Experiencing the Power of Red...avoid like the plague!!! Part 1

By the time I get done writing this…I may break the internet.

My time at Roehl has been, hands down, one of the worst experiences of my life, and I would honestly not wish half of the crap I've had to deal with on my worst enemy. There's really no other way to say it. When I got into this career, I did not expect it to be a cake walk by any means. I expected the worst, and unfortunately Roehl exceeded those expectations. I am only writing this in hopes that ANYONE who is thinking about entering the trucking industry, to pass this one up, because there are plenty of other carriers out there that won't jack you around nearly half as bad as what Roehl has for me. I am going to fill you in on a quick background of myself, and basically what to expect IF you were to make the foolish decision to go with this company. I will also tell you what I have had to go through. Please take this as gospel, I'm not making ANY of this up, literally ALL of this happened.

I drove straight truck around the twin cities for over 6 years, and have been hauling cars with my dad since I was about 5. So I have been around trucks and trucking for a long time, so I am no stranger to how things are. I graduated CDL school in January '15, and was immediately on the lookout for truck jobs. I first got hired at Dart, but that didn't pan out, and I'll make a separate post about that later, but once that debacle was over, I landed at Roehl in February '15. I want to take a moment here to say that I expected speed bumps along the way. You and I both know that not everything goes as planned when it comes to trucking. I am in no way complaining about that kind of thing. I'm merely mentioning the things that happened to me so you can see for yourself how poorly managed this company is.

When you call into the recruiter line, they speak the world about the job, the schedule, time out, time home, and make it sound like it's paradise, and not really all that hard. Obviously, I've learned that ALL recruiters are like this, and will blow smoke up your butt to get you to go with them, no matter what. I signed the documents, and got all lined up for training. I also had to sign the document stating that I would drive for them for a minimum of 75,000 "paid solo miles". Much more on this later…

They rented me a car to drive from the Twin Cities to Marshfield WI, where their HQ is. Long story short, I stayed at the Woodfield Inn in Marshfield for a week while they shuttled us from there to their Marshfield terminal. They provide a breakfast, (which is literally cereal…no continental breakfasts here) lunch and dinner. The owner of Roehl, owns the Marshfield Inn, or Marshfield Hotel, can't remember which one it is, and it doesn't matter, he owns a hotel on top of owning a huge trucking company and also owns the restaurant inside the Marshfield Hotel, so the meals are no big deal for him to cover….because this is where the lunch comes from. Dinner is provided for at the Woodfield Inn by Roehl giving you a $8.50 voucher they print up at the end of every day. You can order something more expensive, but you just pay the difference between the $8.50. Food at the hotel isn't too bad. Isn't the best, but I've had worse.

During training, it's essentially a recap of what you already know. The ONLY things that they covered that wasn't covered in my training school was the 'truck stop pull-through' and the way to do their paperwork. Literally… that's it!! No new techniques learned, no ins and outs that I didn't already learn at my CDL school. They show you videos about what basically not to do, go over trip planning, weight restrictions, hours of service, and their stupid 'Safe 7'. So again, literally everything I already knew from CDL school, but with a few added things they don't teach you and how to do their paperwork. After 5 days of classroom stuff, they FINALLY get you into a truck by day 6. This is all known as Phase 1 of training BTW. Day 6 you get to ride around with the trainer, and then you take turns after that by driving around Marshfield. Taking some turns and essentially re-learning the basics of the truck, which is good if you haven't been behind the wheel of a truck for a while, but they of course teach to double-clutch and do everything as they say "the Roehl way". You learn the pre-trip again, (not like I got enough practice with that when trying to pass the DMV test). Then they tell you that you will be 'testing out' on day 6, and if you pass that, then you will be officially hired. So they have you go on basically the same route that you and the rest of your classmates in the truck just got done going on the day before. Afterwards, they say you're hired and then try to figure out where to go and what to do. What really happens here is they see if you pass on the first time out with them. They say that day 6 is the grading day, but what they don't tell you is that they're actually grading you and determining if you're a good fit from day one. From the first day that you walk into that classroom, they're judging you. Trying to see who you are, what you're like, if you're going to cause any problems, anything like that. They listen to EVERYTHING you say and then use it against you. Great example of this was another member on here who got fired like the next day after he had arrived at the hotel, he had a beer the night before or something like that, don't remember what happened, but they have their spies out in full effect around Marshfield for sure. I originally went to college for law enforcement, and had mentioned this within the classroom and at the hotel around the staff, then once I graduated from Phase 2 training, my Phase 3 fleet manager was a retired Sheriff. Hmm…what are the chances that I would be paired up with someone that did that for a job before he was a fleet manager at Roehl? Especially when there are other fleet managers that did the route I chose and could've had anyone, but I got him. Honestly…what are the chances of that? That's why I think there's something going on behind the scenes that we don't know about. Another thing to realize here is that Roehl gives you a tiny slip of paper that is a printed sheet, in sections meant to be meal vouchers for the drivers at the hotel. So all it takes for a hotel to give you $8.50 worth of food is by having a little slip of paper? I'm sure they have a written agreement to house all of their drivers there, and that's fine, but just remember that may not be the only thing they're asking the hotel to do.

