MARION, Ill. (WSIL) — Winston Johnson’s route from Arkansas to Michigan came to a halt when an Illinois State Police trooper stopped his semi-truck at a weigh station on northbound Interstate 57 south of Marion.
It was the first time driving through southern Illinois for Johnson, working in his third week with Evergreen Freight. Johnson figured the stop would be a routine hiccup on his journey to owning a truck someday.
Instead, an unscheduled two-day stop in the region, through no fault of his own, may have crushed his dream entirely.
“I’m kidnapped here. I’m held hostage until something happens with the truck,” Johnson said. “They’re breaching my contract.”
A contract, Johnson says, that Evergreen hasn’t given him a copy of after working there for almost a month. It’s a contract that would’ve given Johnson the chance to lease his truck and later own it.
On Saturday, an ISP trooper stopped Johnson as he passed through the weigh station, with the scales checking out. However the truck’s registration plate, provided by Evergreen, was fake.
The trooper told Johnson it was the second time he had stopped the truck due to a phony registration.
“He proceeds to say ‘no I stopped it with the last guy in it with a fake registration.’ He said ‘well let me see your registration.’ And I showed it to him and in two seconds he proceeded to tell me the registration was fake,” Johnson said.
Apparently Johnson is not the only driver with a fake registration plate. Johnson says a fellow driver, currently in Pennsylvania, sent him a picture of his truck’s registration plate. The trooper told him that was fake too.
“He said ‘now you have to get the registration out the window because your truck is out of service and you can’t move,” Johnson recounted the trooper saying.
Johnson continued recounting what the trooper told him, saying ‘and just to let you know this company that you work for has been doing some shady stuff since I’ve been seeing them come through here.’
Over the weekend, Johnson tried calling several people including a fleet manager and dispatcher. The manager was unable to be reached. A dispatcher took down his information and said he would get it to the company.
Johnson, a commercial truck driver for the last 10 years including the last three as a semi-truck driver, says Evergreen owes him about $9,000 for work done the past three weeks.
On Friday, Johnson received a pay stub from Evergreen showing the gross pay, deductions and net pay. The woman Johnson spoke to assured him that his money would be in within an hour of the phone call.
Johnson, still waiting to get paid as of Sunday, found himself stuck in southern Illinois without any chance of leaving his truck and its load. With time on his hands, Johnson began researching and asking questions to brokers working with Evergreen.
The research leads Johnson to believe that he’s being shorted on his pay, on top of not being paid.
“The load said I was going to get paid $1,800,” Johnson said. “I called the broker [and asked] ‘can you tell me how much it was worth?’ And he told me $2,350.”
Johnson says he told other brokers about his situation and is warning them about doing business with Evergreen.
“So you took money off the top of the load and then you’re still going to charge me 12% and all of the actual fees for the truck and the insurance and whatnot,” Johnson said.
The Illinois Secretary of State’s office is now coming to the weigh station Monday to provide Johnson with legitimate registration plates for the truck.
But there’s a catch: Evergreen has to purchase the plate on Monday or else the truck and its contents will be towed along with Johnson’s ambitions.
“This is like a dream for me to own my own truck and they just shattered that,” Johnson said.
Evergreen Freight has a pending insurance cancellation case according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
News 3 reached out to Evergreen multiple times for comment but haven’t heard back.
Johnson’s situation comes as the U.S. deals with a shortage of 60,000 drivers according to the American Trucking Associations.
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