Marten Transportation ,Marten Transportation: Wrongful Termination and Defamation of Character Mondovi Wisconsin

Marten Transport is tearing up decent truckers and thier families like a wrecking ball because drivers aren't driving illegally enough to suit them. This company is highly illegal and literally will destroy your work history to avoid payment of unemployment benifits... and if that isn't bad enough, they withhold pertinent reference information and make it almost impossible to find employment after they've fired you.

The following letter addresses only a small portion of my actual ordeal at the hands of this monster homewrecker: and I am not alone. My advice is that you should more than just walk past this company... run!!!
(This first part is to a lawyer)

Dear XXXX, XXXXX and XXXX Law Firm:
Please look at the following. It is a letter I addressed to Marten Transportation. Unfortunately it is completely true and their slander and destruction of me as person is still in full bloom. Currently I am 5 weeks without unemployment and was unable to find a new job until recently because Marten Transportation will not release any information about me to an employer and prior employment references are everything. (this latter because I sent them the following letter). Here's a list of things to add to the following letter.

1.Marten created liable documentation that denied me unemployment benefits which completely destroyed my credit and nearly put my family on the street.
2.Marten refuses to release information pertaining to my job performance to my new potential employers which caused me remain unemployed for an extra month as well as lose many jobs at various companies, and forced me to find one with a company that would accept my application without a reference.
3.Marten is guilty of defamation of character and wrongful termination; as is evident in the following letter. Their discourteous abusive conduct has cost me a California ticket and put a permanent mar on my record as a driver, and my credit.
4.Marten also stole hundreds of dollars out of my last pay check to mail my stuff from the truck to me at home which I did not allow and which caused me even more hardship.

Please read the following letter; which I released to Marten one month ago. I have conclusive evidence supporting everything written here. A subpoena of my qualcomm tracking and messages will support everything and is admissible in court. And remember this: helping me to win this case to restore my reputation and financial credibility is what law is all about.
Thank you for your consideration

and just think, this is what 7 months on without a day off has earned me: I have no service failures, no damage to the truck, no missed appointments and lots and lots of letters congratulating me for excellent service. Marten terminated me and slandered me because I wouldn't run illegally enough to suit them, and because they didn't want to pay unemployment.

Please help me find justice. My credit and perfect 12 year work history are destroyed and I don't want to lose my family and end up on the street.

(This part was submitted to Marten and I never received a reply. They know they're guilty and I've got the records to prove it.)

Marten Transport (Fortune 500 Company)
Human Resources Department
In Care of Christina
129 Marten Street
Mondovi, WI 54755

Dear Christina (human resources):
My employment with Marten Transport was currently terminated as of 1 December 2008. You accomplished this by telephone and then insisted that I vacate my assigned truck and the Irving, Texas terminal as soon as could be arranged by the staff at that location. As of that day my health benefits were cut off and you also released the company where manipulation and deduction of my pay was concerned. Reason for my termination was that I had sent too many messages over the QUALCOMM and that many of those messages were negative without justifiable reason.

This event has created a serious problem for me where finding and maintaining future employment is concerned, and not only that, but I feel Marten is also responsible for the ticket I received in California on 16 October 2008. And, considering the fact that I drove one of your vehicles for seven months without time off; I feel I am due a full physical to determine the amount stress and distress Marten's employment practices have caused me.

FACTORS OF ABUSE per Marten Transport:
1.Marten abuses driver on QAULCOMM
a.The original complaint for my termination was in reference to a message I received from Denise Fitzgerald. This message indicated that she intended to never reimburse drivers whenever she received a reimbursement request and it was missing pertinent information. She did not sign the message and thus I thought it was from payroll, and since I had two Bills of Laden submitted to Payroll without proper PO#'s , I thought I was going to lose over 400.00 in both lumper and toll receipts.

At the time I was recovering from a week when I owed Marten Transport $53.00 on my weekly check. Complicating matters was also the fact that Payroll had told me to send in P&G and other bills twice a send and a resend if I could not get a PO# from my dispatcher in a timely manner (within 24 hours). This is done because some bills are needed immediately and payroll can't wait for the dispatcher to come in after a weekend or week night delivery to issue a PO #. In reference to a send and a resend, what this means is that the bills are submitted without complete information on the coversheet the first time and then with completed information like PO#'s the second time. This is what I thought this message was in reference to, and I am being honest when I say that I did not know it was simply Denise proposing to commit yet another -OBVIOUSLY MARTEN SUPPORTED- driver abuse.