After passing Phase 1, I was hired and moved on to Phase 2, and myself and another buddy I made in class had to drive down to their Gary terminal to start with our new trainers. So I drove us down there in a rental car and stayed at the Comfort Inn in Gary IN. Long story short again, met up with my trainer, super cool nice guy, spent 8 days learning the ropes of how to make it out on the road. After day 2, he said I was ready to go and shouldn't have to be with him anymore, and to get out there and make some money. Unfortunately, my Phase 2 fleet manager said that I had to be there for at least 8 days because that was the minimum that they required. My Phase 2 fleet manager was pretty bad. Not nearly as bad as my first Phase 3 manager but still pretty bad. Proof of this is when she told me that as long I'm within what she called a "reasonable distance" from my destination, I could continue to drive if I was out of hours…which BTW is illegal and last time I heard in WI, is about a $3,000 ticket, so just keep that in mind if anyone ever tells you that you can continue to drive if you're out of time.

After passing Phase 2 within 8 days, I was on my own and loving it at first. My first truck they gave me was a 2013 Freightliner Cascadia 10 speed with 245k on the clock. Apparently they send these trucks out to be 'detailed' after they've been used but after being a detailer for over 12 years, I can honestly say I don’t know what blind idiot cleaned that truck but they need to have their ### beat. I had to clean it with the limited amount of chemicals I had and it took me hours to make it somewhat decent for me to accept it. The windows weren't even wiped for Pete's sake! Fingerprints and smudges all over the place. Looked like someone sneezed on every window. Just nasty. Anyway, everything was ok with the truck for the most part except for the biggest problem…it had a camera in it. Now, the way it works in Roehl world here, is if a driver misbehaves, i.e. speeding, accidents, whatever…he gets a camera put in the truck. So the previous driver that had the truck before me was obviously a bad dude so I had to deal with his mistake.

From day 1 with that camera, they used it against me. They essentially cut my legs out from under me before I ever got a chance to stand up and prove myself to them. It all started with my Phase 2 manager scolding me for not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign. Rolling through a stop sign at speed, and coming so close to a full stop (within 1 mph) are two completely different things. One has the potential of causing a fatal accident, and the other does not. This is one thing they don't understand because it's not the 'Roehl way'. I'll touch a lot more on the this later.

Now onto Phase 3…

Phase 3 is when you're on your own with your permanent fleet manager, and I'll start out by saying that my fleet manager here was, for lack of a better word…an incompetent moron, that couldn't run a fleet if his life depended on it. He was the ex-Sheriff I mentioned before, and starting out, he was nice and left me alone for the most part, but then it started to hit the fan if you know what I mean. Most of the time, it had to do with whatever the camera captured.

I might as well choose now to tell you about that infernal camera. So with Roehl they have 2 different camera systems that they employ, SmartDrive and Drive Cam I believe, but I had the SmartDrive system in my Cascadia. It is one of the most touchiest camera systems out there. If you sneeze hard enough in the truck, it's going to record what it thinks is a 'roll-over event', I know because it happened to me. The system is one camera facing out (which I totally support) and one facing the driver (which I don't support). The system has 4 lights on it. A green X which means it's on, a blue Wi-Fi light which means its recording and has an established connection, a green check mark which means it's uploading a file to SmartDrive's servers and finally a yellow exclamation mark which means an event has happened and will then be uploading the file to SmartDrive. Now the way the system works here is that if an event happens, (following too close, hard brake, speeding, acceleration event, roll-over event, etc), SmartDrive looks at the footage, and if they deem it unsafe, then they send the video over to Roehl's safety department, they review it, and then finally send it off to your fleet manager to see if it's something that they need to "coach" you about. Which you may be thinking, "oh well, that's good that they just don't fire you for something petty", but trust me, the amount of crap I've had to put up with when it comes to that camera, I would've preferred being fired and relieved of the hell that comes with it. Anyway, back to the camera…did you notice how many people get to see that footage before it ever gets to your fleet manager? I'll bet you there's somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-6 people who get to see you, hear you, and essentially spy on you when you're not even expecting it. You could be picking your nose, walking around naked at night, having a private conversation with your wife, playing/adjusting yourself, whatever…and if something happens in that time where the system thinks you did something unsafe, it's captured forever and now whatever was happening, they get to see you when you might not have wanted anyone to see you do whatever you did. It's a colossal invasion of privacy. A perfect example of this was me talking to my wife on my headset once. My moron fleet manager kept harping on me that it was against Roehl's policy to be talking on the cell phone at any point while the vehicle was moving. They even went over this during training and went over Roehl's policy about how it IS legal and OK to do, as long as you're on a headset, and not actually holding the phone, (basically the FMCSA's actual policy, which is also located on page 13, Chapter 1 of the DRG - Driver Reference Guide that Roehl gives you when you're hired), and during this event, they were able to hear my private conversation I was having with my wife on the headset. He called me up and said, "by the way, I just got an event from you about talking on the headset", I asked, what I did wrong, and he said that I was talking on the headset. I asked again, what did I do wrong? He replied that I was on the headset. I said, NO, what did I do that made the camera go off?! He had to put me on hold (and think of some BS story), and then come back and tell me that it was an 'acceleration event'. Which is bull, because I was currently going over a bridge and wasn't doing a wheelie with the truck. Which proves that when they tell you it only records when an event happens is BS. What, did the truck accelerate too fast?? No, I was maintaining my cruising speed at 63 mph, and couldn't have done anything wrong. Eventually I got tired of constantly hearing about these camera events, so I turned the camera away. Soon before you know it, he's there harping on me about that. It wasn't until my 2nd or 3rd meeting with my FM about the camera until I was finally able to get it out of them that it does record all the time, and if it doesn't pick up any event, it just records over the footage it just kept. Funny part is, I know a fellow Roehl driver who has walked past the room with a multitude of TV's that are showing in real-time what any driver is doing at any time. They do have the power to watch you whenever they please. They just lie to you, expecting you're going to take whatever they say as truth, and continue to bend over and take it. BTW, NONE of these cameras come with any contracts to sign, indicating their intentions, or what they do with the footage…because if they did, all the drivers who have them would either quit, or demand they get taken out. I understand that there can be a need to have those cameras, but in my opinion, it should be at the drivers discretion. Not SmartDrive and fleet managers, and safety managers that see it before you. If something were to happen, then let the driver deal with it first, and IF it needs attention, then send the clip over to whoever needs it.

