central refrigerated was a very little company that really no one knew about. swift got kicked out of the produce industry at the turn of the century. swift drivers froze some produce loads coming out of salinas,ca. a couple years later when fuel went up. dick simon started having money problems. that was '03. so they sold out to swift. swift wasn't allowed to buy the company acorrding to the feds. so the owner of swift bought dick simon thru his daughters company central refrigerated. so the school the terminals came with dick simon trucking. the colors of the trucks were also the dick simon colors. so central refrigerated is in the same family as swift. just a different name to get the produce loads out of the west coast. and this happened after swift lost the hostile take over case with either srt or england. most of you the read this. won't know anything about the subject. you haven't been in trucking that long to know this.

Needbetterjob, your close.

Jerry Moyes owns Central Refrigerated. He is large share holder of Swift. Swift is a public company Central is private. Central has nothing to do with Swift. I worked for Dick Simon when we transferred over to Central. There were a lot of other problems with Simon but its hard to know what's rumor and what's truth. If you google it though you will find out an awful lot.

He also owns Central Freight. His daughter runs Central Freight and her husband runs Central Reefer. At least that was how it was when I worked for Central Reefer back in 06. I had no complaints, would go back if they paid better.

just talked to the recruiter at central...seemed very straight forward...no obvious red flags were raised to me. if any recent attended t. their school in SLC...please email or post your thoughts on thier overall training process. any feedback would greatly be welcomed.

For central training look up Follow me through Central the initial posting is for the fontana school, but I went through the SLC school back in July and posted a day by day account. In brief it was fast paced, but if you have any common since you will be fine. Also they only teach you the min to get your cdl.


TruckermanD: I take 4 days of hometime every 3-6weeks. I drive a 2009 Volvo, but other drivers have prostars, w-9's, and t-2000's The newer trucks are petes (386 i think) and freightliner cascadias. Most of the older trucks are 10 speeds, but the new trucks they just got all have 13 speeds in them. I overheard the guy who assigns trucks say that they are giving all the new trucks to teams, so start off teaming and you should get a nice truck.

So far I have only had to run NYC once, I have had a few times in NJ but that was not bad, I mostly run the Mid-west (IA, IL, WI, OH)

I believe if you live within 100mi of a terminal they make you park there and drive your personal car to and from hometime, I live in WA about 800mi from a terminal and always drive the truck home, I have never bobtailed, usaly empty, but I have a load right now and am on ht for Christmas.

Again for training check out 'Follow me through Central" or something like that or just search my posts