Crete Carrier - A Year In Review - Fall 2013 Going Forward

crete offered me .40 cpm, and .10 cents on the dollar to 401k. ill stay where im at .36 cpm .20 cents on the dollor to 401k.

 

Crete recruiting has really stepped up their game. The usual emails and postcards of course. Now They have started texting me, and I got an automated call from them while I was on vacation in florida. I guess the next step is a call from a real person, this is how the conversation will go:

Recruiter: "Heya this is Crete calling, just want to let you know that we're now paying 46 cents per mile!"
Me: "Do you still have optimized idle and driver-facing cameras?"
Recruiter: "Yes but only in some tr--"
*click*

 

If it was a live feed camera I would too. We have them but they are not live feed. They record onto an SD card and overwrite every four days. They are only viewed in cases of accidents. In the 8 months I have been here I have had mine removed once and that was to replace the card with a newer version. Has never been an issue.

 

Recruiter: We Are Now Going All-Automatic.
Me: Take Your Automatic And Shove It Up Your ##*

 

I prefer manuals, but in an OTR job, I wouldn't base my decision on whether I was getting an auto or manual since you're rolling down the highway with the cruise set for most of the day.

When I was pulling heavy containers as a local driver over at Schneider, I hated the auto. Takes too long to get up to speed, in stop and go traffic it can't make up its mind on what gear to be in, when coming to a rolling stop it gets "stuck" in neutral for a couple of seconds before making up its mind on a gear, when backing up to a dock with a heavy load, the truck lurches as it is riding the clutch. This is the Freightliner with the DT12 transmission. I hear that the Volvo automatics are supposed to be worlds better but I've never driven one.

Someone mentioned how it would react in icy conditions. My experience is that the transmission throws itself into neutral too easily when it detects the slightest bit of wheelspin, this makes for a difficult time when d&h in an icy drop lot. You would back halfway underneath the container, wheels would start to spin, and transmission would go into neutral before you got back far enough to lock onto the kingpin. So you would have to pull forward, then back up again, except this time you had to get a running start and you end up slamming into the kingpin. Imagine dealing with this multiple times per day.

The jake is much stronger on the automatic Cascadia versus the 10 speed.

 

I have one of the cascadia's from SFI what the automatic and I've never had any issue with backing up on it now with that being said it could be the way Schneider tinkered with the computer when they put it into service on the company side which wouldn't surprise me one bit

 

I've heard guys say that a long line of stop and go traffic causes the auto's clutch to get hot and the computer shut you down until it cools down some. Was in a bad detour traffic jam in IN last year. They shut down the interstate and we had to stop-n-go down a US route. There were 2 trucks from the same company just sitting in the middle of the street adding to the problems because their auto's clutch overheated and shut the trucks down within 100 yds of each other.

 

That's a good thought, now that I think about it the trans acted more and more weird the longer you drove it in traffic. The overheating theory makes sense. Also the truck was a 2013 so maybe they've improved the backing, but yes the company did things like disabling the performance mode, who knows what other settings they changed.

 

I made it to Nevada,
I had to ask for an extra fuel stop, It was 1,153 miles between the 2 fuel stops and I didn't feel like running that low, and its hot out here too.

 

I got parked in Limon, CO and a few minutes later it was rain and hail. Had a buildup on the windshield (since I was parked) about an inch thick and 7-8 inches up on the wipers....just rain now, and the ice is melting off....