I understand that it's their truck and they get to say what happens to it, and with it, and all that jazz, I get it. I'm not a moron. However, I am known as a "professional driver" and with that comes a certain level of professionalism that is expected. Now I can see if a driver is misbehaving, and basically not being "professional" in his behavior, and putting people's lives at stake, then having a camera should be used to attempt to curb the behavior before it gets worse/fatal. Sometimes when these cameras are employed, they change a drivers behavior, but I do also believe that the pendulum swings both ways and if a driver knows he's being watched, he's going to behave, but once he knows that he's no longer being watched, he'll go right back to misbehaving. It's inevitable.

My Phase 3 manager brought me in a number of times to discuss my behavior that the camera had caught. One of them I was pissed at someone that had cut me off, and yes I did flip them off, which is not professional, but I've since learned to not let the 4-wheelers get under my skin and it's made me happier in the end. But otherwise, I was brought in for 2 failure to stop events, and I will argue this to the day that I die, that I did come to a complete stop both times. They just didn't think that I did, and the really stupid part is that they are relying off what the truck's GPS said my speed was, rather than the actual speed of the truck. In both cases, the GPS said that I was still doing 2 mph when I was completely stopped. The SmartDrive system has a G-meter in it as well, and you could see the positive and negative G's that indicated a complete stop, but they decided to ignore that and still scold me for it. The other stupid part here is not coming to a complete stop in both cases would not have caused an accident. Some of you may say, "well a complete stop is coming to a complete stop". But as truckers, we know that if you're going <1 mph, you're not going to kill a bus load of nuns going through the intersection. 1 mph isn't a deadly speed. Even 2 mph isn't a deadly speed if someone else didn't come to a complete stop. It's still a slow enough speed where you can come to a complete stop in the event of an emergency and not have to worry about doing any damage to anything or anybody. It's too slow of a speed to be deemed "unsafe" by any rational human being that has an ounce worth of common sense. It's just Roehl looking for justification on why these cameras are a good thing and lack of people who have that fancy college paper on the wall at home that have never been behind the wheel of a truck think that just because they read it in a book, that must mean that's how the world works.

On this first meeting, I met with the head of the safety department and he said that if he had it his way, he'd have cameras in every truck. I told him, "I can guarantee you right here and now, if you did that, you would have no more drivers to move your freight."

Right now, I want to tell you that Roehl also records EVERY. SINGLE. Phone call. Every single phone call that comes through their system is recorded for their "safety". Also, just in case a driver comes back and wants to sue them, they can build their case off of what the driver has said and done while being employed by them. They also keep all of their messages that you send to your fleet manager as well over the Qualcomm or DriverTech PC. Again…just to cover themselves. So, when I had these meetings with my first incompetent fleet manager, I recorded them for my own safety as well, and it's a good thing I did. More on this in a bit…

I also want to mention that Roehl's training has gotten progressively worse. My trainer was a great guy, and would recommend him to anyone, because he's polite, professional and knows what to do. I have a friend who talked to a few newbie's that literally just got out of training the day before and had their own truck, and they asked him if he could help them fill their truck, because they were never shown how to do it. They mentioned they had spent weeks with prior trainers and not once were they shown how to use the EFS card and how to fill up the tractor. Brand new recruits and they're in the dark when it comes to filling up the truck. It's like a mill. Get them in the door, get that money from the government, and then shove 'em out the door as fast as possible to move that freight, and if they screw up then we fire them, and we still make money.

