Central Refrigerated Truck Stop II

We always called them the Crash and Roll Stunt Team. You could usually hear one of us chanting "let's go Crash and Roll!" when we got stuck behind one.

I'm waiting to see what others drivers call Central drivers, other than Swift drivers.

 

You probably don't want to know!

 

grab a cb and you'll hear ALL the good stuff we say about you guys.

 

I have a cb. The only thing someone has said about me is I didn't let him over for a bear. I hopped on and told him I grabbed some brakes and flashed him over. He are his words and apologized, and thanked me for trying to let him over.

 

I don't make general remarks about any company. And I have even been known to stand up for Swift drivers in the past.
All the training company's have issues. None of them pay more than 1990s pay. None of them are overly safe.
But there are some good drivers at all of them. Many of them have been with the company's for years and years. Sure, this is not normal for the company, but they are at every one of them.
If you have issues try and find one of those drivers. Find out what lanes they are running, who their dispatcher is. etc. You may find info that can help you make more money.
But if you are just hanging out at the terminal whining those drivers will not talk to you at all. So you will never know.

On the lumper thing. They have allot of reasons for doing it that way.
Most of them I do not agree with.
1. They are not employees of the warehouse. These warehouses are mostly union. So they hire an out of house lumping company they do not have to pay well, or worry about workers comp, etc.
2. They are charging you to break down, sort and stage the load for their trucks. This means that they will get that product on their trucks for no cost to them.
3. Trucks are not released till they are done touching the product. Every time product is touched the chance of loss or damage is increased. So the truck driver is held till they are done. That way any loss can be put back onto the truck and not accepted. Thus they do not pay for the product or the loss.

There are other reasons also but these are some of the main ones. It pisses me off all the time, especially the holding of the truck till they are done with the load. I have sat in a dock while they actively worked a load for 8+ hours in the past.
Company's need to start charging detention on ALL receivers, under contract. And if they will not pay, we will not haul the freight. 2 hours is plenty of time to unload a truck. If they need to sort they can do that on their own time.
But until it costs them 100+ dollars per hour to hold that truck, they will not change what they do.

 

I haven't been able to talk to a CRST driver yet. It would be nice to do that. I will probably wait for central. I think I will be better off doing that. I'm just going to think about it and see.

 

We talked to a few they were having there truck fixed at Freightliner in KS and they were not happy, truck had been broken down for 2 weeks and they had done one load and it broke down again and had to be towed.

The other couple were equally unhappy with CRST.

 

it shouldn't even take TWO hours to unload.

only takes 15 minutes to load or unload my 24 pallets of onions on a flatbed. i'm guess the reefers would probably only hold 22 pallets???

 

Took almost 7 hours last night for Basha's to unload my truck.

 

Ive had 55. They double stack the light stuff.

Unload times were a big part of why I got on the Kraft fleet. I do a lot of drop and hook.