dollars a week, thousands of dollars per year.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Resource network of informative and beneficial safety compliance documentation/material. Streamlined internet interface. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The company, as a whole. Is not the major issue. It is the various accounts and/or different terminal operations. Poor efficiency. It is so sad you have to laugh. The revolving door of drivers has been incorporated into most fleet operations. Hence, the almost too true signing bonus or weekly guarantees. Impractical compensation relative to runs. The exhaustive strain of the industry in its entirety; Navigating quality of life, compensation, and  efficient operations. It is a challenging task to accept driving positions and then determine the length of time before resigning; all in an earnest attempt to secure the best situation for oneself. One key to use before applying is exercising your math skills. Ensure the hours of service and/or miles allocated to the role make economic sense. Are you asked to load or unload? Then, by law, additional compensation must be explicitly defined and conveyed. Class A commercial license holders must be compensated for any loading or unloading. A driver must not be coerced or forced to load or unload any freight by a carrier, shipper, receiver, and/or broker without compensation. (Reference map 21 section 32911 and 49 USC section 14103) Many carriers’ professional ethics and integrity are in question when denoting loading or unloading in job description; fully aware that such service provided by a class A driver must include additional compensation. Word manipulation of the stated law by these carrier’s include but are not limited to: ‘driver assist,’ ‘no heavy lifting,’ ‘ any other duties.’ BE AWARE. Many times these carriers or brokers accept contract bids with full knowledge that the shipper/receiver expects driver load or unload. Because most drivers are unaware of this law, carriers tell drivers they are to “assist’ with unloading. Carriers know that the expectation is to touch the freight. But, by using the word assist, the attempt is to absolve themselves from the true aspect of the requirement by law. They are so many legal ramifications. Particularly, liability insurance when operating or using equipment on any company’s site without certification in use of said equipment. Just a point or two illustrating the aforementioned questionable tactics and professional ethics of certain operations. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
I can only speak of experience at the York dedicated services and harrisburg intermodal terminal. The environment and culture lacks streamlined efficiency to say the least. Drivers can appreciate …and will respect…transparency instead of the tactics taught in workshops to de escalate potential conflict or evade responsibility for processes. Nothing positive to say about the culture or the environment.  Sad truth …..this is commonplace in most corporate environments today. Poor management and inexcusable execution of some operations.

I drove for this company for 4 months then left. I was hired for a SE Regional act then a dedicated act. I was told I would be home at least once a week on the Regional and every weekend on the dedicated account. 

The first hint of trouble was at orientation. A team that was hired for a specific account was told 4 days in that there was no job at that account but they could "go over the road". Bait and switch in action. 

When finally getting a truck for the Regional I was in Ohio, OK, TX. I don't think those are SE but you go where the freight ends up. What was not ok was my not being home as promised. I complained after a couple of times and my "mgr" told me "what are you complaining about, you were home for 8hrs yesterday". Oh, ok.

When I transitioned to a dedicated account I was told I would be home every Friday night and go out every Monday morning for one customer. Did not happen. After the 3rd Saturday waiting in a terminal to re-power a load I asked what happened to the weekend home thing? "We never told you that".  Ok, the next week was a holiday and on the Friday they wanted me to go to a terminal and deliver a load 500miles away for Saturday. I objected and told them I'd had enough. Spent 1/2hr trying to give my mgr and his boss a 2 week notice, finally got fed up and quit on the spot and told them I'd return the truck to the terminal I picked it up at which was also where they wanted me to go to pick that load up. I was threatened with arrest for stealing a truck and then would be blackballed in the industry. I said ok, you are going to have me arrested for returning the truck to the location you are sending me to? I'll just leave the truck here in the truckstop as I don't want to be arrested for anything. Qualcommed the entire episode and said I wanted to speak to both of the men's boss as I didn't care to be yelled at and threatened. They apologized immediately and I returned the truck to the terminal and left it cleaner than when I picked it up. 

Very unsatisfactory dealings with this companies management. I never got the feeling that they knew what was going on or that my immediate supervisor cared or had training to deal with people at all. I sure know that he did not have any experience in the industry.

The pay for the miles driven and the type of freight I moved was quite good but it could not overcome the shortcomings. I have over 20yrs in the industry with several million safe miles so this was not my first rodeo. I can recommend this company for a new driver who needs micro management and someplace to get his/her feet wet and who just wants to put down miles for the experience. As for anyone else, I can not recommend them unless you sign up specifically for a dedicated account and stay on that account.