At Roehl, their trucks are governed to 63 mph. I'll tell you right now, it is a massive PITA to deal with that. It has the potential to make you late for appointments, (to which your fleet manager will scold you and tell you to leave earlier next time to compensate, then write you up for being late due to circumstances out of your control…more on this later), in the end, you are more of an impedance to traffic than a help. You'll be cut off by mad 4-wheelers and even semis that don't know that you're governed to 63 mph. You'll be flipped off, swerved at, heads and fists shaken at, you name it, I've had it happen. Obviously, a little perturbed by this, I made some signs to hang in the window:


The sign is out of the way, I could see around it just fine, I didn't see a problem with it. So I hung them up on both sides while driving home one Friday. I got compliments and thumbs up from other drivers, other truckers, my family and friends all thought it was a brilliant idea, because I can guarantee you that 99% of the population does not even think twice that a semi could be governed to a certain speed, so here's my attempt to help educate the uneducated. Needless to say, the next week, I was meeting with my manager, and getting an earful from him about how stupid I was, and how I was an idiot. You may think I'm joking there, but no, he really actually did call me stupid, and an idiot. After that meeting, I called up my fleet managers manager (operation manager), and told him what he said. To which he replied, "well, was it just you two in the room?" I said, "yeah?". He said, "well I hate to say this but it's going to be your word against his". I said, "oh that's ok, I have proof". He didn't know what I meant, and I told him that I recorded the whole conversation, and every conversation before that as well. There was about a 10 second pause and then he said, "well I might have to see that video if it comes up". Needless to say, I didn't get called in anymore since that call, because they knew that they couldn't nail me on anything else, and that now they're being watched just like how I was. Also, you may be wondering how my manager even found out in the first place about the signs…another Roehl driver at the drop yard took a picture of my truck and sent it to him to tattle on me. Also, you see that suicide knob? Yeah, someone ratted me out on that too. Which BTW there was no regulation or stipulation in the DRG that says you can't have it. My moron fleet manager told me it's against DOT. Cool part is, I called up the Wisconsin State Patrol and talked to a trooper and asked him about it, and he said that he's tried to nail truckers on having those, but can never find a regulation that would apply, so as far as he's concerned they're legal. I have done other research on them, and have been told by my current employer that they're against OSHA. The article they referenced applied to forklifts, not commercial vehicles, so I'll say that they're legal as well. But we're not here to talk about those…other Roehl drivers will rat you out and report ANY "misconduct" that may be happening. It's really sad when you think about it. Other drivers will report something that they may say is against company policy just to what? Get ahead? Yeah right! He also threatened me one time that he would purposely keep me out if I didn't do what he said that week. He couldn't handle the stress of trying to manage 40+ drivers on his board. I get it, it takes a lot to manage that much stress, but that's probably why he's no longer a cop…couldn't handle the stress. One time, he called me up and asked where I was. I was heading down a freeway in WI to get to my destination, and he asked if I was following the fuel and route plan. I replied with no, because I had found a better route. A better route as in, a much shorter and faster route that would not only save time, but also fuel and wear and tear on the truck. He had to scold me for going out of route because the fuel and route plans are there for a reason. Ohhh, I get it…you like to burn more fuel, and spend more on maintenance and pay me less for going further, I get it now…makes sense right?

Part 2 is next....

 

I also want to bring up another situation that happened to me. I was down in Lake Mills WI, got unloaded that morning, and they sent me a preplan after I was unloaded. The preplan read that I would be going to Little Chute WI, and taking that back to MN. That was my load home. I wrote down the preplan as it read, mileage and everything, and I'd also like to mention that I have done a load like this in the past where I took a load from Little Chute back to MN. So it wasn't odd for me to be doing this route. So I took off from Lake Mills WI, and got more than half way up to Little Chute. I look down at my DriverTech PC and the route is telling me to turn around. When I had a chance to see where it wanted me to go, it all of a sudden said Darien WI. Immediately I was like WTF obviously, because the preplan and everything else all said I was supposed to go to Little Chute. So I call up my punctual fleet manager and ask him what's going on? He said that I had been dispatched to go to Darien only since that morning and had no evidence that I was ever dispatched to Little Chute. Now folks, I know you may be thinking that I misread things and that my mind is playing tricks on me, but I can guarantee that they didn't. I even had the mileage written down that they told me I would be going. From Lake Mills, 120+ empty miles would not put me at Darien from there. It put me in Little Chute. I don't magically know the empty mileage from Lake Mills to Little Chute, they provided it to me, because that's what I was going to paid to get there. So how could I write something down that I don't know off the top of my head without looking at their plan?? And that's the point, they changed the plan on me mid-route. They changed it on my DriverTech PC, and in their system. I would not have been able to write down any of this information unless they gave it to me. I wrote down the dispatch number, the empty miles, the loaded miles, when they wanted me there, etc….then all of a sudden it changed. I know what I saw, and I had everything written down as it should have been. This was a Friday and was originally expecting to be home nice and early. But because of a 2 hour detour they had me make, I almost didn't make it home on time. That night, I remember having 3 minutes left for on-duty time. They tried, but I was victorious!

Among other things, they only pay you dispatched miles. Not hub miles, or practical miles, nope…dispatched miles. Whatever they say the mileage is, that's what you get paid for. Wanna know what the really infuriating part is? They only pay based on zip code to zip code. Not actual address to address. You could be in the same city, 15 miles away from your next destination, and they won't pay you one red cent. Just because it's their 'company policy'.

