| CRST Hey there. CRST and I did the "we pay for school" and job is yours dance two years ago. I went through training with a close friend in a little sub-contracted driving school in Fontana, CA. A couple weeks in to our training we noticed that some things were not so sound over at the orientation building as we heard reports from other students staying at the motel. I followed up these rumors with my recruiter over the phone and was assured that it was all talk. I completed my course and went over to orientation.
At orientation I was treated in the same manner as my days as a private in basic training. Our HR guy was actually ex-navy. He opened the orientation with, "I don't know what those recruiters told you, but..." along with a handful of near curse words and obscene remarks. My friend and I were green and the other drivers were long time hood hoppers. They chided us and ribbed us during the first 30 minutes. But it wasn't long before they were whispering, near tears, asking us for counsel and prayer.
I listened over the next 8 hours to a nightmare presentation along with a ridiculous road test in a truck/transmission combo we had never driven before.
I went directly back to my school, which was merely a mile away, and reported back to them my concerns and experience. They sounded shocked. They promised to get to the bottom of it. They made phone calls. They pleaded with us to go back, (and please don't talk to the other current driving students). We called our recruiter. He said about the same as our school.
The next day, we went were going to head over for our second day of orientation. On the way we shot a call out to our recruiter. He sweet talked for a while, but I listened carefully to every word. And in the course of our brief conversation I observed him lying out right yet again. I thanked him and said we'd be going with a different carrier.
We drove to the school of driving instead of orientation. Our school said that they had actually contacted the president of CRETE on his personal cell. He was speechless as she conveyed to him the list of our experiences the previous day. Apparently he said that caused an internal company/terminal investigation. We were later told that it produced at least an eight year scam going on with the terminal and who know else and for what profit we don't know.
We were confident that we didn't want to work for such a company. Our driving school HR person got nervous. We did the "class A" internet job search. Found about five companies with decent pay and records. We applied to Gordon Trucking. We went with them.
My driving school asked us to pay for the school as CRETE was no longer obligated to pay. Of course we would pay. That's when we started to experience the nightmare of their company. They refused to show us a receipt of our school tuition and debt and who owned it. Basics right? Well after making payments for a few months while driving for Gordon I discovered from my wife that they hadn't sent us any information on our payment schedule. No response from them.
At tax time they didn't send a standard reporting form so that I could report my tuition on my taxes. When we quit Gordon to move to Hawaii, I spent 2 months on the phone with my company and theirs, some times on three-way, attempting to get them to send my "driving certificate" so I get my tuition reimbursement. No way. They wouldn't do it. So I wrote them off. And as I expected they don't have anything to say as the debt has never gone to collections nor have they produced any tax info on it. It also leads me to speculate that they actually wrote it off internally and just took CRETE for some extra somewhere.
I love driving.
The Varmit |