First a little about what the company does. Transystems is contracted by Sidney Sugar to transport Sugar Beets from storage piles in as many as 80 sites. The sites are setup for the farmers to deliver the beets for storage before Transystems moves them to the processing plants. The season would normally start in September and end possibly in March or April when the processing was completed. The shifts were from 4:00 pm to 4:00am and 4:00 am to 4:00 pm, 2 shifts 12 hours long.
To move the beets Transystems uses a midsize payloader and semi-trucks with huge double trailers grossing out at approximately 81, 000 pounds for the lead trailer and 51, 000 pounds for the “pup” or second trailer. The trucks I was filling were driven by (90%) Hispanics fresh from Mexico and you were very lucky to understand any of their English, most of the time you would hear them on the company radios speaking in Spanish and again could not understand a word they were speaking.
These people would be hired put in a truck for three or four days with a trainer whose was just another driver that was returning for another season. For my job as a loader operator I was trained by a truck driver for three days and turned loose to load the trucks. My very first night was hell, they threw as many trucks as they could at me not even giving me time for an outhouse break until I couldn’t hold it anymore (at one point the supervisor told me to just piss off the loader) and No time to have a bite to eat and little or no time for something to drink. At one point my mouth was so dry I could not talk. There was a term I heard for this but cannot remember what they said it was. Frankly I think it was done just so management could see what I could do and find something to “complain about”. Piss poor way to treat your employees.
After that night I was sent to another site that was 37 miles away to load. I had to drive my own car and was not reimbursed for the time or millage or gas. Piss poor way to treat your employees.
I need to back up here for a minute, I was hired via a telephone conversation with the Senior Project Manager. I was asked if I could run a loader and how long which I was happy to tell him I had most of my adult life. We did the small talk thing for a while and then it got down to pay which was set at $17.32 an hour and time and a half for anything over 40 hours which is normal and lawful. I specifically told him I would need to make $1, 100 and $1, 200 per week and he said it should not be a problem with the overtime I would receive.
They also had a “Man Camp” that I could stay at. I questioned him on the rooms and he stated I might have to “Share” a unit with someone else. I told him I was not comfortable with this and asked if I could have a unit by myself and stated I could but would have to $26 per day rather than the $13 per day. This kind of threw me that I would have to pay him and the company for the privilege to work for them but I went along with it because at my age (64) I could not find another job in heavy equipment. Piss poor way to treat your employees.
So on November 7th I packed up and left my home in Indiana and drove 1, 132 miles to Sidney arriving on the 10th. The office assistant did not send me the paperwork to my home for a drug test so I would have to take the test in Sidney which I did. What I was not told was that I would have to wait for four days to get the results back “Before” I could start “Training” neither of which I was told about in advance and could not be paid for. But they made sure to have me sign a “Room Agreement” starting on the 10th or the first day I got there. Piss poor way to treat your employees.
When I arrived I was shown where I would stay, it was nothing more than an old office trailer that they had converted into two small bedrooms a small setting and kitchen area and one bathroom. It was filthy and very depressing. Then on the first day as I was moving my clothes and personal effects in I seen a mouse run across the floor. Now, I grew up on a farm a mouse was nothing to get upset about so I went down to a hardware store and purchased three mouse traps and set them. In the next 15 days I caught 11 to 13 mice and alerting the management there was a big problem. After three conversations and nothing being done to stop them from getting in. Finally I had enough one night when I returned from work and found two dead mice in my traps again. I put them in a plastic bag and took them to the manager’s office and laid them on his desk, then and only then he had a supervisor get some bait sticks and spread them around. It did not completely stop the mice from getting in, I purchased some steel wool and started pushing it in every hole I could find and get to which was in the bathroom under the sink where the pipes went through the floor to the outside. In the seven days since then I have caught one more. Piss poor way to treat your employees.
Interesting that I have to pay for the privilege to live in a mouse infested filthy trailer but then I find I have to share it with a truck driver also, at least he could speak English since he was from Georgia. Anyway back to the rest of the crap they pull on me. Training, , , the driver that was training me told me would not be paid the regular rat of $17.32 per hour but $60.00 for each day. When I finally received my first paycheck I was only paid $35.00 a day for the three days I was “IN TRAINING”. Here again I was never told about the differences and when I questioned them about it I was told take it or leave it. Piss poor way to treat your employees.
After a few days on the job actually loading trucks the manager approached me about going to another site about 100 miles south of Sidney to Terry Montana. I thought it was a upgrade or like a promotion but then he told me it was the same pay and that I would have to stay in a hotel there. I asked if the company was going to pay for the hotel and he said NO. NO per-diem no increase in pay scale, nothing. I called the hotel they referred me to and was told the rate was $85 PER DAY. Now let’s see I work 12 hours a day and get $207.84 and then have to pay $85.00 which leaves me $122.84 and I have to eat and purchase gas and any other necessity that might come up. Piss poor way to treat your employees.