After my first fleet manager, I switched over to another fleet. This time, no more reefers, now I was running dry van, and my manager there was a god-send. The guy was super cool, nice, punctual, professional, never scolded me for anything, never called me in to review any stupid camera events, just kept me rolling and left me alone…like how most good fleet managers are. Then, came one Monday morning, and all of a sudden, I got a message from some Indian woman, saying that she would be my new fleet manager. I was devastated! I always believe in giving someone a chance or two to prove themselves. This woman blew threw them on the first day with me. Actually the first conversation, it was over! I'm one of those kinds of people that has a problem respecting someone who hasn't actually done the job they're now telling me to do. I know you can't always get a manager like that, I know the world isn't perfect, but sometimes you do, and when that day happens, you're usually in for a somewhat nice work environment, because they've done the job, they know what it takes, they're probably not going to make you do something that they haven't had to do personally (I'm saying in most cases here), and there's going to be a certain level of sympathy there that would mean the difference between getting written up for something that you know is out of your control, and that they SHOULD know would be out of your control as well because they've done the job. This woman doesn't know a semi-truck from a hole in the wall. She couldn't find her head with both hands. I eventually found out that she had spent a whole week in a truck so she could experience what it's like out here. Ooooo a whole week! You can't learn jack out here if you're only out for a week. No no, you need to be out here for a month at a time, away from your friends and family. Miss a death in the family, or a few anniversaries, or kids birthday parties…then you'll know what we go through.

A great example of her incompetence…after 6 months of utter hell, having to deal with that camera, they finally said that my truck was sold. I had driven 50,000 safe miles with that truck, and now it's sold and I have to move into a new one. It had been a week since she first told me that, so I figured they'd be able to have one setup for me at the Marshfield terminal. HA, fat chance! So here I am at the Marshfield terminal, and there's AT LEAST 4 brand new trucks sitting there, waiting to have their decals put on and get PDI'd. But can I have any of those?!? NOPE!! "They're all bespoke for", is what I was told by another safety guy at the terminal. Gee whiz, all these other drivers get to have their trucks all ready for them, yet I have to be the one to drive down to East St. Louis of all places and pickup an abandoned truck? At least this one was better cared for and it was a brand new 2016 International ProStar with 29k on the clock. A better truck than the Freightliner, but still a PITA to get my hands on. Let me set the situation up for you……we begin on a Thursday morning, the schedule I was on was their 5/2 schedule, so Friday is supposed to be my day to go home. Start on Monday, go home on Friday, off for 2 days, go back out Monday. Wash, rinse, repeat. So Thursday morning at 4 o'clock rolls around, I get up, and get ready to go. I picked up my load that morning nice and early from Eau Claire, and was going to be headed up to Rhinelander WI. While on my way over, I get a call from my wonderful fleet manager that they have a truck for me, so I would have to relay the load at Marshfield and then get my truck. She starts out by saying if I wanted the good news or the bad news first, in the end I had to recover a truck for them, and that would then be my new truck. Unfortunately, my new truck was down in East St. Louis. So it started by her telling me that they would rent me a car from Marshfield, I would load all of my stuff up from my Cascadia, and then drive down to East St. Louis and grab the truck. Then that changed to, they don't have any rentals cars available in Marshfield, so I would have to ride down with another driver to the Gary terminal, with all my stuff in tow, get a cab, rent a car from the midway airport and THEN drive down to East St. Louis. So, I rode down to Gary with a fellow Roehl driver, with all my stuff stuffed into his cab, unloaded all of it into the vestibule of the Gary terminal, loaded it back into the cab, and then rode over to the airport. I asked the driver if he would wait with all my stuff, in hopes that no one would steal anything. He said that I could just leave it behind a 'secured fence' there. Which turned out, ANYONE could come walking through and get into the terminal. ANYONE! He couldn't wait with my stuff, so I then had to unload my stuff again and set it near a utility building on the airport property, run inside, get my rental car and then get back hopefully in time to not find any hobo making off with my pillows, blankets, cooler full of food, condiments, trash bags, etc….all the stuff. Luckily, thank God, nothing was stolen, loaded everything into the loaner car and then drove down to East St. Louis. Now, before I go any further, when I was talking to my fleet manager while I was en route to Gary, I asked if we could just take the loaner vehicle from the Gary terminal, and take that over to Midway, and then have him wait with my stuff while I grabbed the rental. To which she said, "oh, he can just drop you off in the semi". I said, "uhh wait a second here, you're telling me that you think he could not only fit, but also temporarily PARK a 70 ft+ vehicle at an airport while I get my rental car?!?" She replied with, "yeah, I've been around there before, it'll be fine". Yeah, you've been around there before, IN A ####### KIA!!!!". So, I make it down to East St. Louis by 4 am Friday morning. You doing the math yet? That's 24 hours of being up. I get into my new truck, throw everything down, somewhat make the bed and crash for 2 hours. Get up, get ready and drive again the next day for 14 hours. That's over 36 hours of being up (not including a 2 hour rest break), and I still didn't get to get home on time either. I know other guys have had to put up with much worse, but I've personally never had to be up for over 36 hours, to get a job done, and I personally find it to be BS.

