Freightliner Trucks: Poor quality and service?

[msawicki]

My husband and I drive a 2004 Freightliner M2 as expediters. We have only been doing this since Nov. 2003 but have spent a significant amount of time out of service. There are two main reasons for this inordinate amount of downtime: a. Poor quality of Freightliners and b. Poor service and lack of available parts. It seems that they always have to order parts and then when they come in they are the wrong parts (in the right box with the right part number, but wrong part inside). This has happened time and again. Our owner just lost a couple who has been down for almost a month because Freightliner can't get any parts. We have been down a total of 9 days already in March for the same reason. We don't make any money when we aren't rolling. We are going broke. I would really like to hear from others who are experiencing the same thing. There is power in numbers and maybe if we can unite and confront the powers that be at Freightliner things may change. I really think that when a repair can't be completed in a reasonable amount of time, then Freightliner should reimburse the owner for lost revenue on the truck. That is what these plants do to the expedited carriers when their freight is late and a line gets shut down. What makes their production time any more valuable than ours? Since I have been out on the road and seen what truckers put up with, I have been outraged. Don't truckers know that they have rights too? I am so sick of hearing truckers whine and complain about everything, but they never do anything about it. Remember, there is power in numbers. One trucker may not make a difference, but together we can bring about change. I am trying to get the name and address of the head honcho at Freightliner and if I get enough interest I will publish that information and perhaps we can inundate him/her with letters and documentation of the poor quality and service of their trucks. If the carriers would get involved as well, it would have even more impact. I know that they don't like having a bunch of trucks sitting around at Freightliner dealers losing money every day.

 

[dieseldiva]

Hi and welcome to EO. We don't have a Freightliner but are currently involved in negotiations to correct the problems that we're having with our truck. Take a look at the archives here on the forum and it might give you some insight as to what goes on in these situations. Your thought pattern about drivers sticking together is right on the money.


Of all the things I've lost in my life, I think I miss my mind the most!!

 

[tazman]

Hi,

I'll give you a little insight (I sell commercial vehicles so you know where (I'm coming from)

1st thing...Have your "ducks in order" I mean be sure ou have dates and problems and who you talked to on a list befor you sit down..

2nd thing - get an estimate as to how much money you may have lost in downtime ( a good estimate)

3rd thing - Call your dealer Service Manager and ask for the name of the District or Regional Service Manager...get that name and number...

4th thing - Call your dealer ask to meet with the "dealer principal" (i.e. owner or General Manager)...the District Service Manager and the Dealership manager.....Give them some time to get this done...but no more than 10 days....

5th thing - Write a letter directly to the President of your company
(in this case Freightliner)...informtin him that you are scheuling a meeting to resolve these issues with the above people and NAME them in the letter....

6th thing - When you get the meeting notate all that was agreed to and set dates for things to be accomplished......
Copy the president and all the parties.....

Well...anyway this is a good start....
I have found that going in prepared...will get you a lot farther...
you don;t need a huge number of people...just get to the right ones 1st......

My 4.5 cents worth ( it's keeps getting bigger )

Frank in Pa.








"The Beast in the East"

 

[teacel]

It's not just Freightliner, or may not be Freightliner at all. Not likely!!! It may be the place working on the truck and the warehouse they are ordering from. There are good service shops and bad ones alike.

Before you form the wrong opinion of what I am saying in this thread, I want to let you know I am on your side. I agree with you 100% on your line of thinking. I would love to do something about the treatment we or I get on the road, but as wonderful as our system is it doesn’t allow it. Truckers carry a bad name. You, me and the rest of the drivers that would like to change the way we get treated don't have enough money. Until the whole nation of truckers turns his or her key to off things will remain the same, or maybe even get worse.

You stated you started in November. How long before or how much investigating did you do before you bought your truck? Freightliner got the name Freightshaker for a reason. The M2 is a business class truck and very new at that. There isn’t any proof that the M2 is a good expediter truck. If you would have invested any time researching the type of truck to buy I don’t think you would have bought the M2. The Chevy dolly van with a box making it a C unit would have been a better choice. OH!!! I see you don’t even own the truck!!! Right! You say in your post “your owner” That now puts a whole new light on things. Do you know if the owner did any investigating, or maybe has a deal worked out with Freightliner to be a test owner for them.

Here you are getting all upset about other truckers and how they whine and cry, but did you ever ask one of the whiners “if they could give up trucking would they?" Trucking isn’t a job for the so called normal people. Trucking is a lifestyle, and after a while gets in your blood.

