I would like to tell you about the company I was driving for it should have had the name Nightmare Trucking. Several things happened to lead me to this conclusion and they are as follows:
1. The company had problems allowing me to fuel up. The fuel gauge did not work in the truck and they picked where I could fuel and usually only allowed 50 to 150 gallons at time. I ran out of fuel 3 different times because of this. I tried to reach the owner of the company to get fuel because he had to authorize the fuel purchase nobody else in the office had the ability to do this, I had to final call the broker to let him know the situation because I would not make the delivery time. The broker in one incident had to pay for fuel so I could deliver the load. The owner was on vacation and not answering phone calls.
2. In route to my delivery destination I was on a toll road in Florida when I had a blow out on the trailer. I stopped at a service area and call a tire service company about coming out to repair the tire. He said that he could but I let him know I had to call the company to get authorization to have the tire fixed. I called the owner to get the authorization and was told to just drive on it. I was still over 200 miles from my destination. While I was driving on this blowout the public kept honking and pointing that I had this blown tire and that it was peeling off all over the place. The mud flap was ripped off in this process. This incident caused great stress for me because of the safety to the public and to myself. I got to my destination and after dropping the load there got the authorization to have the tire repaired. The service technician that came out to repair the tire and replace the mud flap did so and then had problems getting paid so he wanted me to pay for the tire. I only had $20 on me so the technician removed the front tractor tire for collateral and left for about 5 hours. He final returned to replace the front tire back on the tractor.
3. When I took the job was told that he would pay all lumpper fees. When I got ready to leave from getting unloaded I was unable to get my paper work because there was a $150 lumpper fee. I called the owner and he refused to pay this. I finally had to call the shipper in order to get this paid so I could receive my paperwork and be allowed to leave.
4. Another incident that happened I picked up three different loads having 2 different drops. The products that I picked up 2 was suppose to be at 40 degrees and the other was a sensitive load that needed to be delivered the next day and was suppose to be at 34 degrees, I called the owner and told him about the issue with the temperature and was told to keep it at 40 degrees. He didn’t seem to care and I was told just to get the load there. He didn’t seem to care that I was almost out of hours and being rushed it seemed he didn’t understand and just wanted the load delivered at whatever cost.
5. The truck broke down and I still had all 3 loads. I called to inform the owner of the situation and once again he dragged his feet and once again I reminded him of the temperature issue and it fell on deaf ears. This is going on the third day. The broker has called now several times to find out what the issue was. The broker stated that he was having problems communicating with the owner of the company and asked for the driver number where he found it easier to communicate. I final arrived at the first destination to sit for another day with the temperature set to high for the sensitive load. I told the owner there was a possibility of them not accepting the last load because of the chance that it had spoiled because of the temperature and that he would be responsible for the load if not received. He told me that if the load was not accepted that it would be my fault and that he didn’t now about the temperature even after I had made the statements about the temperature. Several times when I would mention it he would just hang up.
6. I was pulled into the port of entry that takes care of Colorado and Utah. I was entering Utah. I had informed the owner a week before this that I had a tire on the trailer that kept losing air. I was told just to keep air in it and get it back to Salt Lake City. They were doing a level three inspection and I was shut down because of the tire losing air. There was also an issue with the lights and I told the owner about this before I even left Salt Lake City eighteen days prior. I once again called the owner informing him that the tire had to be fixed before I could leave the port of entry. I called a service technician to come and fix the tire. The service technician spoke with the owner and was authorized to repair the tire. He was able to patch the tire. It took the owner almost four hours to send the money for the technician. Because the owner was taking so long it tied both me and the technician up. The technician had to sign off that the tire had been fixed and was unable to do this until the payment was made. I was also informed by DOT that the vin number on the trailer did not match up with the license plate on the trailer. The inspector said that the license plate belonged to another unit he wrote up the trailer for improper registration. I was told to inform the owner of this situation and was told it was just a mix up. I asked if he could fax the proper registration and was told not to worry about it he would take care of it when I get back. When I received my final check the owner charged me for an unauthorized repair. The so called unauthorized repair was the cost of the repair on this tire.
The owner also stated that he would pay for the three layovers because the layovers was not my fault and of course I never seen this on my paycheck. I tried to get my check and the owner would not answer the phone. I was promised retention pay because of having to pick up an additional load that was not ready this about fifty miles away. I was also told that I would get paid for the deadhead miles because of there being mix up and not getting the load. I had a signed contract that I would receive my check on every other Monday which never happened. I held on to the last three bills of ladens to try to get my paycheck. The owner just left a message that stated that I could keep them and he did not care. To this day I still have not received all of my pay and the owner just ignores my repeated calls. I also called the office and the girl that works there started just yelling at me and would not answer me about my paycheck. The owner had a friend bring me half of my check to the Flying J in Salt Lake City. I was out for 18 days and I drove about 18, 000 miles and made 10 different deliveries.
When I got back to Salt Lake City I started checking out the company. I found out several interesting things about the company. The manifest that I received has the name XCARGO, INC. checking with the Department of Commerce I found out that this company is inactive because document were never renewed. Loadstar is an active company that the paychecks are written on. The name on the side of trucks are UTX1, INC, This company had documents filed with Department of Commerce back on October 7, 2008 not all the documents were filed so it was never active. After the issues that I was having with this company all of a sudden all documents seemed to get filed on Dec 1, 2009. This seems odd to me.
I just wanted to let other potential driver that are thinking of driving for this company I hope you read this well so hopeful you don’t have to go through what I did. It is unfortunate that there are people out there in trucking industry that don’t care about their drivers. I have been driving for almost 30 years and this was a nightmare. Even after all the problems I stilled made the loads and did the best job to my ability and I feel that I was treated unfairly.
The owner of this company is Esad Tatarevic and his office is located at 3565 South West Temple Suite 17 Salt Lake City Utah.

Former Employee