Back in November, I was running a load back from Flint Michigan to Sturtevant WI. I had to wake up early to do a drop in Southfield MI, so throughout the day of getting loaded and unloaded, I was running low on hours by the time 1500 came around. They had me fill up at the Gary IN terminal and then try to make the drop that night. Now if I followed their fuel and route plan, I never would've made it, because I had 3:48 left to drive for the night and they wanted me to take the I-90 interchange through the heart of Chicago. If you've driven around there, you know how much of a nightmare that can be at any time really. So I called up my FM, and asked her what my options were, and she replied with, "well the load needs to get there tonight". I said I understand that, but with my hours and the route you want me to take, I'd be lucky if I make Kenosha WI with that route. She said, "well if you want me to find you a truck stop or a safe place to park then I can". Ok, #1 I know how to find my own truck stops or safe places to park. #2 You clearly don't know what the hell you're talking about if you think you can find me a truck stop near downtown Chicago. I said "you do realize that this is Chicago, one of the most unfriendly Semi-truck cities in the mid-west? There are no truck stops or safe places to park if I go through the I-90 interchange, more than likely I'll run out of time when I'm in downtown Chicago". She told me to still make it as far as I could and then safely pull over when I run out of time. She didn't even listen to what I was trying to say. She doesn't realize what is being said and then still thinks everything will be just fine if I continue on. I ended up taking 294 around it all and made the destination on time without a problem. But it just goes to prove what a week in a semi-truck can teach when compared to someone who has to live, eat, and breathe it on a daily basis.

Another great example of her intelligence is that I just got loaded at another shipper one day, and then I get a call from her. She starts off by scolding me about a camera event from my last truck. This was about a MONTH after being out of the truck, but oh she's gotta make sure she scolds me for something trivial, just like before. Then she scolded me for idling my new truck the last few nights. The 2016 ProStar they put me in did not have a bunk AC unit. Just a bunk heater. Perfect truck for winter, but for summer, it would have to be idled every night to make sure you stay cool in the back. Otherwise, you spend the night in a puddle of your own sweat, like I had to on the first night, before I realized I could idle the truck. So after she scolded me for that, I fired back that if Roehl would've ordered the truck with a bunk AC unit, then we wouldn't be having this problem now would we? They would rather make a few drivers suffer during summer time, spend a lot more money on fuel, rather than shelling out the cash to make sure they're comfortable during the summer months, but oh well! Now this truck is an automatic I might add, so then she tells me to not progressively shift the truck to save on MPG. I said, "umm, you do realize this is an automatic truck. I have no control over what the transmission does". (BTW, Progressively shifting does increase your MPG) You can't make this stuff up folks! She's just another mindless robot, that has a college degree, then Roehl foolishly thinks that means she has the ability to be a somewhat intelligent fleet manager. I also want to add that every time I mentioned to any of my operations managers about their performance, they always come to the rescue of the fleet manager, and I'm made to feel like I'm in the wrong for even thinking that someone who thinks that a semi can fit around an airport, or to not progressively shift an automatic is someone who's qualified for the job. Right, what an idiot I am.

The fun continues from there….I like to see a chiropractor on Saturdays because that's what my schedule permits. With my first two FM's, they had no problem with getting me home on Fridays. There was maybe a handful of times where I was out until Saturday late morning, but otherwise, usually pretty consistent with them getting me home on time. The Midwest Regional Van Fleet was originally told to me that it was a 5 on, 2 off fleet, with the possibility of being out on a Saturday for a short amount of time. My 2nd FM was able to get me home just about every single weekend. There was maybe once or twice where he wasn't able to get me home on time, but he did a good job getting me there. My last FM changed everything. Now all of a sudden, the fleet turned into a 5-6 day out, 1-2 day home routine. So for me to make my chiropractor appointments on Saturday, I requested that I be home by Friday nights at the earliest, Saturday early morning at the latest, just so I could try to keep my back in shape. Once I started requesting to be home either one of these days for sure, my FM, my FM's manager, and the safety department all thought that now all of a sudden, they would require a return to work form from me before I could be dispatched on any other loads. Keep in mind that I had been seeing the chiropractor for months/years before this, and never had to submit anything. The past FM's knew what was going on when I was home on a Saturday, and they still didn't expect me to fill out a form like this. But now, all of a sudden when I'm requesting to be home on a fleet that I guess no longer runs the route I was hired for, started retaliating against me, and making my life miserable, just because I requested some Saturdays off. There was no reason for them to make me fill out a return to work form, because it was not work related, it did not affect me operating a CMV in any way, shape, or form. The safety department argued with me that a chiropractor is a doctor just because he had to go to med school. Funny part is, a chiropractor cannot prescribe medication, cut anyone, or do anything medical other than jump up and down on your back and send you out the door. It's just that simple. Saying a chiropractor is a doctor is like saying someone who has their doctorate in psychology is a doctor. It's BS. After the safety department said that I had to provide this form, I asked for them to show me in writing where it says that in their Driver Reference Guide. First, all they could tell me was that this was safety's policy, and that's it. Then I demanded that they show me where it says that in writing. After arguing with them some more, I finally got a page number to look at. The pages they told me to look at did not contain anything about needing a return to work form. It vaguely discussed that as a CMV driver, I would have to abide by the rules set forth by the FMCSA. Yet do they lay any of those rules out in their guide? Not in the least. The ONLY place that I found where they mention needing a return to work form is if your medication or medical condition has changed, and if you've been injured on the job and would then need to fill out the form. Then and ONLY then is it required. So I say again, them requiring me to provide a return to work form never needed to happen in the first place. Nothing changes when you go to a chiropractor, only the fact that your back/neck are now aligned. My medical history hasn't changed, my medical condition hasn't changed, and finally, I can still safely operate a CMV. When I attempted to talk to the head of the safety department, she insulted me and stated that I like to argue. Now I'm not one to ever start a fight. I leave people alone. But if you start arguing with me, then I'll entertain it. Every time I tried to approach this issue with Roehl, I was always professional. No swearing, no unprofessional behavior or unprofessional speech. I treated everyone with respect. Now because the head of the safety department is sick of hearing from me about this for the 2nd time, now all of a sudden I like to argue? No, I'm not intentionally trying to argue. If I found holes in your policy, then you need to address them. It's not like I like to waste my time arguing with you on a policy that you say exists, yet can't prove. I have much better things to do with my life than to sit here and argue with you. So I demanded an apology and she gave me one of the weakest apologies I've ever heard. I also pointed out that not once did I ever attack her personally, or say that she 'obviously' likes to do something. The safety department is a joke, and very unprofessional, along with the rest of the company.

