ARROW TRUCKING Glad Arrow went Bankrupt. serves Doug Pielsticker right for screwing us drivers and employees. Tulsa, Oklahoma

I am an ex-Arrow driver and got screwed while i drove there. i was only there for 10 months but i was barely making any money, wasnt getting any miles and i got the log books and pay stubs to prove it. i was always asking for loads and trying to run as much as i could. the only reason i left was i got called to active duty in support of OIF/OEF for the army national guard. i am currently in iraq right now and just recently heard about arrow going under. i have friends that were still driving for them when i left in march and i kept in contact with them the whole time and heard about all the crap they were pulling in tulsa and the other yards.i was with arrow from may 2008 till march 2009 when i got called to active duty. i also can vouch that the dm's dont care about the drivers cuz i was always fighting with mine about my home time and had to chose between drill in north carolina or going to see my son in wisconsin. the only reason my son was in wisconsin was because of my upcoming deployment and i had no family that my son and his mother could stay with while i was overseas so we moved them back up north with her family. i always gave my drill dates a month in advance and would remind my dm two weeks b4 i had drill becuase i knew they would forget. well i ended up always being late for drill and my unit was great about it cuz arrow could have gotten in alot of trouble for me missing drill. well there was one weekend that was coming up and i had to deliver in savannah georgia on friday morning. it was a drill weekend and i asked my dm after i dropped my load if i should head back to home so i could be there in time for drill. well i had to be at drill friday night at 1800. i got sent to St. Augustine, Fla to pick up a load delivering monday morning in Manasas Park,Va. i ended up missing drill friday and had to drive all night to make it home for drill on saturday morning. i got home 2 1/2 hours before drill saturday morning.  i took a shower, shaved and put my uniform on to go to drill. my fiance told me to lay down and she would wake me up so i could go to drill .well i got up and was dogg tired. i dont know how i made it to drill safely but i did. i guess i had an angel watching over me that day. i was standing in formation saturday morning about to pass out from lack of sleep. my platoon sergeant came up to me and asked how much sleep i had in the last 24 hours. i told him none cuz that hour or so didnt help at all. well he told me and my section sergeant that i needed to find a corner in the supply room to go to sleep. my section sergeant said he would make sure i got sleep. well i got to sleep the whole day and even got let go early so i could go home and sleep. if it wasnt for them i would have surely got into an accident or something becuase my platoon sergeant wanted to send me home right then and there but seen how tired i was and wasn't going to risk my life( unlike arrow who didn't care). but anyways drill went by and i delivered my load in VA monday morning. well i got a message on my qualcomm after i delivered from my dm asking why the military was calling arrow and asking why they couldnt get me home in time for drill. i told him that it was Arrow's fault becuase they had ample time to get me home and had ample enough warning about my drill. he told me to call so i did and he then decided to give me the third degree on the phone. well i had bit my tongue for long enough and i let him have it on the phone. i was done getting run over by him and the company and told him that i would take it to the higher ups if i had to. i was tired of being late and tired of having to fight to see my son. i had a life outside of that stinking truck and that job was not the most important thing in my life. And dont get me started on the equipment. the first truck i had was a 2004 freightliner and it was a complete piece of crap.it had 501,000 miles on it when i picked it up in masury on may 23rd.when i turned it back in it had 534,540 miles on it. shows how much i ran in four months huh? i wasn't in the truck a month b4 i started having problems with it. i was in a shop every 2 weeks like clock work because something would go wrong with the truck. well i bit my tonuge about it and stuck it out for 4 months b4 enough was enough. i got to masury at 1300 east coast time, 1200 in tulsa. there was a 2006 kenworth sitting in the yard and had no driver in it.the kw had 314,350 miles on it when i picked it up. when i dropped it off in masury on march 2nd it had almsot 400,000 miles on it. i was 25,000 milies short of my 100,000 with arrow. well i called my dm and asked if i can switch trucks because i was tired of driving that truck and was tired