My Western Express experience so far

I signed on with WE back in late October. I had my CDL since 2004 but was always a mechanic first and used as a "fill in" driver when someone was on vacation second. Back in April of 2013 I decided I liked driving more and went to work for United Van lines. I did that for about six months and the whole carrying loaded dressers up 4 flights of steps thing took it's toll on my back so I landed at WE. I have no accidents and a clean CSA score so WE took me on right away, but all you really need for them is a pulse and a CDL. After the 3 day orientation I spent 8 days in the hotel until they got me seated in a truck. I don't really have much of anything positive to say about the company. With WE you have to make a choice, money or retain your CSA score. EVERY TRAILER you back into will have issues. No turn signals, 3(YES 3 FLATS!!!), no license plate, federal inspection is 8 months past due..... I won't pull anything that isn't safe and legal 100%. So, every time I get a load I have to spend MY TIME taking their trailers to go get repaired FOR FREE! I won't take a chance and put my CSA score at risk because I only have four more months to go until I have the magical 1 year just driving experience and when that one year is up I want to get on with a decent company. I believe I'm 1 of 2 WE drivers that actually does his pre and post trip inspections ON EVERY TRAILER EVERY TIME, all the other AS#&oles that work here just hook up and go and when they drop the trailer off wherever, knowing the trailer has issues, just leave it and "let the next guy deal with it". Other then that in my 2 months here I have also gone through 4 tractors, right now I have a 2011 FL with about 330k on it. It's the best one out of the 4 I've had. The roof only leaks a little and the bunk heater does work all night.... It is 9,000 miles overdue for it's PM and every time I go through the shop the "don't have time to do it". As for the money end of things, .75 per mile...never seen it, not even close. I usually get about 800-1400 miles per week. My check this past Friday after taxes and they took out for benefits was a whopping $48.97!!! That's spending 6 days in their truck spending most of my time taking their trailers for repair just so that I could legally pull them! Now if I just did what everybody else does and hook up to their trailer and went I could probably get about 2000-2800 miles per week. As for extra pay, you gotta hound you DM to actually get it.

4 more months to go.....

 

Horrible, just have to find a way to keep the family fed while getting through this last 4 months. It's a shame the decent companies don't give you a skills test if your short on just driving experience, nothing I can't do with it

 

That's my hope, the temptation is there to jump to another carrier like Swift, Schneider or some other "grass is greener here" company but I know I just have to put up with crap for 4 more months and keep my CSA and accident free status and somehow find a way to feed my family

 

I guess if you want to feed your family over the long run you have to do your time at the cesspool.
And I hear you Luv2truck, I got the speedgauge message last week too and the 3 or 4 about fuel routing. There is just no accountability when these other Aholes just drop their trailers knowing they are all jacked up, there should be a $50 fine for leaving messed up trailers and not telling breakdown and then those of us who actually do our pretrip and discover the problems, we should have an incentive to take them and get them fixed. Their CSA score will never get any better until they start doing something to improve the state of equipment. We could make decent miles if we had better equipment. I picked up one last Monday in NH that was 8 MONTHS out of it's federal inspection!!! How many other idiots handled that trailer in the last 8 months and either didn't bother to look at the inspection or (more likely) just said I'll let the next guy deal with it?!?!?