Newbie going to Roehl National Flatbed Div.

I saw plenty of new flatbeds come into Marshfield a couple weeks ago.

 

y'all should post that on paoldschool'ers "when are they gonna get new equipment" thread. Things must be looking better on the OR if the equipment purchase is happening.

 

We've had 4 Freightliners and they were pretty good except for the last one. It had problems from day 1 and spent quite a bit of time in the shop. We were happy to get rid of it and get a ProStar but in the 6 months we've had it, it's had 7 warranty claims and visited 3 different dealers and left us on the side of the road 3 times. It's not Roehls fault but it's frustrating.

 

Well they want to expand the fleet by 500+ from what ive heard a few months ago. So its possible that a lot of the junk will stay around for a little while.

 

want to expand and will be able to expand may be two different dreams. I know there was an effort to cull turnover the entire time I was there, but it's hard sometimes. In the efforts to stay safe your FM will spend the majority of his/her time working with drivers that are going to be let go for safety reasons and by doing so neglecting the drivers that may just need a bit more attention to be saved. I think that they should make a department like driver finishing for drivers that can't do things the right way, and just call it driver micromanaging. Really focus in on those guys with a specialized group of FMs and let the rest of FM's actually take care of their fleets.

 

If you do, it's likely due to a clerical error.

We generally give newbies "Old" to "Venerable" trucks, that way if they drive into a lake, the company mitigates their losses.

 

It certainly won't hurt, you just take a look when you're out there at Van vs. Flatbed drivers. There's a difference. Van drivers are cleaner, flat drivers are leaner.