of being in the shop all the time and didn't feel safe driving it anymore. well he didn't answer so i called marlene and jonhathon in tulsa and left them messages. well my dm calls me back at 1400 and cusses me out for calling marlene and john and says that he will check to see if i can switch trucks. well i told him if they didn't let me switch trucks i had no problem cleaning my truck out and going home cuz i had people that could come to masury and pick me up. well i waited and waited and finally at 1655 east coast time i get a call back saying i can switch trucks. my dm(Pat Starr) said he had to ask the vice president and all this other bull crap that wasn't even remotely related to me switching trucks because the VP had nothing to do with truck assignments. well the people in masury got pissed cuz they were all getting ready to leave but they were cool about it cuz they knew it wasn't my fault. i called and did the proper procedures 3 hours b4 and it took tulsa all that time to decide to put me in what i thought was a better, safer truck. well i switched trucks, and was happy bout my KW. well it wasn't even a week b4 i had problems with that truck. come to find out some dumb mechanic had changed the starter on the truck and didn't tighten all the wires and bolts back up so that was a 5 minute fix. then the fan hub goes off the block. so i was in the shop for that. then the air dryer and turbo go out on the truck. plus they castrated the crap out of the trucks and couldn't figure out why they were having all these problems out of the trucks all the time. they were making the motors and trucks work against themselves. but hey they thought we were all a bunch of dumb goobers and rednecks and that we were treating the trucks rough and didn't know how to drive them. well arrow got what it deserved and i hate to say it but i am kinda glad i dont have to come home from Iraq and go back to work for them. it sucks cuz now i have to bust my butt to find a new driving job but it's ok. i might stick to flatbed but not sure. as far as not paying us for tarping we got paid better than most flatbed companies. the only thing that sucked was the fact if you had multiple stops or multiple pick ups you had to un tarp and retarp the load evey time. they could have paid us for that because the extra stop pay didnt cover it. the only thing i miss about arrow was my turck cuz after all the work that got done to it it was a great truck and finally ran good, it was just castrated and slow that it couldnt get out of it's own way let alone anybody elses. lol. jsut thought i would throw a joke in their but i am no comedian which is why i am a truck driver. well that is just one of many bad experiences that i had at arrow. and for not paying us for the miles we ran that is true because i had one run that started in north carolina, went to texas and dropped, picked up in oklahoma and dropped 3 stops in wisconsin, picked up in wisconsin for moses lake washington, dropped in washintgton and picked up in la grande,oregon for pella iowa,dropped in iowa and picked up in st louis for return trip to north carolina. well i calculated my miles and was short changed by arrow on my miles and my money for that whole entire trip. but its all water under the bridge now cuz not much can be done about it. also i had medical insurance through arrow and bcbs and i was paying almost 250 a month for my son and myself. well i had ot take my son to the doctors and got a bill and arrow didnt pay it and bcbs didnt pay it and i fought the enitre first four months of my deployment to get the bill paid. well here it is almost a year later and the bill still isnt paid. well about three weeks ago i was home on leave from iraq and i called arrow and talked ot merna rodriguez in the benifits department bout hte bill. i sent her the bill like she told me to and said she would personally handle it. well little did i know that arrow was gonna go bankrupt 2 weeks after i send the bill in.well i called the doctors office from iraq and finally got a dela worked out a dela to get it paid off so my son's mother doesnt keep getting harassed by them and i dont keep getting bills in the mail. so not all things that came out of arrow closing r bad. look at all the help us driver's are getting for other jobs and helping get home. i mean i may not be there in the states with yall and may not be stuck miles away from home(technically i am but in a different way) but i feel yalls pain cuz now i am unemployed too and will be looking for work when i get home. any ways i think i wrote enough. hope this sheds some light on the bull crap arrow use to pull with drivers.

Gannon Owens aka Opie Taylor or Junior from KWhopper Alley. Truck 6415 & 4144.(4144 was my first truck and 6415 was the truck i was in b4 i got called up to active duty)