My reply message was that the situation was B.S. and I spelled it out B.S. because I had seen Marten Supervisory Personnel use this expression in QUALCOMM messages in the past. And being as I was taking Denise into my confidence to try to get help with my reimbursements, I didn't think it was a problem. Where I was cited for negativity, I was actually seeking camaraderie.

As it turned out, Christina in human resources sided with Denise where termination of driver pay on a whim is concerned, and the fact is, there is no legal precedent that would accept this company conduct as being anything but hostile toward its working force. The situation is simply and irrefutably evidence that Marten Transport is not a professional company and that they are tearing up drivers and their families like a meat grinder at the driver's expense.
b.I worked 7 months on with no down time and did not call my dispatchers. This would have been plenty of reason for extra messages being as other drivers take time off.
c.I had an excellent working relationship with my first dispatcher Todd Stuber but was assigned Joanne when I stated that I didn't want to run regional if it meant my being in Chicago all the time. Joanne was immediately hostile to me and has a reputation for being completely out there and hostile where her other drivers are concerned.

Evidence of this can be seen in my prior QUALCOMM messages on 10 August 2008 when I was dispatched to load in Waco, TX and then sent a personal message from Joanne asking me to pick up and drop in Haslett, TX. When I tried to find out the meaning of the conflicting messages I was literally insulted and even a phone call did not resolved the situation. So you know, I had wanted to find out if I was meeting a broke down driver in Haslet, TX whom might have already loaded in Waco. As it turned out, I was picking up a railroad load and was dropping it in Haslett, none of which was mentioned in the latter dispatch. Luckily, night dispatch came on and saw my dilemma and then forwarded me a message to clarify my duty or I would have gone to Haslet as directed and lost the company hundreds if not thousands of dollars in fuel and lost time on a costly rail road appointment.

This situation led me to ask Rod for a new dispatcher; a request he granted after another one of Joanne's later bizarre and unreasonable attacks.

d.On 15 October 2008, I was working for Denise Fitzgerald who is the person that actually sits next to Joanne at the Mondovi terminal. At around 7 a.m. I was dispatched to pick up an empty trailer so that I could pick up a local load and drop it at the Ontario, Ca terminal. My wage was to be hourly for the 10 mile drive and I was supposed to QUALCOMM Denise with the hours spent on the load as soon as I finished. As it turned out the trailer she assigned me was already loaded so I went into the lot and found another trailer to use; a dirty one that required almost 40 minutes of my time to make serviceable. I had been told by night dispatch (per the QUACOMM and phone message weeks before) that I should find an empty on the lot when I needed one since it helped them out when they were having problems assigning trailers, although Denise would have none of this.

After I made an empty trailer serviceable she then assigned me another trailer; this one pad locked with another driver under it and soon to be taken into the shop for repairs. When I told Denise this she nearly came out of her skin so I went to get the terminal manager to report the problem. He called Mondovi and set up a scan on my QUALCOMM so that Joanne could be watched and sure enough Joanne invented a story about someone checking on my truck and then invented and sent a lie that stated I had left the terminal with an unassigned trailer up until I told her at around 13:30p.m that I was still waiting for a trailer assignment and was now late for pick up, at which point she assigned me the trailer I cleaned out that morning a trailer I might add that had sat on the lot all day. In all I was 2 hours late for trying to help her out, as can be seen in evidence on the QUALCOMM, and I all I did was get beat up for it.

e.19 Nov 2008, Denise and I are getting along fine and no more of the vicious attitude I had been subjected to is being vented toward me. In fact, Denise has even stepped up to the plate and told me much earlier that I should keep my Thanksgiving time off request in because she thinks I can make enough money to make it home. At the time I had a legal agent working my California ticket and he had put the fine and court date off until 2 Mar 2009. Why not? I figured, but as it turned out my mileage was so bad the week before Thanksgiving that I owed Marten $53.00 on my Thanksgiving week check.

Depression hit me like a sledgehammer and I did jokingly write a message to this effect: D. cancel Thanksgiving and don't worry about X-mass either because I hear the Anti-Christ is showing up. I owe the company $53.00 for working here this week. And while this may seem extreme, everyone I know thinks it's funny and actually expresses a pretty good attitude from a guy whose mileage is so lousy he can't afford to take any time off for seven months.

