ruan

Great company! Grab it if you can! Pay isnt the best but you are hauling milk. I have yet to hear anything bad about them though.

 

I run out of Ripon.
Until you gain seniority, your hours will be all over the clock.
They can run you 16 on/8 off under the AG rule.
Doesn't happen every day, but it does happen.
They are a union company, which has not impressed me at this point.
The pay is hourly, and after 90 days it goes up a little. That's it.
Might be different at Tulare, but I doubt it.
There is a lot to get used to.

 

It is at Ripon.
Goes to 16.93 after 90 days if you have a milk license.

 

Guess every terminal runs differently.
We're paid by the load/co-op down here in Clovis, NM.
Some runs within the "local", 100 mile radius.
And then occasionally some over that which go out to near Albuquerque or out and back to Norman OK.
Do your homework and pick what fits!!

 

Tulare pays better than Ripon. But this job is a revolving door, beware..

 

I know this is a little bit old, but can you expand on that? What is so bad about them?

 

Well, sure. As of 30 September 2015, the Ruan RIPON terminal is officially closed. 90 days before this; let's say around , June 15, 2015, everybody was getting wind from management that we were going to shut down. Coworkers --senior guys-- were jumping ship like crazy. But the "official" word was, we are not closing down. Corporate forced our terminal managers to post some "rumor mill" memo in our driver's room saying, "we have been receiving several disturbing calls alleging that we are closing down... this is NOT true." 2 weeks later, I get a WARN Act letter in the mail saying, we are all getting fired.

I talked to some douche bag "partner" down in Tulare who busted out with some pseudo-legalese about this and that, and told me to go screw myself ...

It is a union shop, and that could be good or bad. But let me ask a rhetorical question. Weren't the Unions formed to limit the work day to 8 hours a day and protect employee rights? At Ruan, the Union guarantees the work day can run as long as 16 hours a day. The union never did anything for me except take my dues and subsidize my health insurance, a little bit.

They also abuse an "Agricultural Exemption" for milk hauling, since milk is a raw product. The exemption, which was originally used for farmers--GUYS WHO LIVE ON THE FARM-- is applied to this position in trucking, so you will regularly come back to work after 8 hours of clocking out. Consider your commute time unless you live at the terminal , and you are looking at 5 hours of sleep on many nights. You barely have time to take a dump, take a shower, and eat a meal before you are driving back to work.

What else? Management is in Iowa, so we are constantly getting orders from these faceless people who we do not know personally. The management/union dynamic doesn't really work too well at Ruan. Management is a revolving door. I think we had 3 terminal managers in my six months at Ruan. Our dispatchers, were hired from a local temporary agency and had no trucking experience. The managers looked down on our line of work ,because they were not personally invested in our line of work. Our dispatch manager wasn't even licensed to drive a commercial vehicle.

About that union/management dynamic; the management's theory seemed to be, blame every single thing you possibly can on the driver ,because we have a union, and we cannot be fired . Management, were largely scared people who were terrified of losing their jobs. RUAN scheduled me to take a Weigher/Sampler exam just 3 hours after I got off work, on my day off. They worked me 16 hours that night. I couldn't accommodate this exam. When I did not appear for the exam, they tried to blame me for not letting them know about the schedule conflict. I did tell them about it all week. Then, they denied me ever telling them about the conflict; instead, they were busy covering themselves by blaming me. I was labeled a "no show" when, in reality, they created a scheduling conflict and failed to resolve it. They tried to force me to pay for the 2nd Weigher/Sampler exam. After getting a hold of the Union contract, I discovered that, not only was I due for a raise they weren't planning on giving me, but they were contractually obligated to pay for this licensing exam.

So the workplace was especially toxic at Ruan. Management hated the union employees, the union employees were weak in their commitment to both the union, and to the company. They worked the hell out of us, and the management didn't know what they were doing because they all came from Select Staffing or whatever the hell.

Spare yourself and go haul fuel or chemicals, stay away from this place. The writing is on the wall that they are gonna close down Tulare next.