H.O. Wolding is a GREAT company!

Congratulations Biggy D! Be sure to bring warm clothes and outdoor gear. You'll be outside most of the time during orientation...and its cold here.

At the yard for service. These new trucks look nice...

 

207 pride. Congrats and good luck. If you get Shawn as a dispatcher, you'll love it. I did. If you get Joe as a trainer, listen to everything he has to say. Great guy too.Butch aand Fran will do a great job of getting you ready for training.

 

Thanks guys and Ron and Gail speak very highly of you Weeble. Without mentioning your name of course... Any tips of things I need to bring to orientation would be greatly appreciated...

 

Another ProDrive grad. Ron runs a great program there. I need to give him a jingle, haven't done it since the move.

 

Happy to see you guys enjoy the company because I only heard horror stories from current drivers about they way they pinch pennies. One driver says they will trip over a dollar to pick up a penny. Now the original owner was good to his drivers and gets a lot of praise ... but his kids have taken over and appear to be bean counters ... not sure how much driving experience the kids have.

To add balance to this thread, this is what I heard and witness about how they put dollar over driver.

>> They use to have smaller drive wheels on their tractors. A government grant wanted a study or something and they installed smaller drive wheel on all their tractors and then drove those tractors over 1 million miles. I even seen qualcom messages saying the driver has to crank up 20 times so the customers yard dogs can get under the trailers they drop. I know some yard dogs are frustrated with HOW and have raised the trailers higher so HOW drivers have to crank them down just to hook up. Tough on the older driver or a female driver or a driver with a sore back or any driver in bad weather.

>> They pay their shop help low wages. This caused the shop mechanics to walk out and quit once (maybe more). I know they have a couple of mechanics all the drivers rave about but if you get someone on the low end of the pay scale and you are driving a tractor 8 years old that is a formula for a road side break down. I heard they are getting newer equipment all the time because of California standards but not paying the support well is risky at best.

>> They will force you to take a longer route if it runs through the mountains to avoid paying for chains and some tolls. I heard stories about drivers coming out of california having to add 100 miles to their trip (unpaid) to avoid the rocky mountains during the winter months.

>> Their drivers have mentioned the Safety Director use to drive for another company and his driving career ended when he got into a accident that cause a fatality. I have no idea if this is true ... just a story that a group of their drivers told me.

>> I have seen them use retreads on drive tires. This might be more to the fact that they don't pay their shop staff well and a mistake was made. But another driver said it was like that on other tractors too.

>> About 12-15% of your pay is bonus based. If you don't make your bonus because of a medical leave (I know a guy that was out two weeks and did not qualify for his bonus) you lose a lot of money.

>> There is more but you get the idea.

NOW FOR THE POSITIVE ...

>> I heard it is a great company if you live in their power lanes. Home time is easy for those drivers.

>> I heard the pay is good if you include the bonus money.

>> I heard they are getting newer equipment.

>> I heard if you have the right dispatcher you can get good miles.


Take it for what it is worth. No place is all roses and sunshine or is as bad as one driver thinks it is.

 

Well thank you for your Info. There are no perfect starter companies. That being said after doing a ton of research not just here. I think they are the best fit for what I am looking for in a company.

 

True Biggy D, but good to have all the facts before committing your blood, sweat, and tears to any company. I could have mentioned more, like small trailer wheels that don't line up to the height of some docks, but the point was made in the above thread ... They are trying to cut cost where they can and at times it causes some for driver end their customer base. Right now they are run by bean counters.I honestly do believe this is a good company for a hard worker.that lives in their power lanes.Good luck

 

As a newb living in Maine I probably fit in perfect in there power lanes. As far as bean counters that's corporate America... All the companies that that hire newbies in my area are just as tight if not tighter. Like you said work hard, Smile and kill them with kindness... I am thankful for the opportunity to get a start earn my way and get real life experience.... Who knows were life brings me but I think I picked a good place to start...

 

Wow I've been busy and missed a lot here,

chip it's nice of you to come add balance to the thread. When did you last work at Wolding? Most of the posts here are by current drivers or those asking questions of current drivers. Except for Weeble of course who abandoned us to go play in Canada.

but I would like to address some of the issues you brought up.

