The Good, the Bad and the Crazy Im going with England

Aaah thats just it. Most of us here have been honest. God willing you get a good trainer.

 

Rattlebunny if yoy have your heart set on going with England good luck to you. Have never drove for them so can't say anything good or bad about them. Look foward on reading your post about them

 

I have Drove for England back in mid 90's. They were ok to a point, but it all how you handle your self and how they treat you. It took me a while to realize all companies are about the same, just different faces. There is no Great Companies, and it only what you your self makes out of it.

I figured out my problem a little too late, 8 jobs, 4 years later and a divorce.

Learn how to work their system to the Max, and you will do fine. Keep a cool head and learn to let some things roll off your shoulder.

 

Hey Rattlebunny, you might want to think about getting a wifi adapter for that notebook. There are some rest stops in Nebraska that you can get free access, but that is not the norm. Any of the truck stops that have the (forgot what Pilot's call them) overhead gantry, run tv signal blockers so you cant use your free tv. Personally I recomend Verizon, as they have a lower price.

Most of the trainers will give you a set of the truck keys (as long as you dont lose keys), and the truck is locked up when away. Yet for down time, The trainers I had were all out gogogo! The most down time I witnessed was when we traded loads. We had a load that was supposed to go east and another driver was running out of time. So we had to wait in a stop some 6 hours for her to show up and trade to go back west. The only other time was when my trainer "roy" spent some 6 hours in Burns Harbor trying to get christmas off with family (no he didnt get it). Yes there is extra pay for driving on holidays.

When I was with Western Express, "Greg" loved to stop at the casinos. There was a little more down time then with Western.

Personally I would recomend you go down the road in Salt Lake to Werner Trucks of Salt Lake (just around the corner) and sign up for a used CR England truck. You can finance a used truck for $50,000 with a lot less headaches and payments will be alot cheaper. Plus the maintenance on said truck will be yours.

I beg you, please dont fleece. If you really do want that private property. Buy it.

 

You've stated that you respect Lovesthedrive opinion, well what you read above it the best advise you will ever receive with regards to CRE. If you can't afford to buy or don't have the credit to do so, stick with being a company driver until you put in enough time to move on. If you think the "sound" business bent you over you ain't seen nothing yet.

All you have to do is read every post on the board about CRE. Of course, there are those on the far left and maybe one or two on the right side of the debate. What you will find is an overwhelming imbalance of information that clearly points to caution. Don't simply dismiss every negative post about them as rantings of lunatics just becuase you have found that CRE is your only option at the time.

There is a lot of valuable information on this site for those that are willing to do some research. As a matter of fact you will read numerous warnings that flow along the same lines as this one. All too often that advise is ignored.

Remember. Reputations are never given, they are earned.

Move forward with eyes wide open and drive safe. Best of Luck to you.

Oh yea, I also wanted to address the wifi thing.

I just switched from Sprint to Verizon. I had been using the Sprint notebook card for years and was always happy with it. But I found out that if I got a Verizon blackberry I could then plug my laptop into the Blackberry and use it as my internet connection. It costs an extra $30/month to do so, but I was then able to cancel my Sprint card which was costing me $60/month.

I also found out just how bad, slow and spotty my Sprint card was. I kept both for one month and downloaded identical files to compare speeds around the country. Verizon consistantly outperformed Sprint by a wide margin and Verizon's coverage is infinitely better, in my opinion, of course.