For those thinking of driving for Werner, DON'T.

Discussion in 'Werner' started by FallsInc, Oct 11, 2008.

  1. FallsInc

    FallsInc Light Load Member

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    if you are reading this thread you either have;
    A. an interest in starting a career driving a truck
    B. the curiosity/hatred only an [ex]employee can posses
    C. you have OTR experience and want to drive for Werner

    let me tell you from personal experience, this is not a place you want to work. I started with Werner in mid-January 2008, and I have just become a Werner trainer. I picked up my first student in the beginning of September, and did a little math in my head. In the 8.5 months that I have worked for this company, they have hired 16,500 people! SIXTEEN AND A HALF THOUSAND!

    DOES THAT TELL ANYONE ANYTHING? They have to hire 64 people PER DAY in order to keep all their trucks moving! (And they don't do orientation on Sundays...)

    think about this on the flipside. Imagine you are working for Werner, and thinking about quitting and finding the greener grass. Well guess what? An average of 63 other people are thinking that exact same thought at the exact same time. Should they all execute this plan, they will be much happier overall for their troubles.


    Ok, now to take care of the ABCs

    A. you just got your CDL, or will have it soon. Good for you. Trucking is a well paying, high demand career that does require some sacrifice, but is well worth it. This is not a get rich quick scheme, but if you put your time in, you will be making an average wage for it. The high pay doesn't come right away. That is the thinking of most new drivers as well. They just think to themselves "how bad could it really be?" or "you have to start somewhere, and I have to put my 1 year in before being able to get a better job."

    While you generally do have to be in OTR for 1-2 years and up to 5+ for some places, you do not have to make such a huge sacrifice by working for Werner. It really is THAT bad working for Werner. I'm not going to go into small details, as most of it would only make sense to a [ex] Werner driver anyway, but let the numbers speak for themselves. Today approximately 64 people were hired into Werner and approximately 64 will quit (this is an average number of course).

    You do have to start somewhere and put in the magical 365 days of OTR. But do it somewhere else if at all possible. Werner will get you the experience you need, but if you have the option to go elsewhere, it should be used. Any carrier listed on this site in the DAC section will hire students. If you have a poor driving record, there is still somewhere else to go. Werner should be a last resort. While carriers such as Swift, England, JB, etc. are have bad images, there has to be someone on the very bottom of the pick list, and Werner should be there.

    Here are another few numbers to wrap around your brain. Werner's recruiters and information that they send out trucking schools all speak about the 38cpm average that new drivers start at. This is incorrect. You WILL start at 26cpm. End of story. You can make up to 38, IF you get all the bonuses. If you run regional, you will not get mile bonus (need 9500 miles in a month... lol.). If you idle the truck more than 5 hours a week, you will not get the fuel bonus (goes by total mpg). Plus there are other bonuses that I do not even know about. The two I wrote of, only account for +4cpm... ANYWHERE will pay better than these clowns.

    B. you worked for Werner before, and you wanted to come in here and see what the deal was. After you read the whole thing and realized I was not some retard who got a raw deal and wanted to rant in public about it. I am still employed at Werner enterprises, and I am a trainer, although I must admit, I am working on becoming one of the daily 64 out the door.

    C. you have 1+ year OTR experience, or almost do. Good for you. Its time you graduated to a better paying/more driver centric organization. But as I talked about in the A section, you will not be happy here. if you are concerned about DAC reports and the 10 year history that the DOT requires for FMCSA qualifying jobs, then a 2 month stint at one place is not something you would want to have to write down on every app you fill out for the next 10 years. Find somewhere else to call home.



    In conclusion, if you take my advice today, it will save you weeks, months, and sometimes years of frustration, thousands of dollars more, and will add to job satisfaction immensely.

    Werner's slogan is We Care, Werner Cares. It's partially true. We do care. The drivers do care for other drivers. We must stick together. Werner does not care, plain and simple, I am my truck number, and this is how I am known to the company. A five digit truck number and a six digit employee number.
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2008
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  3. jimbo29

    jimbo29 Bobtail Member

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    For someone considering entering the industry, a well written piece of advice is worth a million.

    Thanks for the great post.
     
  4. beehive

    beehive Light Load Member

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    Geezus!

    :biggrin_2554:

    No Werner for me.
     