Then the last straw was today, after working five straight 4:00pm to 4:00am shifts I was given two days off. I went to the office to see what my schedule was and I was handed a schedule that stated I worked tomorrow then I was off one (1) day, then I was scheduled to work two (2) days, and off another two (2) days, the I work three (3) days, and off two (2) and so on until May 3, 2014. What it equates to is I would work 36 hours one week and 48 hours the next week so they do not have to pay out overtime. Piss poor way to treat your employees.
I hope anyone reading this realizes this is not a popular company to work for. They have a huge turnover in truck drivers and loader operators, they are also always looking for supervisors and office clerks (you can see the lists on the website) so I suspect that the importance of retaining good employees is very lacking corporate wide. Piss poor way to treat your employees.
Their equipment “Trucks and Loaders” here in Sidney are very bad and poorly maintained, just the last few night of the ten trucks that should have been running they had five or six trucks broken down. This is a constant from what all of the other operators and drivers have told me and now have seen for myself. Piss poor way to treat your employees.
I don’t see myself staying any longer and will just have to write it off as a very expensive (Approximately $1, 700.00 for gas and expensis) and frustrating employment experience. It’s a shame I was very excited to get the job, I have a passion for operating heavy equipment and after seven years of bad economy and looking for a job I thought things were finally going to change, NOT! Piss poor way to treat your employees.
Other Transystems LLC Locations:
Great Falls Service Center
Main office address: 1901 Benefis Ct., Great Falls, MT 59405
Transystems LLC Reviews
First a little about what the company does. Transystems is contracted by Sidney Sugar to transport Sugar Beets from storage piles in as many as 80 sites. The sites are setup for the farmers to deliver the beets for storage before Transystems moves them to the processing plants. The season would normally start in September and end possibly in March or April when the processing was completed. The shifts were from 4:00 pm to 4:00am and 4:00 am to 4:00 pm, 2 shifts 12 hours long.
To move the beets Transystems uses a midsize payloader and semi-trucks with huge double trailers grossing out at approximately 81, 000 pounds for the lead trailer and 51, 000 pounds for the “pup” or second trailer. The trucks I was filling were driven by (90%) Hispanics fresh from Mexico and you were very lucky to understand any of their English, most of the time you would hear them on the company radios speaking in Spanish and again could not understand a word they were speaking.
These people would be hired put in a truck for three or four days with a trainer whose was just another driver that was returning for another season. For my job as a loader operator I was trained by a truck driver for three days and turned loose to load the trucks. My very first night was hell, they threw as many trucks as they could at me not even giving me time for an outhouse break until I couldn’t hold it anymore (at one point the supervisor told me to just piss off the loader) and No time to have a bite to eat and little or no time for something to drink. At one point my mouth was so dry I could not talk. There was a term I heard for this but cannot remember what they said it was. Frankly I think it was done just so management could see what I could do and find something to “complain about”. Piss poor way to treat your employees.
After that night I was sent to another site that was 37 miles away to load. I had to drive my own car and was not reimbursed for the time or millage or gas. Piss poor way to treat your employees.
I need to back up here for a minute, I was hired via a telephone conversation with the Senior Project Manager. I was asked if I could run a loader and how long which I was happy to tell him I had most of my adult life. We did the small talk thing for a while and then it got down to pay which was set at $17.32 an hour and time and a half for anything over 40 hours which is normal and lawful. I specifically told him I would need to make $1, 100 and $1, 200 per week and he said it should not be a problem with the overtime I would receive.
They also had a “Man Camp” that I could stay at. I questioned him on the rooms and he stated I might have to “Share” a unit with someone else. I told him I was not comfortable with this and asked if I could have a unit by myself and stated I could but would have to $26 per day rather than the $13 per day. This kind of threw me that I would have to pay him and the company for the privilege to work for them but I went along with it because at my age (64) I could not find another job in heavy equipment. Piss poor way to treat your employees.
So on November 7th I packed up and left my home in Indiana and drove 1, 132 miles to Sidney arriving on the 10th. The office assistant did not send me the paperwork to my home for a drug test so I would have to take the test in Sidney which I did. What I was not told was that I would have to wait for four days to get the results back “Before” I could start “Training” neither of which I was told about in advance and could not be paid for. But they made sure to have me sign a “Room Agreement” starting on the 10th or the first day I got there. Piss poor way to treat your employees.
