considering going with Roehl

DsquareD - Thank you for the information. What was it about driving refrigerated that bothered you? I'm curious as I was under the impression, perhaps mistakenly, that refer trailers offered more flexibility for cargo than plain vans. Cheers.

 

Kind of. I don't want to be a big downer on the forum. I'll send you a PM about my experiences after I finish dinner. You can always go reefer if van isn't doing it for you. That's one of the nice things about Roehl.

 

It's not about being a downer. It's about supplying info. The problem with this industry is people only talk about the good givin peoe a false impression of each company. Every company has negatives. Trust me Roehl does too. Put the info out there for others to make a choice knowing the good and bad

 

Reefers do offer more flexibility. For owner ops, that have their own trailer. In a large company it will be rare to haul dry goods in a reefer. Roehl doesn't haul produce, at least I don't believe they do, so that is a huge plus. However, having to deal with wash outs, fueling reefer, making sure it has enough if dropping it at a customer, getting one that you need to pre cool but has a dead battery or won't start. Someone else ran it out of fuel. Tons of fun that, priming it. I'm not a fan of them. Others like it.

 

I was wanting to converse with bitshifter privately because I think we may have some previous work/life experience in common and I wanted to taylor my response to him specifically. I will share some generic things about reefer though that I grew tired of.

• I don't get paid to fuel. It's bad enough that Roehl treats us like kids on this issue instead of giving us options that allow fueling at the end of the day that don't cut into drive time. Now add reefer fueling and you nearly double your line 4 time for fueling, especially if you pick one up on or near empty, so you fuel it up and still have to stop again a few hours down the road to fuel the tractor.
• Washouts are another pita that cuts into drive time wether I'm doing it myself or waiting 45-60 minutes to have it done while my 14 is ticking away.
• Jump starting goes both ways. I carried a very high quality set of jumper cables with me so it wasn't too bad, but still a pain. I did do it in reverse once with dead batteries on the tractor in the winter (batteries where at end of their life).
• Lumpers. I'm not sure why so many grocery warehouses don't just unload their own freight, but Lumpers are the norm in the reefer hauling business. If I could just whip out a corporate credit card and pay the bill it wouldn't be quite as big of a problem, but that would require the company to trust their drivers. So you check in with the consignee and then they tell you to go see the lumper service. Now you wait in that line for another 30-45+ minutes just to get the price so you can go out to the truck and wait for check authorization. Now you back into the door and wait... 2 hours if you're lucky, sometimes 4,6 or 8 hours. My longest was just over 12 hours locked to the dock and no detention because guess what happened in that 12 hours? I had a 10 hour break.
• Grocery warehouses are a pain and treat drivers poorly. They frequently over book appointments so if you are as little as one minute late that is their excuse to put you at the end of the list and make you wait 6-8 hours and it may have been a relay load that you had no control over. Even if you are on time and so is everyone else they can't get them all done at once so you wait and if you jump through all the right hoops you just might be lucky enough to get $10 or $20 of detention pay.
• Fellow drivers. So after you washout your trailer like a good little boy and put it away to go home you come back to the truck ready to go to work and guess what?!? All the empties need a washout or at the very least a good sweeping of the corrugated floor. Also barely over half tank of fuel and you need at least 3/4 to drop at a customer so you have another wasted fuel stop that you don't get paid for. And regardless of how quickly you say you can do it on your logs the 14 never stops ticking. So actual fueling may only take 7 minutes but now you sit there waiting for the guy in front of you to move his truck so you can get out of the fuel island and get back to work.
• Dry loads in a reefer are frequently crap loads. For instance, my most frequent home time load was scrap paper. The mill that it went to was half past old and the employees kinda grumpy, which wasn't that bad. It was the sweep out that was a killer. Apparently dust masks are too good for truck drivers and if you wear contact lenses you might as well just toss them after sweeping out a scrap paper load because it's like trying to sweep against the current in a wind tunnel.
• Overloading (granted this was more of a problem at Marten than Roehl. But just in case you decide you want to take your reefer experience to another company.) The other dry loads that you might get are at places that aren't used to loading reefers. So you get over loaded and then drive 45 minutes to the scale and 45 minutes back to the shipper, more miles that you don't get paid for. This eats up both line 3 and 4. If you're lucky they get you back in a dock and cut your load right away. If not, you might have to wait until they come back the next morning to cut the load. Load cutting also gets tricky because maybe the customer decides that the item to cut was loaded first so most of the freight has to come off and be put back on.

Ok, there's a little sampling of what bugs me about reefer. And before any of you dog me out about that's why you get paid 2 cents extra, I get that. It was not my intention to go on a rant and I'm not afraid to work hard. I'd just rather put more of those working hours in behind the wheel.

 

I was just giving the cliff notes, you did better. Not worth 2 cents to me.

 

I hate to sound like a whiner, so that is why I didn't want to post publicly at first. Also if a person wants to get into hauling produce (not sure if Roehl does besides bananas & potatoes) then you might as well go reefer.

I remember lusting after a Great Dane reefer with a spread axle. If I was to own my own equipment that is what I would like to have. Never have to slide tandems again and can go to 40K on the spread. I spent quite a bit of time discussing the business with a few O/O's and there is some good money to be made if you know what you are doing and are connected with the right freight dealers/brokers.

FYI: Produce is a bit of a specialty which has additional headaches of its own, 4-5 stops at produce farms in CA before you can get rolling, and special temperature monitoring of the cargo, not just reading the control box on the reefer unit. But that's why it pays more and can be a niche that some drivers prefer.

 

Yeah, did some in the past, CA to east coast, lots of Nogales, AZ in the winter. Hated it, strawberries were the worst. I'm sure it paid great, but I was just a driver.

 

DsquareD -

I received your PM and it is very sage advice. It appears that I cannot reply yet with a PM as I don't have enough points or messages or who knows.

Thanks,
Robert

 

Ok. I forgot about the post count restriction. You'll be there soon if you keep posting.