On this particular month I only made it 9400 miles and this can be directly attributed to Denise removing me from a half delivered load and sending me into West Virginia.
2.Marten responsible for tired driver and California Ticket
a.On 16 October 2008 after I had finally discharged the trailer problem and load, and after I had then loaded a second dispatch near downtown Los Angeles, I was ticketed for parking on an asphalt apron on I-40 near Needles, CA. The day before was the trailer incident which led to my loading at a late hour. I ended up leaving the customer at about 21:00 hours and I was unable to find parking in Barstow, CA or any of the two rest areas thereafter.

Having put in well over14 hours I was exhausted and forced to park on the shoulder of the highway. This situation could have been avoided if Denise hadn't been impossible about assigning me a trailer so that I could get loaded the day before. Oddly though, just minutes after Officer Williams ticketed me, I sent in a message to Denise stating I had spent 5 hours on the problem trailer load instead of the 8 I actually did (8 just seemed too fantastic to believe although it was true). And then she sent me a p.o. number for five dollars to cover my pay. The message I replied with pointed out that her horrible conduct the day before had just destroyed my family's Thanksgiving and Christmas and that she could keep her insult. This led to a conversation with someone in operations and that led to another negative situation that Denise had plainly instigated.

3.Marten using Violation summary letters to instigate training and application of illegal log book practices.
a.Pay attention here Christine because this is for real: When I got home my daughter handed me a fist full of violation letters that had been sent out to me by Marten's safety department. These letters break down into two catagories: those that address paper infractions that might be identified by the D.O.T. during an inspection and those that congratulate me for creating illegal cooked books transparent enough to slip past D.O.T. inspectors. The only thing that was expected to match in my logs was the D.O.T. inspections, tickets, fueling and nothing else. Bills of Laden, QUALCOMM delivery messages and toll receipts do not have to match and the fact is, had I not driven illegally for Marten, I would have been fired and put out in the cold a lot sooner .

This is clearly evident by the attitude Marten employees exemplify when I literally comply with your company polices; when I literally go above and beyond the call of duty by cleaning and maintaining sorely neglected trailers by getting them in and getting their lights and brakes and reefers fixed and you still fire me on a whim, and when I work rigorously to keep the truck on time even though the customers themselves aren't usually worried about compliance with their own appointment times.

As you can see Christine, all of the prior incidents are what led to my termination and there really can be no dispute as to the reasons for the complications. If Denise and Joanne would have simply done their job instead of instigate problems with an excellent driver none of the latter would have occurred. But even so, it all did occur and I am sitting at home today scared that my family is going to end up on the street in the cold. For damages I can sight 7 months of driving under incredible stress for people whose conduct is so unprofessional it could start bar fights.

I am penniless at Christmas and there must be a dozen or more companies that won't touch me due to the slander Marten put on my D.A.C report. How you can do this when my performance was exemplary, I don't know. You don't have failed D.O.T inspections or late appointments. There is no equipment abuse and the sole accident I had was non-preventable which I also plan to prove in court. What you don't realize here is that I committed myself to professional performance by knowing my job and applying myself to the utmost of my ability and it only brought me grief.

Where this whole incident is concerned: you will be hearing from me very soon. I did a good job for Marten and I begged to keep that job so that my family could have a Christmas and all it earned me was sleepless night after sleepless night and worries that my children may end up on the street. Don't pretend that you don't know what your actions and the policy's at Marten transport have instigated against my family.
You said yourself that you saw no other way to resolve this. I agree and if you are true to your office in human resources you will do any and everything you can to assist me in this lawsuit.

And, so that you know how serious I am about my novel Drive: here is an excerpt. Bear in mind that Marten will definitely star with a black hat on:
From Drive:
Ethics: Principles of human conduct as they apply to society

The Highest Ethical Principles: to do good, to serve or to achieve perfection where a moral or ethical principle is concerned.

Jurisprudence: The development of written law through interpretation of legal code and ethic.

The latter are three aspects of the law and personal moral conduct. They infer that an individual is responsible for being good, for being a servant of the greater whole, and for being moral.

This book is concerned with the development of ethics as they apply to the individual. It is about applying them on an individual level; one which each and every one of us has to commit ourselves to for anything in society to work above a level that promotes anguish, failure and hatred.
________________________
XXXXXX XXXXXXX
Professional Driver & Author
(And I am coming after you monsters. I'm going to make you a star ... you can take that to the bank!)

Razzly63
Mahomet, Illinois
U.S.A.