And now, the rest of the story...
I don't see where they cut off his fuel card.

I don't see where it says he was so broke!

To me, it sounds like an unstable driver. He did this once before?
Did CRE make him do it? Dunno. It doesn't say does it?

I too searched the internet for what news stories were left from this incident, and couldn;t find much, though I did pull up some old threads on it on another site. What remains in the news arena is the initial reports, which were proven afterwards to be very inaccurate. They did cut off his fuel card, he was left in the summer heat without any money, and not having eaten anything for the last few days, and CRE's claim that he had abandoned the truck was clearly false. The folks at CRE did manage to spin the initial stories quite a bit and get them out making themselves look very good. The driver was eventually charged with littering, and that was the max crime that was committed here. I haven't checked, but OOIDA's site might have a better retelling of the tale and the aftermath than anyone else would. They had him on their radio program a while later. By the way, the guy was eventually hired by someone else as a company driver, and at last report was doing fine.

By the way, if you are truly an independent lease operator, how can a company "fire" you? Isn't firing solely an issue that applies to an employer/employee relationship. At most, if it was truly a lease, the most they could do is take steps to terminate the lease.

A buddy of mine worked for CRE as a lease operator for a short time. He was let go (long story), but he had been shut down at a scale house. The company actually came to the scale house with another driver to drive his truck away, leaving him to fend for himself over 1100 miles away from his home, didn't even take him to a terminal.
Granted, the guy I'm referencing has no business driving a truck (I'll be the first to admit that) that was still a pretty crummy way for them to handle the situation.

Even if that had not had happened he wasn't going to stick with the lease operator program anyhow. They had promised him so much money (as they all do) and after everything was said and done his checks were NO DIFFERENT than they would have been had he been a solo company driver.

I dont know much about CRE but i did 1 time for about 4-5 hours talk to 6 of their drivers... it was umm.. last november i was going across I-80 in wyoming they just opened the interstate so we started a Convoy the 7 of us headed out on the ice covered road long and slow....

they couldnt get over telling me how much they loved it there though it made me want to change over to CRE espically with the route they ran the guy incharge of the convoy said he had been with them for 5 years and that they were all dedicated and they ran from Salt Lake City to Wisconsion.. i would love a route like that its my favorite part of the country...

but checking into the company they pay was low i stayed where i am at now..

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There are Old Truckers and there are Bold Truckers, But there are no Old Bold Truckers.

No, but you go ahead and write it any way you see fit.

Use your brain. Why would he have been on the side of the Interstate out of fuel? Why would he have asked the wrecker driver for fuel? Had his card not been turned off, he would have purchased fuel, and would NOT have been on the side of the Interstate.

And you wouldn't. Why? Because you have no concept of just how badly a driver can be treated out here, and how little anyone cares about it when it happens. I have and do, because it has happened to me. The story is on the site. You try living in a truckstop for five days in Connecticut on $25.00; all that the company would advance me for a layover on a Thanksgiving weekend, despite the fact that they were holding $1400.00 in pay owed to me from my hard work. That company is out of business and long gone, but twenty years ago, they were as infamous as Swift is today. That company was called Direct Transit, Inc. of North Sioux City, South Dakota. The man that owned that company is in the Federal Pen, on a tax evasion conviction.

Me? I was as trusting as you seem to be, and would have laughed at the thought that people could be so cruel out here. I don't laugh anymore about things like that. It's still happening too, and it's still no laughing matter.

Companies routinely cut off driver's and lessor's fuel cards when there is some kind of dispute between the driver and his dispatcher, to effect a subtle or not so subtle form of punishment to bring the driver into compliance with their demands.

It could have resulted from something as simple as the driver not having been home for weeks, and the dispatcher deciding that he STILL wasn't going home, and the driver may have threatened to go home anyway. He might have asked for a cash advance, and was refused because he was in the hole to the company. There are many explanations as to why he may have been on the side of that interstate, but he obviously was in a state of desperation and he did not want to quit his job, or he WOULD have abandoned that truck.

And it's no small wonder. Working for some of these trucking companies out here will drive you straight in that direction. But why attempt to make you understand this? You're made of teflon. Better to demonize him, than to listen to a thousand people that may actually have some knowledge about what the deal is out here in this industry...right?

Look...by all means, go for it. You're EXACTLY the type of employee that they are seeking, and the kind of guy they target. You're trusting, ignorant to the facts about them, and you are willing to overlook everything that should tell you that they are a company to be avoided at all costs. Don't pay one minute more of mind to what you read here, or anywhere else. We're all negative nancy's and don't know a thing.

I will leave you with a few questions that you really need to seek the answers to, although they are more for those who will actually desire to do so. Your mind is made up, and you apparently are seeking anything and everything to justify the fact that you are not willing to take the time to research them to a satisfactory conclusion on your own.