I never heard about the grant for trucks with the smaller tires but it doesn't surprise me. Wolding is very good at looking at the programs and grants available to trucking companies. I guess some call it bean counting but I call it being smart business people. They save pennies because they add up to dollars. It's why they have been in business for so long.

there are trucks with smaller tires and one of them was my first truck. Yes there were a couple of days when I cursed those tires for all they were worth. I am an older female driver with a bad back and it was in winter. LOL however it wasn't very often and I never experienced a yard dog raising the trailers everyone I've encountered has been helpful. Maybe I was just lucky. Most if not all of those trucks will be taken off the road soon. My understanding is by the end of the yr abt 80% of the fleet will be 2010 or newer and another 60 have been ordered for the first quarter of next year. Some of the reasoning was California but through bean counting or testing they discovered the significant savings in fuel mileage.

as for the shop, I honestly have no idea what their paychecks look like. I had heard their was a pay issue and some left but do not know the details. Wolding is a training company. Not only do they take drivers fresh out of school but technicians as well. Just as drivers get experience and move on to better paying companies so do technicians. My last truck was 10 years old and I was never broken down on the side of the road. Are they perfect absolutely not! No one is! I get frustrated some times when I go to get something fixed and it seems to take forever only to find out that, hey we decided to change your exhaust but I would rather have them fix the things they find than send me out with a problem. We're all proud of our CSA score and some of that credit needs to go to the shop.

as for the Rocky Mountains, uhhhh do you really want to be on there with a driver with 2 months experience in the winter? You want/need chains you simply walk in the shop and get them. We mostly do not go over Donner, the more experienced drivers do but as a whole it is considered a safety issue not a financial one. The one like I like is if it is hazardous enough to need chains I do not have to go. We are not forced to go play with the crazies in the snow. Those that are comfortable with it can. Our routing is not forced, yes if your hundreds of miles out of route there will be a problem but for the most part your good to go. Wolding will not pay tolls are the Kansas turnpike unless you are routed that way. I see their point, why pay $12.50 when it saves less then 15 miles. Other than that all my tolls have been paid and I haven't been routed around them.

as for the retreads I don't know I haven't seen it.

I've heard the story about our safety director and have as much detail as you. I'm unsure why you brought it up. Was the accident his fault? Was he fired because of it? Does that mean he can't do his job or will be to cautious? I don't know the details but rather than assume he was at fault I consider the other possibilities. Maybe the other vehicle ran a red light, or drove under the trailer or came from the far left to take an exit. Too many things can happen out here to make assumptions.

and now for my pet peeve. The Bonus Money.

When I first started out I researched a lot of companies and most were right in line. Wolding included, some were less and maybe a couple a penny or two more. As a new driver your PAY is .29 per mile and goes up at 6 months, 9 months and at one year, then each year after. That first year is tough. I put my actual numbers on a post in this thread for the first year and it wasn't bad. You are paid by the mile. You may get PAY for detention. You get layover PAY and you get PAY for doing a reset away from home. You also get PAY for multiple stop loads and unload PAY if you do that.

wolding also offers the opportunity to earn BONUS money. It is not your pay, it's a bonus for a job well done! Each quarter you have the opportunity to earn up to .045 cents per mile for all miles driven in that quarter if you drive over a certain amount of miles. Sorry don't have all the numbers handy but there are three different levels of mileage and bonus. I perfectly understand the complaints when your staying out and asking for miles and can't get the bonus. I've been there! I hear some of the guys complaining about not getting a bonus and then after talking to them further you find out they are home most weekends or only drive 8 hrs a day or refuse to do anything to help themselves. They just expect this pay that is not pay but is a BONUS. There is also a safety bonus, bonus vacation weeks after a certain number of years accident free, million mile bonus etc.

this company is in no way perfect. But I guarantee you this, if a family member got sick tomorrow H.O. Wolding would make sure I got home as fast as humanly possible. I've seen and heard to many first hand experience to doubt it. My mentors mother got hurt recently and she had to go home and take care of her for an extended time. H. O. Wordings response, just let us know when you want to come back, your truck will be waiting.

will you find things you do not like about this company. Definitely! Drives me crazy no one ever says their name, sometimes I scream about their trailers and there has been many a tempting moment when I wanted to find a secluded spot for the Qualcomm and a hammer. No company is perfect and no company is a good fit for everyone. Different things are important to different people.

This forum is mostly new drivers, we came here when starting looking for info and stuck around to share our experiences. I have learned most of what I know by talking to the drivers that have been with Wolding five years or more. Anything less seems to be a lot of complaining and I've experienced that with other companies drivers as well. So I would encourage anyone looking at any company to find the old timers, ask them what it's really like once you have proven yourself.

 

Well now that it's been brought up, do any of you carry chains? If so how many? I know one driver that only carries two just in case of getting stuck. Others a full set and any number in between. And where do you put them?