  5. IROCUBabe

    IROCUBabe Road Train Member

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    Now I don't like to bad mouth people so I will let the money do the talking here. I've threatened to do this before, now I just wish we hadn't been slacking off the one time I actually did lol. Makes Werner look bad, but Werner doesn't chose to push off available or stop to sleep nightly that be us... :biggrin_25518:


    If we run hard we get paid hard, I've included a snippet of a past set of paychecks, unfortunately only so many show up in the pay summary online (last 12), I chose last month since it was recent.

    I included the overview, one weeks detail, and the past runs when we ran hard, back before I started being sick and sleepy all the time.

    We run 48 state, we are no longer on Team Werner (though we were also NOT on Team Werner during May/April either, we were on Team Werner June > July > August). We are basically running like 1.5 drivers right now, hence we average about 3800-4000 miles a week.

    We were off 2 times in September, once the first week, and once the last week. Hence why pay sucked those two weeks. The double pay you see for the last week - > Top one was pay, bottom one was BONUS.

    We don't even GET a fuel bonus on team, so I say that one doesn't exist we have 7.2 mpg average on this truck, and an apu that worked until last week, they will fix it but we haven't been that willing to make a load late over the apu but I am putting my foot down on my husband for that come Monday cause we are going to get bothered about high idle for the weekend -_-.

    Anyway, basically, bonuses do exist, and you get paid for what you run. .26 cpm? Are you talking regional? Cause I was started at .32 cents a mile and no one ever told me .38 I was originally told .34 but that was something to do with the Walmart division I wound up not getting onto.

    Regional doesn't get a set per mile, they get a sliding scale that changes depending on the miles of the load. Been there done that.

    I know of 3-4 bonuses at Werner.

    Monthly Miles Bonus - Hit it 2x, wait 3x its 18000 miles a month for a team. something like 1/2 cent per mile. There is the fuel bonus which is a pita to get so we don't bother. There is the yearly bonus, received every year 1/2 cent a mile for half the miles the truck has run. Husband got his last month, I'll get mine in DEC.

    Then there is the quarterly 'You didn't get a ticket (that we mentioned >.>) or crush anything bonus.

    Don't blame Werner for bad pay. Course when you said a new cdl holder has gotten into a high paying industry I stopped taking you seriously. Where are you getting your numbers from. I can pick three numbers and multiply them too and seem really convincing. In fact, I believe it is a well known fact you can quote stats for and against ANYTHING you want. Figures are manipulative. You realize that werner has 12000 trucks, so you are saying that every Werner Driver has quit within the last year? Weird, cause I've met a ton of several year in drivers. Pretty much all but 15 I have talked to have been with Werner more then a year.

    Werner has 9000 trucks. You are saying, that with exactly 10 months of Werner employment, you have seen 16,000+ people leave and come? Have you seen 64 people quit in one day with your own eyes?

    So by your words, over half of the Werner trucks have had at least 2 drivers quit in a year? I would reallllly like to know how you are getting your numbers. I am going to have to start having videos of the drivers I talk to most of whom have been here well over that year you are talking about, because that would be actual factual based numbers.

    Lets look at it this way. Werner has 9000 trucks, in the last 300 days we have had our truck replaced 2x. Once due to age, and once due to maintenance. K, I know for a fact it takes about 7 full days to cycle a truck through maintenance back into being ready for a new truck driver. In the case of our first truck, it took them 2 1/2 months to cycle it through repair, refitting, repainting, and sales.

    So by your logic, Werner has had to do this at least 8000 times if 1/2 of the 16500 were full qualified drivers, and not students, so at least 8000 trucks were sitting? Only 1000 didn't sit for 7 days and several of them sat for 14 + days undriven?? And they are still in business???? With 25,000 trailers??

    Fuzzy math?

    And not the ones I made up cause I am mad because I am sitting in Laredo without a load over the weekend.

    Or my student just said stupid bs to the SDM and got off my truck... again.

    I mean if you are so unhappy. Quit?:biggrin_25511:
     

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  6. honor roll

    honor roll Road Train Member

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    Where and when did you go to truck driving school FallsInc?
     
  7. Bigarmin88

    Bigarmin88 Road Train Member

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  8. FallsInc

    FallsInc Light Load Member

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    i am midwest regional and i make .255 (Per Diem -1cpm, raise +.5cpm). all drivers start at .26 now. the point of this part was not low pay, but rather they advertise the average as .38, when in reality, that number is the max a new driver can make... look into a Werner recruiting brochure. its all in there in black and white.


