Western Express reviews

Idk I'm sure everything I would say about these soul sucking leaches has already been said. Spent 5 of the longest, most dreadful weeks of my life working for these ########. Was otr flatbedder for 3ish years, decided regional would be a step in the right direction to local. Huge mistake. Only reason I worked 5 weeks was because I couldn't get a load home.

They promised me regional, got stuck otr.

Promised 1500mi = $900 + 50cpm after. Made sure I didn't get that. And I hustle my ### off. The closer I got, the longer I waited for load dispatches. My last week I was at 1200ish on Thursday. Friday rolls around, wait all day for a 150mi run home. At which time I turned in the truck and said peace.

Stuck me with trainer for a week because I couldn't double clutch during their driving test. Haven't double clutched since school.

Plus everyone who works there treats you like you're scum and you should be grateful for the scraps they give you.

If you're thinking about Western Express, run, as fast as you can, run!

Btw I was flatbed division.

Only thing I did like about the company was that they have very nice trucks. And they have a safety class during their arduous orientation that was actually very useful.

I worked there from November 2014 to April of this year. It was more than likely there for looks. So far to date every Western Express truck I've seen near a scale house is always pulled in. The only time I've gotten to bypass it is if the scale house lane is full(some states),if my truck was lightly loaded that DOT didn't want to bother with it(South Carolina) or if the scale house is closed altogether(usually if the scale house has enough drivers inside the scale house with paperwork if they've redlighted).

Yea i drove for them, mistake! Truck was in shop. Out of shop, picked up load, left shipper, noticed when i applied brakes, truck wasnt slowing as id like. Contacted BD they told me to take truck to terminal in fontana. I was in Arizona at the time. We went back n forth n i decided, ok i will go. Since i knew something was up with the brakes, when i got to the hill coming into Indio, i got into emergency lane, stopped, put the truck in lowest gear, put on my hazards and went all the way down going 5mph. I got to vanning scales and was red tagged n put out of service. MY TRAILOR HAD NO BRAKES AT ALL. It took a guy and myself to test them with him UNDER the truck tellin me when to apply and hold brakes. When i got to the terminal the next day, i walked into safety dept to see the guy holding up the paperwork from the scalehouse THAT I PUT ON HIS DESK THE NIGHT BEFORE. Well, you guessed it.....they terminated me. I applied for unemployment and western denied it. I fought it, went in front of a judge and my dispatcher. He asked him a bunch of questions which of course he lied thru his teeth n it took everything i had NOT TO INTERRUPT! Then it was my turn. It felt pretty good when it was over but i was scared to death but guess what? The judge saw thru his "stories" and I WON AND GOT MY UNEMPLOYMENT!!! I am a woman truckdriver and this proves that if you know you are right, DONT LET ANYONE TELL YOU DIFFERENT OR TRY TO BULLY YOU OUT OF WHAT YOU DESERVE! Its pays to fight your case! Will never drive for them again

Western isn't that bad to learn the ropes of trucking. I did flatbed with them for a year. For about the first 6 months I was there they ran me mostly in the mid west. I started out getting short runs, they get better the longer your there. They have yards in pa, va, al, tn, in && ca. Van orientation is about 3 days && flat bed in about a week long. Could be longer if you have to wait for a trainer. But uusually trainers always coming back to the main yard in tn. During orientation you'll stay at the Magnuson hotel or super 8. Pick up to the yard are at 7. They gotten better for as perks for the driver. Showers, real food on the yard(over priced) now I even see they have DIRECTV in the trucks for you guys. Western isn't all good but its the same as some of the other mega fleets out there.