When I arrived I was shown where I would stay, it was nothing more than an old office trailer that they had converted into two small bedrooms a small setting and kitchen area and one bathroom. It was filthy and very depressing. Then on the first day as I was moving my clothes and personal effects in I seen a mouse run across the floor. Now, I grew up on a farm a mouse was nothing to get upset about so I went down to a hardware store and purchased three mouse traps and set them. In the next 15 days I caught 11 to 13 mice and alerting the management there was a big problem. After three conversations and nothing being done to stop them from getting in. Finally I had enough one night when I returned from work and found two dead mice in my traps again. I put them in a plastic bag and took them to the manager’s office and laid them on his desk, then and only then he had a supervisor get some bait sticks and spread them around. It did not completely stop the mice from getting in, I purchased some steel wool and started pushing it in every hole I could find and get to which was in the bathroom under the sink where the pipes went through the floor to the outside. In the seven days since then I have caught one more. Piss poor way to treat your employees.
Interesting that I have to pay for the privilege to live in a mouse infested filthy trailer but then I find I have to share it with a truck driver also, at least he could speak English since he was from Georgia. Anyway back to the rest of the crap they pull on me. Training, , , the driver that was training me told me would not be paid the regular rat of $17.32 per hour but $60.00 for each day. When I finally received my first paycheck I was only paid $35.00 a day for the three days I was “IN TRAINING”. Here again I was never told about the differences and when I questioned them about it I was told take it or leave it. Piss poor way to treat your employees.
After a few days on the job actually loading trucks the manager approached me about going to another site about 100 miles south of Sidney to Terry Montana. I thought it was a upgrade or like a promotion but then he told me it was the same pay and that I would have to stay in a hotel there. I asked if the company was going to pay for the hotel and he said NO. NO per-diem no increase in pay scale, nothing. I called the hotel they referred me to and was told the rate was $85 PER DAY. Now let’s see I work 12 hours a day and get $207.84 and then have to pay $85.00 which leaves me $122.84 and I have to eat and purchase gas and any other necessity that might come up. Piss poor way to treat your employees.
Then the last straw was today, after working five straight 4:00pm to 4:00am shifts I was given two days off. I went to the office to see what my schedule was and I was handed a schedule that stated I worked tomorrow then I was off one (1) day, then I was scheduled to work two (2) days, and off another two (2) days, the I work three (3) days, and off two (2) and so on until May 3, 2014. What it equates to is I would work 36 hours one week and 48 hours the next week so they do not have to pay out overtime. Piss poor way to treat your employees.
I hope anyone reading this realizes this is not a popular company to work for. They have a huge turnover in truck drivers and loader operators, they are also always looking for supervisors and office clerks (you can see the lists on the website) so I suspect that the importance of retaining good employees is very lacking corporate wide. Piss poor way to treat your employees.
Their equipment “Trucks and Loaders” here in Sidney are very bad and poorly maintained, just the last few night of the ten trucks that should have been running they had five or six trucks broken down. This is a constant from what all of the other operators and drivers have told me and now have seen for myself. Piss poor way to treat your employees.
I don’t see myself staying any longer and will just have to write it off as a very expensive (Approximately $1, 700.00 for gas and expensis) and frustrating employment experience. It’s a shame I was very excited to get the job, I have a passion for operating heavy equipment and after seven years of bad economy and looking for a job I thought things were finally going to change, NOT! Piss poor way to treat your employees.
Other Transystems LLC Locations:
Great Falls Service Center
Main office address: 1901 Benefis Ct., Great Falls, MT 59405
Phone: 406-727-7500 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 406-727-7500 FREE end_of_the_skype_highlighting
Toll Free: 800-548-9864 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 800-548-9864 FREE end_of_the_skype_highlighting
Idaho Division
Projects locations in American Falls, Nampa, Paul, Twin Falls, and Boise
Main office address: 419 Shoup Ave West, Twin Falls, ID 83301
Phone: 208-734-8050 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 208-734-8050 FREE end_of_the_skype_highlighting
Toll Free: 866-253-5480 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 866-253-5480 FREE end_of_the_skype_highlighting
Red River Valley Division
Projects locations in Crookston, Drayton, East Grand Forks, Hillsboro, and Moorhead
Main office address: 2211 S Washington St, Ste. A, Grand Forks, ND 58201
Phone: 701-746-0389 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 701-746-0389 FREE end_of_the_skype_highlighting
Toll Free: 800-557-3520 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 800-557-3520 FREE end_of_the_skype_highlighting
Minnesota Division
Projects location in Renville
Main office address: 83901 Co Road 21, Renville, MN 56284
Phone: 320-329-3400 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 320-329-3400 FREE end_of_the_skype_highlighting
Toll Free: 800-705-0163 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 800-705-0163 FREE end_of_the_skype_highlighting
Rocky Mountain Division
Project location in Worland, Wyoming
Main office address: 419 Shoup Ave West, Twin Falls, ID 83301
Phone: 208-734-8050 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 208-734-8050 FREE end_of_the_skype_highlighting
Sidney Montana
Main office address: 1120 East Main, Sidney, MT 59270
Phone: 406-433-5522 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 406-433-5522 FREE end_of_the_skype_highlighting