This job has turned into a glorified call center. You are expected to be on “ready” for minimum 6 hours per day otherwise you’ll be written up. You must be on the phones all while trying to solve complex issues with loads you booked. Expect inbound calls of 100+. Most of the time you end up trying to fix someone else’s problem. You also have to maintain your email inbox and provide on the spot updates for needy customer teams. Brokering loads is the easy part of the job. This review is just for the Power Only division. 98% of your day will be phone calls or emails about trailers that are not where they are supposed to be or trailers taken by someone else or trailers that are broken. Sometimes there are no empty trailers within 200 miles of where the load picks up so you have to now convince a driver to deadhead 400 miles and only pay $1/mi for the empty pick up. The morale is extremely low. High turnover as many of the experienced brokers have gotten smart and left. Pay is not nearly enough for the amount of work done. The schedule is challenging too. Don’t expect a Monday - Friday for at least a year. You’ll be working at least a sat/sun if not Friday-Monday schedule. Dealing with carriers daily is also a struggle. Many are money hungry and will try to take advantage of you where they can. Communication with carriers/dispatchers can also be challenging due to the language barriers. Lastly, the 45 hour work week really turns into 48-52. It’s not worth it as you will not have a work/life balance because you’ll be so mentally drained. The burnout is real! When you first start out you’ll be doing 
check calls all day and it’s exhausting. Good luck.

Advice to Management
Drop the 6 hour ready time. Let brokers be brokers and work on their loads. You want to know why CE isn’t getting their updates on loads? It’s because the booking broker has to be on the phone dealing with someone else’s problems. Same goes for email inbox. You say help is on the way, but nothing changes. Raise the salary if you want to attract top talent. Don’t be shocked when top talent leaves due to salary being so low for such a high demanding job. One could go work at fast food for just $1 less and have less stress. 45 work week is unnecessary. Why? Give people back time and they may have a morale boost. People are burnt out in 360 Box. For some they may be too far gone to be saved. Keep up the status quo and you’ll keep losing good people.   Lastly, drop the whole walking around with a megaphone yelling “Check calls!!” The people that have been there a while get it, but for the newer reps it’s extremely intimidating. You know who you are.

Horrible management and worse company ever worked. They have favorites in the team and don't take any action even if they make any number of mistakes and micromanagement on the others in the team until they fire those members. People with the age 25+ are managers here and they do not know how to handle the things properly, what they think is correct and no matter how you try to convey them the practical truth information, never in an understandable mindset. There is no industry best standards and practices they follow and many worse things to mention which never can be seen elsewhere - They have a concept called Shield person for Production support through out the week/month dedicated to the work and the horrible thing is getting hundreds of production issues in any given month and the developers and the shield person has to update each and every issue manually either on UI or in the database, instead the management never insisted to focus and make permanent fixes not to happen again, the same production issues are repeating over and again for years and never take an action with a permanent fix. Next, the company do not know how to do production deployments, they do on Friday nights starting 8 PM and it takes ever with a lot of issues and worse way of handling the deployments. Don't understand what the Business persons are responsible in the team, developers have to know the requirements and then development, they have to do the QA testing, they have to give the Sign-Off for the production deployment, eventually they have to do everything end to end, still not sure what BA people in the team are responsible for and there is no QA person for the teams. They fire their employees with no valid and strong reason (there are so many silly reasons to mention), which shows the poor management skills (they should have trained better), they terminate their employees all of a sudden without any notice, talk rude and take away all accesses the very next minute. I saw they set up a meeting and fire an employee and take away all access just in 7 minutes, everything done. Not treating their employees well and no respect/courtesy, no notice period, they don't pay any money while leaving the company like the amount equal to the notice period, they don't pay any unused paid time off, and benefits while leaving the company. Overall, working there is a worse and horrible experience ever and feel shamed for joining and working in such a worse company. 

Operations/Dispatch
The company may do well due to its intermodal expansion in recent years, but that added revenue will never find you.
The employee turnover rate is so high, I'd train 4 different people in as many weeks because they'd quit after only a brief exposure to the company. I'd have joined them if I had any options at the time.
This turnover seems mostly due to the monotonous work, overbearing and yet,somehow, ineffective management, poor pay, and catastrophic work/life balance.
Simply visit salary.com or glassdoor to compare the pay with similar jobs, and that tells the story.

