NOT GETTING PAID

I drive for Werner Enterprises on the owner opp side. I was a company driver till Jan 1 2016. Now i drive for a owner opp/fleet owner and he has not payed me or my co driver. We have agreed upon .42cpm to the truck andwe have driven more than 5,000 miles and have only been paid $350.00-ish. No late, damaged, loads. All paperwork turned in via transflo and i have copies im about to put a lien on the truck as soon as i can figure out how. Any suggestions would will be appreciated

Robert H. asks:

I drive for Werner Enterprises on the owner opp side. I was a company driver till Jan 1 2016. Now i drive for a owner opp/fleet owner and he has not payed me or my co driver. We have agreed upon .42cpm to the truck andwe have driven more than 5,000 miles and have only been paid $350.00-ish. No late, damaged, loads. All paperwork turned in via transflo and i have copies im about to put a lien on the truck as soon as i can figure out how. Any suggestions would will be appreciated

The above information considered, what is the benefit of working in this scenario? You have far greater recourse and the ability to reconcile your pay as a company driver.

Have you brought this up with Werner? He needs to pay his employees, and if he's running under their name I'd think they'd hold him responsible for it.

Also, is there a reason you only ran 5k miles in more than a month? Extended home time or something? Because if not you need to look for another gig fast. 5k a month is not going to cut it, especially as a team. You should be running that every week, easily. My advice is to cut your losses and run. Bosses who bounce checks rarely change for the better.

Unfortunately that is not uncommon and it's one of the things we warn people about when they consider leaving a larger company and going to work for a small fleet or an owner operator. Sometimes the boss just doesn't have the cash in the bank to pay everyone.

I really don't know what you can do about it that's going to make more sense than just finding a new job to be honest. I mean, you could go the legal route and try to get an attorney or call some government organization to report him or whatever. But that could drag on for months or years and you still might not see the money. In fact, it might cost you more to try to collect than it would to just move on somewhere else that has money in the bank.

So if it were me and I couldn't get the boss to pay me I'd cut my losses and move on. If you want to write some letters or call an attorney later on to see if you can recoup some of that money then why not, right? But if you just started working for this guy and he's already doing this then in my book you already know everything you need to know about him. Get out of there.

I know for a fact that at Prime, the driver gets paid before the Owner/leasee gets their share. You are still considered a company driver even though you are driving some else's truck.

Not sure what to tell you about your situation, but Brett has some very good advice on that.

So either go back to driving a company truck at Werner (especially if you are still on the hook to them for your training) or find another company to drive for. It's that simple the way I see it.

Ernie

Yes Ernie you are correct about Prime. Basically Prime sub leases me my co-driver and they are considered employees of Prime. Of course I am responsible for the costs of his health insurance, retirement cost, vacation pay, sick time, FICA and ssi etc etc etc and they deduct everything from my settlement. I also pay prime for handling all that for me which I think is about $10 bucks a week.