C.R. England and Sons, Inc. - West Valley, Ut.

I went down to Tenn for Cov I was their for mabey 12 hr when I got their it was around 4:00pm And I could not belive how many people were their then I was told to go to dinning room and get something to eat got done went back to hotel room across the street and I dont know how to say it but something did not feel right,the next day my room mate and I were getting ready to go back over to the school I told my room mate I left paper work back in the room and needed to go back when I got back I called a cab and went to the bus station and got a ticket back to appelton Wi and after seeing this web site I did the right thing, now I can stop wondering Now I know to always go with your gut feeling

 

"If the orientation class is huge, you don't wanna work for 'em".

Another great, great rule to use to help you avoid rotten companies.

You made one classic mistake, though. You didn't drive to your orientation. At least you took enough money with you for the bus ticket back home. One should always take enough money for the return trip, just in case the company turns out to be infested with liars and he has to bug out early (before he is officially hired on--very important move).

I went to a Builder's Transport (remember those guys?) orientation back in '96 and didn't even make it to noon on the first day. After seeing about 75 guys pile into a classroom that had maybe 40 seats, I vacated mine and headed back home. In my mind, the drivers who were being replaced by all those newbies were quitting for good reasons. They knew something I didn't, something that definitely wasn't gonna be good for drivers like me, so I bugged out. Come on. 75 drivers a week at a company's orientation? And this was a company that had about 2,000 trucks. That's roughly about 250% turnover. No thank you, BT! BT was either soon bought out or they closed down, so I know I made the right decision.

I also walked out early on a TRISM orientation once for that same bull. When I got to the orientation terminal (in Joplin, Missouri), their lot was filled with trucks that had been cleaned out by quitters, and the orientation class was so crowded they had (seedy) hotel rooms with four guys in each room. I got out of there pretty quick as well, went back to Salt Lake, and found one of the best trucking jobs I've ever had. I made more money at this company than any other and even got a brand-new 99 Volvo when I hired on to drive dry-van loads. Unfortunately, this company was a little bit "too" good, as it went bankrupt about a year later. This is no surprise, given that trucking companies compete with each other mainly on labor costs. Low wages = business success in today's trucking industry.

 

Ok - I am not going to get into the argument about how bad CR England is. I just want to know what to do now that I am in their CAT Progam.
I have completed their training with about 15k truck miles from their training and now working with a disgruntled lease operator from them. But my trainer was good and was actually making good money from them - a true profit and he is also a lease operator.

The question is if I do leave who is going to hire me with no real time and no real miles under my belt. I can't afford to sit around and wait.

I did get a call from JB Hunt but from what I have heard and read they are just as bad as CR England in some area's.

How is anyone supposed to make a go of this if the only people who will hire a newbie are the bad companies?

I'll agree with what was said about the hotel's and stuff though - Indiana apparently isn't too bad compared to the others but when I was in SLC we were packed 8 to a room - no tv and if you went into the tv room your screwed if you don't want to watch what everyone is watching.

But as for the training - I think it is adequate to get started with but now where to go from here - that's the question.

 

I posted this somewhere a long time ago-

Find another student that you can get along with and run as a team for the duration of your contract.

A good, hard running team can work anywhere in the company that they want to, and usually gets the better loads. There are also more dedicated accounts available to teams.

If the teaming situation dosen't work out, you can still run solo and not have to quit, and risk them trying to screw up your credit, DAC report, etc.

I ran team with them for 2.5 years, on a dedicated acct., and did pretty well.
Got enough experience, and kept my record clean so I could land a MUCH better job.

Good Luck-

 

they [screwed] my husband, treated him very bad, my husband is lebenese from lebanon, he fought against the terrorist from age 16 to 40 . but all the trainers treated him like ####... we wasted 4 thousand dollars for driving school, which they promised to find him a position. trust no one. what a mess he went through. all who think that this is the way to make a good living think again. all those trainers are ########.;\

 

I never made it past the orientation. I flew myself home. The only thing I can say is good from my experience is that CR England lists would would have been my 67K dollar lease truck as paid off. Gives me a good 75 point boost on my credit score.

 

Yeah, I hate to say it. Well, I would describe it really as a "mild dislike", but I agree with you, Lorm. If a guy really believes it's that easy to make big money, then let him get skinned. Those billboards are kinda like those little signs you see around some cities advertising some big money scam. You know, those that advertise something akin to making thousands for very little effort. All one has to do is call a phone number and he's on his way to a 10,000 dollar week, 250,000 dollar year. Yeah, those jobs. People are actually dumb enough to believe those jobs really exist. They don't realize that if those jobs did exist, there'd be no openings, and thus no signs on posts advertising those jobs. It's like the 20-dollar bill on the street. You'll never find it. Somebody else will have already found it by the time you arrive on the scene. Besides, getting a true "good job" takes a rather large amount of "connectedness" in this day and age. You gotta know somebody.

Same for those billboards. Ol' P.T. Barnum was right. Except he underestimated it. There's a sucker born about every ten seconds, not every minute.

Yeah, if somebody actually believes those billboards and expects to just simply fall into a good easy job that pays well, he deserves what he gets.

 

Back to my original question - where should someone in my position go with no verifiable hours and a cdl go to find work. Who would hire me?

 

My wife and I got our CDL licenses through CRE, mainly because we wanted to train together as a team, and because we wanted to take our dog with us after getting a truck. We did the lease thing and ran 20k miles per month average on a dedicated Walmart fleet. We stayed with them 15 months terminating our lease early and received our whole maintenance escrow of $7800+ back in addition to our miles as ran. Our fleet had a weekly floor pay of 5000 miles so long as you were available to run. The lease payments were too high I now realize, but we made about $20k more in our first year than we would have as company drivers. Most ppl that drive for CRE are not prepared to run 6 weeks out or more to pay for their lease and have poor on-time performance thus get crappy loads. I agree with another poster that CRE hires a lot of welfare to work type people whom have never been successful at anything else prior to trucking which brings the image of the company down, but I have to say that CRE has good equipment overall, lots of freight, and will run you to death if you want to run, but you have to make it work.:biggrin100 (37):

Anyone who has been in trucking long enough, knows that teams and solo driver live in 2 different worlds on the road.

I wonder how many solo drivers were late getting home for a important function or lost miles or sleep, so that England could take care of their precious team drivers and keep them from whinning and quiting.

By the way I used to run team for KLLM and USX. So before you say I don't know what I am talking about, Think agian. If you are getting treated poorly as a team driver, you can bet it is much worse for the solo.

I got my CDL from a now defunked school in 91 in Wa State. At the end of the 8 weeks (yep 8 weeks not 4 like most now) Gene England showed up in a Brand new FLD at the school and told stories and took students for a ride and told them to "come be part of the family" etc etc.. Out of the 23 students in the class, 19 went to work for England and one husband and wife team went to work for PRIDE (heard they were connected in some way to CRE, but don't know for sure) I went to work for KLLM and one other guy went to work for his dads log& Hay company. I searched out KLLM, they did not search me out. Why did I not do what most of the rest of them did? I was not impressed by Englands high dollar shinny equiptment and the low pay. I prefered a little less truck and more pay for the driver that KLLM offered. What good is a shinny new truck to drive when you can't pay the bills. Seems not much has changed in England land.