I'd also like to bring everyone's attention to a time when they told me to nark out another driver. Here's the short story, I was cruising through the 90 interchange in Chicago. I thought I was having chest pains, maybe a potential heart attack. Turns out my vertebrae was out of adjustment and putting pressure on my heart. I've only had this particular situation happen one other time in my life time. I called my incompetent fleet manager and told him what was going on, he told me to pull over as soon as it was safe and park it. The safety department felt it necessary to park me and have me leave my truck at the Pilot in Beloit WI. Keep in mind that I live in the twin cities. Luckily I was able to catch a ride home from a family member that just happened to be passing through at the time, so I was able to get home and see the chiropractor and get all fixed up. Getting back down to Beloit is another issue entirely. I had to ride down with another driver, which is normally not a big deal. However, my fleet manager told me to, "keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary"…essentially to spy on this poor kid and nark him out if he says or does anything odd. Which made me feel very uncomfortable. But the kid was a nice guy, and I didn't need to give any kind of bad report to my FM. The really odd part was while we were driving down to Beloit, I got 2 calls, one was from Roehl, giving me a survey of what I thought about my experience so far. The other was from some random firm in CO, asking me about my experience so far as well. The weird part is, is that to my knowledge, I was the only one to get anything like this. I have a couple buddies that I keep in touch with when I graduated from Roehl, and I asked them if they have had any calls like that, and they still have yet to get a call about a survey. Why would I get 2 calls, the same day, asking me about the same subject, and wanting to know my opinion about Roehl?

I tried to get out early. I tried to appeal to their 'common sense' side, but it does not exist. This company and its office staff live in a constant state of bureaucratic BS. They do everything by what is labeled as their company policy. There's no point to sit here and tell me that's how businesses work, I already know. I know they HAVE to have these policies in place, otherwise there would be lots of problems. I get it. However, let me put this situation on you…you have a driver that WANTS to leave. Doesn't like it, doesn't 'play well with others', wants to just bud out and call it even. If it were my business, I'd like to know why the driver is upset and wants to leave. If a resolution can't be found, then I'd wish him well, no hard feelings. I talked to the HR department who is in charge of settling the debt of drivers who leave before their mileage is up. I basically said, "I want to leave, so can we setup a payment arrangement where I make payments to you, until the debt is satisfied?". They said, no, you must pay the entire debt within 30 days, or else be sent off to collections. Ok, so you have someone who wants to make payments and wants to make good on the debt that they owe. But, you'd rather have a collection company come in, take the payments instead, and then give your company LESS money than what was originally owed. Think about it….if I pay them outside of collections, they get the full amount back. No trouble, no harm, no issues. You instead send someone off to collections, the collections company charges you a fee to collect the debt, and you don't get paid back the full amount. If I'm wrong about this, please chime in, but this is such a stupid move on their part, I would expect it to be made by the government it's that stupid. Why would you not want to get paid back in full? Why would you intentionally lose money on someone that wants to pay you back before it gets out of hand and sent off to collections?!?

