CRETE - A Year in Review

I have to give you credit. To have to put up with what you do, you should be making a lot more than you do.

 

First and foremost happiness is the most important thing. But don't fall into this "at least I have a job" mentality. Yes Knight has issues and even Schneider, these two mega carriers ALWAYS put my health and home time before just about anything else. I do the prescribed job and do it well but there is just more to life than servitude to a $50,000 job. Best of luck Snackbar. Your posts are the best ones here and when you cry I cry bro and when clean house I am happy for you oh and when you sit for a weekend I laugh but I know, as you do too, it all evens out in the end. Well it used too ! Now they are just trying to squeeze every last dime and nickel from the people.

 

Does Crete hire people with no experience straight out of trucking school?

 

Yes. I called to make sure they hired out of my school.

 

Let me attempt to address to "hiring excess drivers" SS seems to have such a problem with.

Crete has approx. 3900 drivers (company and o/o). If Crete loses only 1% (not an unrealistic number) of drivers each week due to health, safety, and turnover reasons, that equates to 39 drivers. The average orientation class is actually less than this number. So I think we can conclude that the company is only replacing normal driver turnover, and growing the fleet.

It was said in a safety meeting earlier this year that Crete was not going to grow the fleet, nor were they going to shrink it. The reason is that they want to be poised to haul the freight that will become available when the economy turns around and also when the truck capacity shrinks due to other companies going out of business or cutting back on their fleets.

I'm not saying they are right, or wrong. Just giving information to think about.

My miles this year are off as well, I've 110,683 paid miles at the end of October, which is an average of 11,068 per month. However, I have taken more time off this year. 1 week in Jan., 2 weeks in Feb., 10 days in Aug., and another week in Oct.. Usually I only take about three weeks total off.

Yes I know, comaparatively my miles are much better than many, according too SS. But I'll let ya'll in on my secret.......my father owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and all I have to do is ask for His help. It really is that simple.

 

I have one more thing to fax in to them today on my work history. I sent out 9 applications last week. I am hoping to go with these guys.

 

Good luck..let me know how it turns out with the FBI thing

 

Are any other National drivers on here having trouble getting out of your home region? I just finished a 9,322 mile November where I literally spent three weeks on the Southeast Regional board. After the first two weeks, I was close enough to home to take a couple of days and come back out hoping to get out of that loop. I got out of it for around a week which was my only good week for the month; but, even then I couldn't get out of the Eastern Time Zone except for 2.5 days and only saw the West Bank of the Mississippi once.

I did pretty well in the second and third quarters after the disaster that was the first and had worked myself into being back on track to make the raise. It seems pretty doubtful it's going to happen if this keeps up. I hate to cry conspiracy, but I've been hearing a lot of the SE Regional guys complaining that they're being sent way out of the region and can't get home. Makes sense. They get paid less for those runs and Crete saves. For anyone in administration who follows this book, this is the kind of thing class action attorneys drool over. It's probably not worth enough for an attorney to take a case for any one Plaintiff, but I've heard the possibility of lawsuits being discussed a pretty good bit of late and it's not just the usual nutjobs doing the discussing ... Stop it.

 

Weazz I called and made sure they got the fax today. I talked to my recruiter after that and said they are waititng on my TN, and Fl MVR's to show up. And they had faxed a request for some info from my school. The school hasn't responded yet. The fax number they sent it to is a generic number for the entire tech school. Our campus is seven miles down the road.

My sweetie said if they ask me to roll before Christmas, she said roll!

I am gettin psyched!

 

I heard they did away with SE regional.