    9500 miles=.5cpm on the month
    10000 miles=1cpm on the month
    10500 miles=2cpm on the month

    i average about $100 per month on the bonus. i stuck in an "lol" into the mileage bonus part cause i never get that many miles in a month. i am ready, willing and able to run through my 70 every single week, but all i end up doing is sending macro 26 over and over and over (ready for new load). i know this is an issue because i'm regional, but i know its not isolated to regional either.

    never had a ticket, never had an accident. bonus never reflects this (although i admit, i've never looked into it).

    yes, there will be drivers that stay longer, i am not going to deny it. i have found plenty myself. they still need to hire the same amount of people though, to replace the driver that could have replaced the one that had stayed on for a few years.

    you finding employees that stay with werner for long periods of time only means that there are more people quitting with less than 1 year in then there are 1+ year drivers leaving.

    How I arrived at 16500 in 8.5 months is subtract my student’s employee ID from my employee ID. We are 16499 apart, and he was hired 8.5 months after I was. We both have Springfield as our home terminal.
    This doesn’t take into account the fact that some people never make it into a truck of their own, so I guess I can’t say 64 drivers are quitting or graduating. Thank you for pointing that out. I will correct it. BUT, they are still being hired, and most of them are going out with trainers…

    I just turned in my 2007 387 for an 06 Century. I saw the techs at the terminal replacing the windshield less than 24 hours before I was assigned this truck (and didn’t even put everything back on afterward). I am a trainer. I have no accidents. I have had very few late loads, and I am on good terms with my dispatch, my idle is consistently less than 5% (and I don’t, and have never had an APU truck), but I was still removed from a great truck and put in a dirty, damaged pile of crap, that I have a list of about 20 things wrong with it, a few major issues. The reason I got this truck and got removed from the other? Money. They wanted to ensure they would get enough out of the sale of the truck, and it had too many team miles on it, and the one I have now, doesn’t. hell, my pete had less miles on it than the century.
    I loved my peterbilt, and I didn’t put one single scratch on it, and they took it away and put me in a truck, that if I do say so myself, is insulting to drive, and my student feels the exact same way about the situation.

    Correct. but I'm sure that it doesn't work out that way. we both know that Werner wouldn't have problems if they could keep all the students, lol. this also is a part of the 64 error i talked about above.

    Which is it, 9000 or 12000 (i don't know the myself)?
    Either way, 9000 trucks means 7.1 percent of the drivers quit a day. 12000 is 5.3% per day.






    In any event, I am not trying to BS anyone here. I am not bad mouthing Werner. they do serve a purpose in the industry, and they are obviously doing something right, I just feel that driver retention speaks for itself, and all the top 10 trucking outfits ALL have more than 100% turnover. That means that Werner must replace its entire work force once per year, at minimum. Just because not everyone quits doesn’t mean anything other than they have to hire more students to replace the ones who do leave. They still have hired 16500 people in less than 9 months. And yes, employee IDs are sequential.

    i think that covers it all. feel free to nitpick/ask more questions. i am more than happy to answer.
     
  9. FallsInc

    FallsInc Light Load Member

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    Aug 20, 2008
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    no offence, but i would prefer not to give specific info that could possibly be used to identify me.
     
  10. IROCUBabe

    IROCUBabe Road Train Member

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    When we had to turn in the 379 for the massive repairs it failed safety for, we got a 387 to replace it.

    We hate the 387 for no other reason then it is... like driving a toy truck. I like my trucks rough, long in the front, and small inside! Our first truck was a 2004; it was in great condition, had a few issues at first, and then it was fine. The next truck they handed us the keys for was 1 year newer less miles but had a giant dent in the front, and it took the shop 24 hours to get the hood to shut. We felt slighted to be giving them a perfect truck and handed one that had obviously been in a serious scrap that broke the hood, wheel well, and the door. I feel the truck thing, but I think you are forgetting that they don't go 415-416 straight through, there are numbers they skip, I won't get through the details because I don't want to relay something I wasn't supposed to know but they do not go 415000 415001 415002

    I was hired in a group of 10 drivers, one was my ex, he was 1 different from me, but the driver beside me was 100 different, the driver behind me was one thousand different. Check in orientation, see for yourself. I believe they switch monthly what they are numbering like if tis 412 now its 413 next month, but don't quote that.
     
  11. honor roll

    honor roll Road Train Member

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    Hey sorry just wondering if you went some where local in your area I could of went to truck driving school with you that is why I asked. I can't PM you because you don't have enough post
     
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