Western Express, where do I start. Well I figured I'd give them a try since they take students. I called, got an orientation date, and a hotel room. Drove from DC to Tennesee, went to check in and was told at 9:00 at night that I'd have to wait. They had a pipe burst and the first floor was covered in water, as were the elevators. So no water, no toilets, no showers. Day one orientation. Not so bad, boring, lots of waiting for physicals and drug tests, typical day 1. Day 2, going over company basics, then the safety part. It was taught by some ex cop and dot person. The guy did nothing but make fun of van drivers and go over and over and over the same safety B.S. for about 5 hours. Now, don't get me wrong, safety is crucial for a trucker, but those of us sitting in class had clean driving records, so why spend all that time preaching to the choir. By hour 3 I raised my hand and pointed this out, he didn't like me much, but I think Western will feel threatened by any educated intellegent trucker. And I'm not knockin Westerns drivers, I met some nice people there, but if you're a braindead steering wheel holder that never questions their mistakes and lets them walk all over you, they'll love you. Day 3 securement. They went into thorough detail about securement and covered all the basics for all the load types they carry. And for every load, they also told you how much money you'd be charged and that you'd not get paid your miles if a load wasn't secured properly. I know load securement is essential, but it seems like a big scam to rip off drivers and save money on their insurance if a driver makes a mistake. At that point I switched to dry van, and was thrown onto the road. They never set my gas card up, didn't and wouldn't provide me with info to set up transflo on my phone, and sent me out with bad logs. I had a paper log book that we started to fill out in class, ans that was the same book I was sent on the road with. So I go on the road and the fun begins. My first day I couldn't drive, rules, so I was "O.D." for 10 hours. Day 2, I drove 11 hours, about 500 miles. I started out double clutching and by the end of the day was floatin up and down. The instructor didn't like that, mainly because he couldn't float gears, and covered my tach with ellectrical tape, and told me I needed to learn to drive by feel. I said ok and gave it a shot. On day 2 I could float by feel so then he started nitpicking everything else. My first delivery was to a distribution center, we got there late, and they said they didn't have an empty. Weekend dispatch for Western is non existent. We sent 3 QC messages and decided to park for the weekend. Monday when our real D.M. came in, it got sorted out. Run 2 was supposed to be a live load. We get there, it's a drop and hook with 2 stops on the load. We are told that we can deliver the next day to stop 1 anytime after 8 am. Get to the loacation and they cant unload us till the next day when their receivers come in. So we go back to a Pilot and park. The delivery went good, we were unloaded in a timely manner and off to stop 2. En route to stop 2 we get a T call to switch trailers and head to Cali. The other driver didn't know what Pilot he was at, didn't want to ask, dispatch didn't know, and after about an hour figured out where we needed to be. So we picked up our trailer, with bent rims and landing gear, which I pointed out, the responce was "we ain't being down for 2 days gettin it fixed, be careful, and don't get us pulled over". Ok, so I hook up and we're on our way. We did a few little CA to AZ to CA to AZ runs and then picked up a trailer load and were headed back to TN. They were supposed to have a load ready for us to do a T call, but that never worked out. I decided to call it quits after the first week for a few reasons. 1. I drove better and harder then my instructor, I drove about 2200 miles in a week, he did about 1200, he was always tired. How somebody can be tired after 8 mountain dews, 3 or 4 redbulls, and yellow jackets is beyond me. 2. Dispatch was a joke, anything that happened after 5PM weekdays or on the weekends never was addressed. You all know, if the weels ain't turnin...yadda, , yadda, yadda. The way I see it, if this is how they represent themselves to a student, then when I'm solo it's probably gonna be the same. 3. The condition of the trucks and trailers, sorry, there was never a day where I didn't find a few issues. We had a flickering ABS light for the whole trip, a busted fairing on the drivers side that I pulled off while super trucker was sleepin before it ended up goin through someones windshield, I bought glad hand gaskets to fix the dry rotted ones on the tractor and trailer, watchin the needle on the air gauge cycle from 90 to 140 every 5 minutes isn't safe. 4. Their QC was messed up. According to D.O.T. you're supposed to take a 30 minute break between 4 to 8 hours of driving, Western forced you to take a break at 4hrs. to 4.5hrs. Or they would cut your drive time by 3hrs. They did payroll well, an electronic pay stub was sent to me on Thursday, and was paid on Friday. They don't have a very good trainer policy either. All mine did was talk about gettin laid, lot lizards, chug energy drinks and yellow jackets, and talk about how Western was a peice of ####. Plus the guy was just "common" in a lot of ways. And twice during our 7 days together he got a 12 pack and drank in the truck. I wouldn't get back in till he threw the bottles away, he didn't like that, but I told him I wasn't gettin busted cause he couldn't follow rules. So take all this with a grain of salt. Western needs to really get their business in order and focus more on their drivers, maybe they can become better, if they wanna put the work in.