The very last thing I want to bring up here is the collections side of it. Flash back to Thanksgiving Eve, I had mentioned to my FM that I wanted to be home for Thanksgiving. I had mentioned it to her a month and a half in advance. It's not like I just dropped it on them to get me home right then and there, this had been planned. You do your best in a business environment to make every employee happy, but sometimes it just doesn't work out like that, that's life. So I was dropping my trailer in Green Bay at Georgia Pacific. Just a drop and hook, nothing fancy. Then my DriverPC goes off and tells me my next preplan has me going from Appleton to the Gary terminal. So I called up my wonderful FM, and said, "umm, Gary IN isn't home…we were supposed to try to get me home remember? I had mentioned this to you over a month ago, and every week since". To which she replied, "well this load has to be delivered". After hanging up and swearing everything under the sun, I hopped out to slide my tandems. Before I slid them, I opened the trailer door to make sure the load hadn't shifted, or anything bad was lurking inside, waiting for the next innocent person to come walking by, open it up and have the load kill them. Everything was all good, so I closed the door but didn't fully latch it because I wanted to come back and button everything up when I was done sliding the tandems. I get back in the truck and start sliding the tandems and then I hear a thud thud. I look out the passenger side mirror and there's the door laying on the ground. Now I'm personally confused by all of this because I've had trailer doors ripped out of my hands before due to wind, swing around and hit the side of the trailer and not break, but I've never had one break off on me. So now instead of it being a drop and hook (which they didn't have any empty trailers anyway), it was now a live unload. So I got unloaded, loaded the door back into the trailer, strapped it down with some van straps, and then took it back to the Appleton terminal so they could fix it. Now my trip down to the Gary terminal wasn't going to work, so instead they had me take a relay back to the Twin Cities. Yay! I got home, and that's great. Almost a whole month goes by, December 22nd, I get a call from my wonderfully honest FM to relay my current load to the Marshfield terminal. I asked why, to which she replied that another driver has to go home. Little did I know that driver, was me. That's right folks, she lied to me. I get to the Marshfield terminal, message her that the trailer has been dropped and eagerly awaiting my next load so I could keep rolling. I then get a call from her that I need to go in the office and talk to some guy. Right away, I think, "ok, this is it…this is the day I've been waiting for, they're finally going to let me go". Sure enough I was right, I had a conference call with my fleet operations manager down in Gary, (also where my FM is stationed out of) and he said that because the door broke off and caused damage to the door (which was fixable I might add), I was now being placed on a "decision making leave", which meant that I had to turn my truck in, it's unpaid, and if I wanted to keep my benefits going, I would have to pay for them on my own…all of this on December 22nd. Sooooo Merry Christmas to me and the family huh? During the call, the safety guy that dialed up the guy in Gary asked me how I plan to get home. I said I could probably have my wife come get me tonight, or maybe my father could make the drive. Otherwise I would have to take the bus. Right…pile all my stuff out of my truck into a bus and hope that it makes it home with me…I don't think so. I've been here and done that before. In the end, I HAD to be out of the truck by that night. No ifs ands or buts about it, I had to be off the premises by 7 pm. It was like I was being treated like a felon. I was able to have a family member come get me and all my stuff and everything was done. January 8th rolls around and I get a call from the fleet operations manager down in Gary IN, informing me that they are terminating my employment. I replied that I would see them in court, and hung up on him. Now, flash forward to February 8th, I get a letter in the mail from Alliance collection agency, claiming I owe them $5,680. LOL!!! Not once did I get a call or a letter from Roehl saying that I owe them the money. Upon doing the math, if we go off of what their dispatched miles say, I'm about 2k and some change shy of meeting the 75,000 mile goal. Now add up what I actually drove, and I'm over 77k. Now here's the really cool part. Back when I signed the contract, stating that I would stay with them for 75,000 "paid solo miles"? Yeah, well the contract does not state what "paid solo miles" means. It just says "paid solo miles". Doesn't define what that could mean, or anything. Roehl just shot themselves in the ### for having the contract written this way, because it doesn't take a genius to know don't have a contract worded a certain way if you don't back it up with definitions of what you're saying in it. That leaves it open to misinterpretation on the highest level. I'm brand new out of trucking school and have never done this job before…do you think I know what "paid solo miles" means?? I took it as me, in the truck, by myself, driving and getting paid for the mileage I drive. Of course you don't get the Driver Reference Guide (DRG)…that states how they pay you based off of their mileage, until AFTER you're hired. Not actual mileage, or any other mileage. It's off of what they say you deserve to be paid, which also means zip code to zip code, not address to address, so you're screwed out of mileage and pay left and right! In the end, I wrote a letter back to the collection agency telling them that I wouldn't be paying the mentioned debt, and that if Roehl or Alliance would pursue this collection process, or tarnish my credit in any fashion, that I would pursue every remedy available to me under the law.

Let's just say I haven't heard anything from, and they're that much wiser for letting it go anyway.

Sorry for the novel here guys, but these are the main things that have bugged me the most about Roehl.

The company would probably be a nice company to work for if they weren't so big and bureaucratic. The bigger they are, the harder they try to not fall, and they accomplish that feat by reminding their drivers with all of their bureaucratic BS policies. The 'safe 7', and all their other crap that a driver would have to put up with. They have TV's setup at all of their terminals where they film the higher ups giving awards to FM's and drivers for their accomplishments. That's all fine and dandy, but when you watch these videos, it's like they're trying too hard to show the rest of the drivers that they are a great company to work for, and to overlook their screw-up's and only focus on the positives that someone else is getting rewarded and that if you work hard enough, you'll get there. If I could say one thing and one thing only about this company that is a positive thing, it would be their terminals and having the ability to stay at them when you're usually routed near them. Other than that, the company is corrupt, shiftless and only cares about one thing…money. They don't care about the drivers. If you have a wedding or some important appointment to go to, they do their best to get you home, that's fine, but otherwise, their lack of caring and sympathy for their drivers reveal that they only care about money. They hire incompetent fleet managers to run these fleets, and most of the time over work them because they can't keep up with 40+ people on their board. I'm not saying being a FM is an easy gig, because I know it can get stressful, but if I had 40+ people to watch over on a daily basis, I would probably be looking for another job ASAP because I don't think I could personally handle it. The only right I have to say that these people are incompetent, is that I have talked to other drivers, and even other FM's and know that certain people handle stress better than others, and 1 out of the 3 FM's I've had showed me that he could handle it just fine, all while being tactful and professional in what he did.

Remember that I did not, do not, and never will expect this job to be all candy and rainbows. This is a tough business to be in, and if you're not careful, you can end up dead in no time. Having the help of a company that has its act together helps the driver succeed at his job.

So that's it folks. Stay away from Roehl, and do whatever you can to make sure they go the way of the dinosaur, because they sure do deserve it.

 

Amen to that