You said numbers are stronger and wanted to here from others. As it is and has been for ever, If trucker A said the sky was blue, trucker B would say it was red. That is a fact!!! So in other words, don't waste your time. OR!!! The biggest truck show in this country is going on right now, and will be until Saturday. There will be a predicted 70K drivers and owners , Carriers, OOIDA, and so on. That would be the best place to start asking about sending letters to the head honcho. He may even be at the show. Bombarding the head honcho with letters will only give job security to the trash hauler, at least until the letters stop. He (head guy) may likely tell you the M2 is a business class truck and isn’t designed for open road, long haul work. Although I wish there was a thing or two we could do or say to change things or to even be a part of in the changing of, My best advice to you is to find another owner that has a truck that will keep you rolling. I say this to you with all due respect.

 

[msawicki]

I appreciate the comments I have rec'd so far, very helpful. Our owner has many different types of expediter trucks including tractor/trailers and she is in the process of switching us to a different truck which has performed much better than the M2. My husband has been in trucking as a semi driver for 24 years so he is familiar with the trucking industry. I am the rookie who is getting the eye-opening experience.

My husband is convinced that using a class 8 truck and modifying it for expediting is really the best way to go and it seems we are running into lots of other people in this field who are coming to the same conclusion.

Well, I will follow the suggestions we have rec'd and our owner is looking into seeing what she can do to bring this to the attention of Freightliner, so we will keep our fingers crossed and hope the situation improves.

 

[Numero_uno]

I can tell you right up front from my own experience in corporate America. I am a retired director from one of the largest Aerospace Corp. in the world. Tazman is 100% correct in his laid out scenerio for corrective action. I would like to re-emphasize the importants of the meetings he instructed you to not request but to DEMAND. And it is extremely important that at the meeting someone must take a complete comprehensive set of minutes with action items assigned by name and organization to perform the agreed to actions with closure dates also assigned. This is very important, it will be a great help if all else fails and you have to get into litigation.

Good luck, and don't give up!

 

[Numero_uno]

You need to tell your owner to stick to her guns and don't give up! There is no reason she has to spend her hard earned money for inferior equipment or service. Don't listen to this "your whinney" BS. These rigs aren't given away free! They cost a lot of money, and we as consumers deserve to get what we pay for, and thats it! If you did not provide qualty service to your carriers you would be run out of business, no questions asked!

Your talking serious money for that equipment, and if is faulty, you should be getting serious attention. If not from your dealer, then from the manufacturer.

Don't take no for answer. There's always litigation!!!!

 

[redytrk]

WELCOME MSAWICKI...

You may want to read the thread on my M2.

You will find it under Truck Talk With heading"M2 Problems"We have experienced many of the same frustrations your owner has.Parts must filter through Detroit Diesel locations,causing mixups and delays.This was supposed to be corrected the first of 2004.But to date it still has not.

As for our truck...It still has not been fixed.Its going on 4 months now.We have contacted everyone at corporate FL,and at Detroit diesel.They no longer return my calls.We even threw the keys and the payment book on the desk of the salesman.He is very sympathic but has the same problem getting anything done.They wont even return his calls.The last he and the service manager heard the engineers in Germany were working on the problem.

To make matters worse,My whole family have had only INTERNATIONALS,since time began.I myself have had 2"Binders" before.

 

[geo]

all very good points and well taken also join ooida and call gary green and tell him about what's going on they had a problem
a while back with volo and they got it taken care of

 

[davekc]

From my own experiences, freightliner has built some poor trucks. The ones I have had in the past were not of that great of quality. With the exception of Dothan Frieghtliner, the numerous dealers we encountered were a joke. Even the smallest repair would take a week or longer. And numerous times of using the wrong parts ect.
Just talked to a tri-state driver who had a new international and with under 100,000 miles it has been in the shop 40 times and still needs repairs. He drove for a owner and they were trying to get AB to take it back but they are refusing. International use to build pretty durable trucks but maybe that is changing? We have a KW and so far have had no problems and there service so far seems excellent. The T300 is going to have a new face for 2005. Not sure whether they will have problems or not. When KW and Pete have introduced models in the past, they were generally trouble free. Time will tell. If you just keep getting the run around hire a lawyer or Tony's great idea of calling ooida.

 

[RichM]

I think Freightliner started to hit the skids a couple of years ago when they fired the Head American President and brought in a German from Mercedes Benz to run the show. At one time I worked for the German Company ,Siemens and some of the German Nationals were extemely difficult to get along with,one guy even said all Americans must learn to speak German if they wanted to get ahead. It could be that the new man has caused such animosity that the rank and file don!t care any more. I live in the Jacksonville Fl area and my local Freightliner dealer is so-so. I have had good service from Stoops in Indy,horrible service from Ft Worth F/Liner in Texas,you just never know.If I was specing a new class 7 truck these day I would definitely go KW or Pete. By the way ,GEO I saw you in the Norfolk area on I 64 East,March 23rd,can!t miss that Big Star.

