The largest con of working at FitzMark was a lack of consistent opportunity to make anything above the base salary. To make anything above the base salary you had to reach $29,500 a month in profit and then you got 10% of the profit from your loads. This is horrible compared to other 3pl's and is only compounded by the favoritism shown my management in the assignment of freight. The higher margin lanes are horded by a small group management likes while everyone else is left with freight where you are just fighting to break even. This is not only with established lanes but also new lanes being diverted to certain reps when they are seen as having the opportunity to make decent money. In addition, if people leave the company instead of giving their higher margin lanes to reps who have shown promise or perseverance as a sort of bonus they are just added to the list of freight for those who are favored by management.
Regardless if you make or lose money on a load you still have to track and trace each shipment. This leads into the extreme lack of work life balance you can expect at FitzMark. A normal day you will have people calling you before you even wake up, the whole time you are trying to eat lunch, and routinely you will have to work well into the night from home after leaving the office. In addition, you are on call 24/7/365 so getting calls you are required to deal in the middle of the night, on weekends, and holidays is not uncommon. This would be one thing if commission was reasonable but when it is not it becomes infuriating. So if you like working like a dog all day and night for no reward FitzMark is a perfect fit.
The next issue was the overall lack of structure and transparency that was put forth by management. During my time with FitzMark the carrier sales department organizational and commission structure where constantly changing with minimal legitimate explanation. I saw the amount required to hit commission raised almost 25% in under a year with no addition to base salary (even though it was promised to come shortly after the commission increase took effect). It was also not uncommon to play musical chairs on a semi monthly basis where the teams get all shuffled around and you are suddenly working on completely different things with different people. While I realize change is required in business if you need to change the same exact things that often maybe there is a larger issue.
At FitzMark you may also be fired with no rhyme or reason and with no indication your performance was under review in the first place. I have never been in a place where so many people where fired with no negative performance reviews or write ups. The person who usually does these mass firings even seems to rather enjoy them. If you are firing employees without a negative performance review and no attempt to retrain or help the employee it is a direct reflection of the disinterest of management in their employees. It simply comes down to how can they extract the most value from each person and give them the least in return. FitzMark embodies a ‘churn em and burn em’ mentality within management to a degree I have not seen before.
A very large issue specific to carrier sales roles within FitzMark is the time frame for carrier payments. It is not uncommon when talking on the phone with carriers how they will tell you they no longer work with FitzMark because it took over 60 days to get paid (industry average is 30 or less with most good brokerages aiming to get carriers paid in under 20), they were short paid on a load, or they were denied detention pay because they were lied to about having an appointment. This is just another way the management seeks to suck out every dollar without regard for those on the floor. It is also not uncommon for management to instruct carrier reps to lie to carriers about aspects of the load to get it covered and only tell the carrier after they have picked it up. Practices like this are what give legitimate brokerages a bad name.
I could go on and on about different reasons and examples of why you should avoid FitzMark like the plague but when it comes down to it just take my word and save yourself the headaches. There are plenty of others transportation and logistics firms around Indy to work at where you can learn much more and create a better chance at advancement for yourself.