Many of my fellow employees were normal, great folks to work with. However, due to the outdated management who were set in the job, the Operations department suffered a huge free-rider problem: good employees will do most of the work, while slackers on their phones or chit-chatting or doing essentially nothing are not reprimanded or corrected, so they continue to do nothing, while the hard workers do everything. (No, this does not work itself out later when raises or promotions are considered, because JB Hunt doesn't do that, not in any meaningful sense).

I wasn't being snarky with my title. There were so many days I'd wish I could just vacuum the carpets and wipe the windows with the janitors then sit in my cubicle taking 127 phone calls from screaming, cussing, disrespectful drivers, who I'm genuinely trying to help, and must listen to every foul thing they want to dump on me. But to some degree, they saw me as JB Hunt, and if you're a CDL holder reading this, such voluminous amounts of visceral discontent every day should provide some indication of your counterparts opinions on their current employer.

You'll read many reviews that speak about JB Hunt losing its top talent due to its various deep-seeded problems, some I listed above. To put my experience in that light, I did consider, and many others considered me one of the very best employees in the Operations department. Nothing from management would suggest that though, because like others have said, you're just a number, a cog. I decided to go the way so many others smartly went, and found a different employer. So, from misery, despair, and 11 dollars an hour, I now have purpose, hope, and 83K a year. 

There are better options for jobs out there.

And you deserve a good job. 

So go ahead and see if maybe there's another option on those job postings before you select the black and yellow JB Hunt icon.

I was with JB HUNT for 5 1/2 years, my first account I was under Target in California and my second account I transferred over to Selma under Tjmaxx/Marshall's. Both had very different management styles and both had it's perks. Tjmaxx/Marshall's accoumt at the time I got hired was only 2 years old. The job itself is highly stressful both physically and mentally, if you're going out to the valley you will be getting 1 trailer and possibly 2-4 stops on that route. Expect to be back at the yard between 5pm-7pm or later. Valley routes typically start at 6am but I always started my day at 4am (as long as there is someone in the office to dispatch you, you can start as early as you want). If you get a route going to Austin (north routes) and beyond you can have anywhere between 2-4 stops on one trailer and those routes start between 7am -10am, but here's the kicker, expect to come back to the yard and pick up another trailer and do some more stops around San Antonio, and those routes can also have 2-4 stops. Expect to be back around the same time, it all depends on traffic/ accidents specially around the I35. Every day you will be alternating between valley runs and Austin runs, they do this so that drivers can have about the same amount of pay. Some days you will drive over 500+ miles,  and other days you'll barely hit the 300 mile mark, some days are easy and some days are hard. And last but not least since your driving for a retailer you'll have a peak season and that starts around August and doesn't end till like the beginning of February of that next year (even though they tell you it'll end soon it never seems to end). With that comes twice the workload more trailers to be run, and even if you get back to the yard with 2 hours left on your 11 they will somehow find a short enough route for you to do, it's all about the pallet count. Incase I didn't mention or forgot to mention you unload the pallets yourself with a pallet jack that's being provided at the store location. The reason why I left, was because I got retaliated after going up the chain of command. 

Why you ask? They are dishonest, not forthcoming about their practices, and disorganized. Every time the company starts losing money the drivers end up getting screwed. I received a flyer in the mail after Obama Care was implemented that health care costs would rise and that everyone along with the company would have to share in the increase in costs. It increased $50/wk when the actual cost of the premiums was only $30/wk. The company took advantage of the employees expected increase and decided to start paying $20 less/week than before and allowing the employee to cover that $20/week. They have over 16,000 employees. Saving $320,000/week. Good job guys. Their is no sympathy toward the driver you are just expected to try and complete your route no matter how unreasonable. The pay was good before a recent change (because the company is losing money), the amount you get payed now for the type of work and the amount of hours worked is laughable. The position used to require a class a or b drivers license. Most commercial drivers who have been part of a organized company realize how screwed up the company is and leave. The turn-over rate for drivers is ridiculous. So now the company has no requirement for a commercial drivers license which opens the doors to anyone willing to do the work for the lower pay rates. They expect you to work 12-14 hours/day delivering and installing appliances on a production-base payed system that isn't fair . They may send you out to deliver a 700 lb refrigerator (That's not a typo 700 lbs) by yourself.  They can't keep quality installers (the guys who help the driver out in the field) because they pay them $9/hr with no benefits. They don't even work for JB Hunt, they work for a staffing agency called Bright Sky (Gloomy Skies if you ask me). So when the "quality" installers they employ who typically are fresh out of high school or out of options calls off or quits from being over-worked you will be expected to do your work by yourself with no increase in pay. The more experienced you become the more they take advantage of you. Take my word. This company is not worker friendly and heading down-hill. Stay away. The only reason I gave 2 stars because believe it or not I actually like my work and I was paid well until the recent changes.

