(I tried to post this in r/truckers, but the mods are strict about mentioning anything to do with politics. But here’s proof that criticism of the administration will get you kicked off a base)
I’m telling this story because if you’re considering becoming an owner operator, this is a cautionary tale if you want to sign on with Mercer.
I’d been signed on with Mercer since early 2024.
I was making payments on my truck and was an inexperienced owner-op, and an older guy from the oil fields told me Mercer is a good starter company for owner operators. Because it’s kind of like being a company driver, where they give you a dispatcher, but you get to choose your loads and there’s no forced dispatch.
There’s some drawbacks. You can only use their load boards and agents. The agents low-ball you. The entire company takes lunch at the same time and there’s only an answering service on the weekends.
If your dispatcher sucks, you end up doing back-to-back resets and may find it hard to make any meaningful profit.
This Mercer agent, JTV, posted a load that said it was a good product, picking up in Houston, delivering to Tennessee. Not a great paying load, but it was just ok.
JTV calls me and tells me it’s actually delivering to a military base, and asks me about my ID situation.
I’m thinking I’m picking up a load of canned goods going to the base commissary.
…no.
I get to the pickup. I get on the dock. And they start loading me with an ingredient to make explosives, going to this military bomb manufacturing military base in Tennessee.
I call my dispatcher, because the load on the screen still says I’m picking up a food product.
I wasn’t sure what to do.
(I’m a conscientious objector. I’m a civilian. I did not want to be part of the supply chain that is making bombs that are killing children in Gaza.)
If I refused the load (because it was a legal load) Mercer would be upset, and cancel my contract.
So I reluctantly accepted the load, and drove it to Tennessee.
I get to the base in Tennessee where they do the most invasive search of my cab, where they’re going through my personal bags and property.
They do a background check on me where I have to give up all my personal information.
I start making comments about how I didn’t sign up for these searches. I tell them how JTV lied to me about this load and how they told me it was food, and that I thought I was delivering to a distribution center or a commissary. I said I didn’t think I was going to be delivering weapons of mass destruction so that “this administration” could “kill foreign brown children.”
This upsets everyone in the office, and someone asks me why I “hate America.”
I mention the Epstein files, I mention that Trp is an adjudicated rapist, and how the Epstein class literally eats children. “If anyone is a traitor to this country it’s that guy.”
…well, with that, they decide I’m a “security risk” and kick me off the base.
I have a very clean record. I’ve never been arrested. I’ve never been sued. I don’t own weapons. So, that was hilarious.
I call my dispatcher and tell them what happened.
I drive to the TA and sit there for 24 hours, and JTV calls me the next day telling me “another driver is going to take the load in for you” and tells me to meet this “other driver” at this parking lot near the base.
…turns out JTV couldn’t find a real relief driver.
They had a military guy from the base with a CDL that shows up in a car. He gets out of his car and I’m confused, because I’m expecting a swap (as you do.)
This military guy starts yelling at me, immediately.
“I heard what you said yesterday. You called us baby killers.” He then throws in “I’m sick of people like you. If you hate America, move to Iran.”
He then tells me that I have to let him into my T, and he’s going to drive it, and that he’s my only option and that I’m lucky he doesn’t just let me sit there with this loaded trailer full of chemicals.
He’s gone for three hours in my T.
He brings it back, tells me the signed BOL is on the dash…and now I have a check engine light.
I take my T to the Kenworth, where they do $3,600 in repairs.
After repairs are done, the next day I get a call from the Mercer Dry Van supervisor, who starts going off on me about how he’s a Veteran, and how I’m disrespectful, and they’re canceling my contract and that I’ve got to deadhead 300 miles to return the trailer to their yard…or else. He was totally hysterical, to the point where I’m like “sir…calm down.”
No one at Mercer defended me or had my back, at all.
They like to say they’re a “family,” but, yeah, you aren’t actually family. JTV lied to me. No one apologized. Mercer stood with JTV, and would not admit that what JTV did was a bait&switch.
I never would have agreed to a military load like that.
JTV was not upfront.
They couldn’t even find a relief driver.
JTV lied to me about how that load was going to be taken off of me.
This happened three weeks ago.
I’m traumatized, sitting at home, not making money.
Mercer disposed me like a bag of trash.
