VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — A former truck driver for Triton Logistics says the Illinois company routinely overworks its drivers.
Rick Jeffcoat of Kempsville reached out to 10 On your Side following our report Thursday on the latest lawsuit against Triton, stemming from a fatal crash nearly two years ago involving one of its drivers.
“The workload was horrendous,” Jeffcoat said in Friday morning interview.
Jeffcoat, 68, said he has been a truck driver for 50 years, and started driving for Triton in January, but stopped in March after an ankle injury on the job. He said Triton was running its drivers too hard and too long.
“Federal Motor Carrier regulations state that you can’t work over 70 hours a week,” Jeffcoat said. “My second week I worked around 88, 89 hours, or just over 90 hours.” He said he worked those long hours beyond the legal limit about 85% of the time he was there.
Once he began the grueling schedule, Jeffcoat said he wasn’t surprised about the deadly crash of a Triton truck rear-ending a party bus in December 2022, killing three people and injuring several others.
An NTSB investigation found the driver that night on I-64 was sleep-deprived and lied to state police about having a relief driver. Further, the driver revealed a scheme that Triton used to falsify driver logs to make it look like their drivers had more rest.
Jeffcoat was a local driver for Triton, with runs between here and Richmond. But he said the abuse was even worse for truckers making longer hauls — they were known as “road drivers.”
“All of them would tell me how they would have to exceed their logs,” Jeffcoat said, “and that the company did trick them with the rolling back of their hours available. Every road driver I ever talked to was beat to death.”
Triton’s only penalty so far for the crash that killed three people is a $36,000 fine. The company is being sued on two fronts — first, by several of the victims in the party bus, and more recently by Towanda Futrell, the Norfolk-based owner of the party bus company.
10 On Your Side left a message this afternoon at Triton for owner Andrew Voveris and he did not immediately respond.