Western Express prides itself as being a "second chance" company. This actually means that they are a bottom feeder with predatory hiring practices. I met one guy at orientation that had just gotten out of the joint from a 6 year stint for making meth. We hire every ghetto gangbanger off the street, and there are tons of problems because of it. I would be less hostile to their practices if they were to hire people who had made a mistake or had a few points on their DAC, but WE hires repeat offenders of violent crimes as well as some of the most stupid trash available. You know its bad when people tell you that prison etiquette applies around the main pavilion. Now it appears that they found a new source of filth in the middle eastern and Somalian immigrants they are helping to get green cards.

As such our CSA score suffers. I have met drivers that refuse to fix burned out lights and tell me; "It not yo bidness" when I take pictures to send in to safety. Recently I met a driver that didn't know what a sidewall or even break drum was. I can name names of people who witnessed this. I also recently tried to defend myself in an argument with other company drivers that a coolant leak due to a bad EGR cooler was not going to prouce toxic fumes in the cab.

Western Express is not the worst company in the world, I ran flatbed there for a few months until I found a local job, If your willing to work, they will get you the miles. I was running 2500+ miles a week at 0.40cpm so the pay wasn't the worst either. My biggest issue was with bad trailers, I was plagued with bad trailer after bad trailer, I mean not even roadworthy sometimes. Most of that was because previous drivers failed to do their pre trip inspections and report the issues to breakdown, Hell for every successful DOT inspection you get $25, not sure why drivers would want to fail them and risk their license! In my experience with Western, you ARE targeted by DOT, especially the flatbeds when going through weight stations as they want to check your load is properly secured (Western DOES NOT have PrePass as they lost it due to bad safety ratings).

Longest I sat with a bad trailer in a shop was 4 days, at that point they had me dead head 3 hours away and pickup another one and keep moving. My truck was very reliable, I was issued a 2015 International Prostar with less then 100k on the odometer, the last driver obviously did not take care of the interior but I cleaned it up and all was good. All in all my experience with Western was a decent one, I made decent pay ($850-$1200 weekly) and enjoyed getting to travel the Midwest, East coast and southeast US, Home time was iffy, all depends on where you live though, if you live on the East coast or near Nashville odds of seeing your house 1-2x a month are a good bet, if you live elsewhere, its a gamble!

I jus quit western. In fact westerns lease program is trying to get me for truck abandonment cus they wouldn work me. Their shops... be expecting to sit for a week or 2. A turbo on an international isn under warrant, least it was when I stopped mechanicing, some one had the air breather tube clamps loose. Some one knew the turbo was out and it was in the shop. I can put two and two together. Been thru 4 Turcks in a month and half spand. Then they tried to stick me in another after I fueled. Did the same this g in this last truck I'm sitting with. Had 2 weeks of warranty left on the 30 day contracted. Its by law to have that in place. The company made me sit for two weeks. I left the shop to run loads. I got the load and drove. I get to Lexington and reallized a voice mail. Saying come to Nashville with the load. I'm head in in the same directing I'll set with the load for securement till some one comes. I. Not abandoning. The truck needs work, I pulled in a shop. And quit, the truck is under servalence. Quitting and abandoning are two different meanings. Go some where els man, trust me.