 

[Weave]

From having owned two, I can say without a doubt Freightliners are not the best quality truck out there. I wish I could afford to own a KW or Pete, but that has not been the case. On the other end of the string, I don't think Freightliners are the worst either by a long shot. Very average in my opinion. I competely avoid using Freightliner dealerships for service unless in an emergency, and only two have come up on the road. One was I needed a starter on my FL70, and got pretty good service from Stoops in Indy for that. In January the steering gearbox blew apart on my Columbia for some mysterious reason, and I was at the mercy of FYDA in Cincinnati, who were a real pain. If I didn't go down in the shop and bird-dog the mechanic on an hourly basis, I think the truck would still be there now. It took 2 days and over $1300 to get the truck back on the road, where my local mechanic could have done the job in half the time for half the price. I use a good local guy to do any repairs I can't manage on my own, and he can fix any truck and any engine. These are the type of people you want to make friends with after the warranty is gone, as they will be more genuinely interestd in fixing your truck right than a dealership will be. Sad to say you simply can't rely on the manufacturers anymore the way you could in the past- they just don't care.
-Weave-

 

[RichM]

I think a good local shop that does REPAIRS only is the way to go.These are the places that keep the local dumps,local pu/del trucks ,school buses running etc.. If they did lousy work the word would get around real fast and they would be out of business.Last June I had a water pump go out near Canton Ohio,the shipper sent me to a place about a mile away,they replaced it in half the time and half the expense that a F/Liner dealer would have charged.
However, the Service Manager of my local F/Liner dealer once said to me"The salesman will sell you the first truck,I will sell you the next one", true words,bad service can kill sales from a dealer.

 

[mcbride]

I don’t know if anyone else notices this about Freightliner but they NEVER have the parts you may need in stock! I am not talking about weird/odd-ball parts either! Just as an example, we have a Detroit in our truck and needed a turbo hose....we went through 7 eastern states, called ALL the Freightliner’s along our way and NONE of them had a hose. We were under the impression that the Detroit was fairly common...guess not. We finally had to order it and naturally pay out the nose for shipping charges.

We also just recently needed two timing sensors while in Nashville, Tn. Freightliner told us it would be 4 days before they could even look at it AND we knew what the problem was! (Diagnostic reading on dash told us!) We just needed the sensors. Naturally, they didn’t have them either...once again had to order them.

While I am venting, I might as well address the issue of the published Freightliner dealership’s hours of service advertised in the book they give you when you purchase a truck. How many times have you seen that the dealership is supposed to be open 24/7 and on weekends only to get there or call and find this not to be true? I called Freightliner about this and they said I needed an updated dealership listing...got 2004 edition....still advertises dealerships open when they aren’t.





mcbride-
--What goes around comes around--

 

[redytrk]

Funny you should mention 24/7 service advertised in the dealer book.Just this day I had my check engine light come on.At the same time,the exhaust brake stopped working.The Diagnostic codes showed a problem with the ECU.
So I went by the closest dealer showing 24/7.Being sat I thought this would be a good move. They were open allright but when I told the only one of two I found in service,I was told they couldnt do any thing "even if I wanted to".

IT WAS THE PART ABOUT "EVEN IF I WANTED TO" THAT REALLY GOT TO ME.

I went back in and asked just what he meant by that remark.He turned red,and said it was a poor choice of words.In any event I will never set foot in FL Rockford Il.again.

 

[geo]

join ooida and tell gary green what's going on they will go after them

 

[Weave]

I have experienced just about all of the above hassles myself. I have found if problems are engine related, the specialty shops for CAT, Detroit and Cummins are a better bet than a Freightliner dealer. Freightliner's old motto used to be "The Company That Does Things Right."
I think they should change it to "The Company That Can't Do Things Right, Even If We Wanted To." Sorry to say Daimler has made a total mess out of Freightliner as far as the dealerships go. My local dealer in Buffalo, Fleet Maintenance, hasn't been too bad as far as parts inventory. But that is likely to change as I was informed Freightliner no longer wants the small, single independent dealerships. They want them all to be big multi-dealerships like FYDA and Stoops. As far as the new trucks go, I think their warranties aren't worth the piece of paper they are printed on if all customers have to put up with is a hassle and long waits at these dealerships.
-Weave-

 

[davekc]

RichM
Since you live in Jacksonville I have had excellent service from KW on commonwealth. If you need generator or a/c work, truckgen down the street is excellent. Klause and Dano do a great job and I have never had to wait, or had a job that had to be returned. Reasonable rates, and actually know what the hell they are doing.