I started at this company fresh out of CDL school. They took me with no experience and trained me for 6 weeks. During training they show you the ropes, the customers and the routes to manage your time efficiently. Even though, they have me an additional week with another trainer spend time learning backing and traveling to the yards. So as a rookie I don’t have any complain with my training, because they did invest in my training in order to make sure I am a successful driver. Therefore, I am very thankful for it.

Now 6 months after, I can say that working intermodal division is not as hard compare to other trucking jobs like where there is more physical labor involved. Basically, you just picking up, get loaded or drop and hook. Normally I drive locally but unfortunately commuting it’s the hardest part for me because I drive an hour from home each way. 

As far pay goes, I’ll say it’s fair for the minimum of 9 hours. If you drive more hours, you are pushing your body to the limits. Most drivers that makes good money tend to work 12 to 14 hours max per day. Depending on many factors such as weekend wraps, number of loads per day, the assignments, the miles. You can work as hard as you can or as little as you can. 

As far as safety, You are in control of your license. You get to make the call and decisions. If shippers give you a hard time, then you can refuse to pick up. If a tired is blown and you get to call dispatch and safety they take care of you. No one is forcing you to do anything illegal. 

Equipment in general are pretty decent but a lot of drivers are too lazy when it comes to safety. Some of them don’t want to deal with roadside and waiting and pass the problem to another driver. The biggest challenge is to find good chassis that are in good condition and JB hunt is working on that, I’ve seem trucks tires that are below the threshold in some trucks. So my take on equipment is 50/50. 

I’ve have seem a high turn over of management. Most of the managers are rookies and never been part of the game. They don’t understand the drivers, you have to battle with cooperating to do their job. Some of them screw with your pay, some of the have preferential treatment.

As far as culture, most drivers are chill, easy to talk to, everyone helps each other. Again, you get some bad apples. 

I was let go from this position back in June. There is no ac in the warehouse no exhaust fans extremely hot temperatures and you lift way more than 100lbs. There are about 600-1000 items sometimes that need to physically be moved and put away then loaded back on the truck in the afternoon. The account manager is not there for the afternoon shift and has no idea how to run it. The helpers are unreliable and generally do not speak English and are replaced weekly. Your in charge of staging and scanning out all products for the next day while babysitting these helpers who can’t help you. Then when you do the ykk it’s a nightmare. In the summertime you unload about 3-4 trucks a week filled with window glazing products which weigh 50lbs to 150lbe. After unloading the trucks you scan in these products tag them wait for the office to run  the order through the system so you can scan it out and put it back on trucks to go put. Sometimes you have 5 trucks with 100-300 pieces. Not a good company to work for. When I injure myself in December I couldn’t work for a month I was never told what to do so I stopped in and dropped my doctors note off to my manager he was not there of course. So I made a copy put it in his mailbox and sent him a text letting him know what was going on. I called and texted him weekly it no respond. I couldn’t get my elbow fixed until work acknowledged that it was a work related injury. A month later my elbow felt better got a note saying I was ok to return to work but still no answer from account manager. I called the office in Arkansas and immediately after I received a call from my manager saying where have you been? What a joke. I was unable to collect my workers comp and was treated very poorly after that incident. I got my work done. Did more physical labor there than anyone else and I just became angrier with these guys who leave when I get there and expect me to run the show. Jb hunt has been losing money each quarter for the past 3 years. They have a reputation for treating employees poorly and I would recommend you stay away from this company for your own safety

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Truck driver 324 salaries reported	$82,749 per year
Trailer mechanic 53 salaries reported	$31.51 per hour
Local driver 191 salaries reported	$80,125 per year
Diesel mechanic 10 salaries reported	$31.29 per hour
Owner operator driver 60 salaries reported	$752 per day

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