Why would a company that is so great, need to hire so many totally unqualified and inexperienced people to staff their vehicles? It would seem to me that if it was so fine and dandy, that all of us multi-year experienced drivers would be banging on the door to be let in to drive one of those red racers.

Why do they scrounge through all the CDL scam schools for warm bodies?

Why do they constantly advertise for help?

Why is it that there are so many other companies out there that do not have to do these things?

Why do they operate four company training facilities, and recruit through numerous other schools, in order to attempt to constantly staff less than 3,000 trucks?

The answer is simple. They do these things because they are unable to attract and retain an experienced staff of people, because they offer horrible working conditions, meager pay, and treat people no better than the trucks that they put them in.

I wish you well....and let us know how it all turns out.

I am going to make a bumper sticker to put on my car warning drivers to stay away from lease purchase programs. With the economy and the price of diesel not to mention that the leases are slanted in the favor of the company it is a financial death sentence for anyone unless you have a stock pile of cash reserve somewhere and can afford those lean weeks. And trust me there will be plenty of those. I feel for you but it shows just how these recuiters work. They prey on the uninformed and bait them with tales of financial treasures. As most know here my husband was in a lease purchase agreement with JBH and it was a nightmare to which 6 months later we are still struggling to get out of the hole JBH put us in. In fact it may be a real possibility that we will have to file bankruptcy. I wish I could post a bill board on a highway somewhere or be able to afford a tv commerical warning everyone the horrors of LPP's. My advice is get out of it asap. We were told we would have to pay an early termination fee but after repeated phone calls from me to anyone and everyone at JBH including the VP of the LPP and threatening them with a law suit, we got out of the agreement. Of course they withheld about $1,600 of the escrow monies they deducted from us each week.

Some people entering this industry have no choice but to go with companies like cre. No other company will hire them. I beleive everyone deserves a chance. I just think it is outragous that companies will prey on desperate drivers. Unfortunatly though these companies will always have more than enough bodies to fill there seats. Why would any of them change?

Well, some folks just have to learn the hard way. And apparently this lugnut character is insistent upon learning a hard lesson.

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Z-Lady's devoted hubby.

Let me point out that Lugnut is in an unhappy position with few options due to circumstances he has mentioned on other threads. At this point, CRE is the only option he has. It's not a great one, certainly not one that anyone on here would recommend if he had other choices. So as a group, we wish him well and hope for the best, while fearing for the worst.

This isn't a group that routinely bashes unless a company gives good reason. There are plenty of people that jump on the bandwagon against JB and Swift, but for the most part on here CRE has managed to stay below the radar screen, since few people here have ever worked for them, and very few even consider doing so. Were I to rate the large companies that we are all familiar with, JB Hunt and Swift would be considerably higher in the pecking order than CRE, which would probably be the very bottom of the list.

Be that as it may. The point here is for Lugnut to walk into this with his eyes open and a certain amount of wariness. All these people saying very much the same thing should cause you to wonder and worry a bit. If you walk into this situation with blinders on, then you are going to get used and abused. Since you already have issues that limit you with other companies, you are goig to have to be very careful because you are walking into the lions den, into one of the companies that is most known for abusing the DAC system to wreak havoc on a drivers record. Your goal should be to get in there, get trained, get on the road, and pile up a year until you can make a parting from them without major damage to your record or reputation.

And frankly, that's a big item to have on your plate to do. They have a high accident rate, a questionable training and licensing program, and a repuation for cheerily tossing drivers out like used kleenex. You are going to have to be careful and spend each day walking on eggshells to make it.

Coming on here and suddenly turning into a company defender, cheering for CRE and making it sound like they stand for truth, justice, and the American way makes it sound to everyone like you have blinders on, and it's evident from your other posts that you know better than that.

This will probably be my last word on the subject, so good luck, but for your own sake, be smart and safe, and take care of number one while you are working there.

Okay, I'm back down on earth.

Littlebit and Burky have made excellent points, and I wish to offer my apology to Lugnut for the tone of my responses, because it wasn't fair.

He does have an issue, and I suspect that the stigma attached to the charge has more to do with why he encountered resistence, than anything else, but for sure, he does deserve a chance to enter the industry.

I do wish him the best of luck, and I truly hope he makes it through all of their training, and goes on to do what it is he wants to do.

And even if that does not happen Lugnut, please let us know, and we'll put our heads together and find you another way to achieve it. And I assure you, that there will be no "I told you so" coming from myself either.

My concern is, and always will be to help find a better way for newbies to bypass the bad players out here, because some of those companies have no shame whatsoever about the reputations they have, nor any intention in amending the way they operate their companies.