CFI or Werner?

subseaguru · Jul 6, 2017

that is crazy. i was talking on the cb the other day and mentioned that i dont see many cfi trucks anymore. guess we all know why. i wish you the best of luck on your next venture. you certainly deserve better.

Byx · Jul 7, 2017

pattyj said: ↑

Sounds like your company wants to make sure you take a 30 minute brk.
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hubbardc23 said: ↑

I just left CFI and I cannot say enough bad things about it. I worked for this company from when it was just changing over to XPO, under XPO the freight was amazing, the relationship between drivers and fleet managers were good, and trip planning was tight. It was a company where if you worked hard you could make an obscene amount of money. That all started to change one night when I got a message over the qualcomm. XPO had sold us, taken almost all of our terminals, and now we were going to be CFI? We heard nothing else for several days. You don't know stress unless you are in a truck 1500 miles from home and 200 miles from anywhere getting news with no warning that you now have a different employer. Early on, the changes weren't huge but suddenly however, the office staff had a huge shakeup and they told us sales was making our name through marketing us as a company of highly skilled drivers who will go to the customers no one else wants to go to. I went through 3 fleet managers in a matter of months, each one usually would only last about a month and a half. My miles were still good, even though the shippers were way the hell out there suddenly and hard to find, but I kept quiet. One day I had a hub on a trailer start to go out, I caught it on my mid trip so I called into road service except I didn't get any notice that we had outsourced our fleet maintenance. I got a Petro/TA agent asking me what company I worked for, and me having to tell the poor soul that yes, some trailers do not have sealed hubs and no, its not something I can just drive on for another 800 miles without getting it fixed. Around this time I still wasn't uncomfortable. The miles were getting shorter and the trip planning was getting some weird layover in there, but it was still coming out right by the end of the month. I have a more experienced driver friend who I decided I would team with, since his current teammate was retiring from the industry and I was assured that CFI team freight was solid by the same lady who had recruited me when they were XPO. She hadn't lied to me back then so I trusted her again. That was a mistake. When I came in to pick up my friend from orientation it was the first time I'd been to joplin since the changeover.
1st thing: not one familiar face in the inspection bay or shop. not one. almost all new staff, but they kept the cantankerous, angry, tire guy.
2nd thing: a driver screaming at a technician over why his newly assigned, high mileage volvo has a cab support shock that's not even bolted to anything. I can certify, it was free hanging.
3rd thing: they started sourcing a lot of work out to surrounding dealerships; as they let go of experienced shop staff they brought in stupid kids who don't know much.
4th thing: the cafeteria food was way worse. It's totally inedible, which is an issue since once you're at the terminal its hard to get out for some food unless you take the ancient shuttle driven by insane people. One you are at the terminal, you cannot bobtail out.
5th thing: very little freight available, a lot of drivers there waiting on loads, and a ton of trucks with no driver.
I can summarize my experience team as: total crap. CR England has better trip planning. the dispatchers are lazy now, and night dispatch is more worthless here than any dispatch I've ever worked under: that includes JB Hunt. They downgraded our health insurance and charge more. They have new trucks but they have no bells and whistles other than a cheap cobra inverter, also they have lane departure systems that go off in construction zones like crazy. the collision mitigation system is piggy backed onto the adaptive cruise system but it often picks up 20ft bridges as a collision threat and hard brakes, reporting an event to the company. The forward collision system is a known issue with the company but they have no fix in place and don't care how much you don't appreciate getting flung out of bed because the trucks systems fail to operate. We got our new truck and the brakes were out of round from factory, the brake adjusters had water coming out of them so they weren't greased at all, none of the electronic systems worked. They instated fuel in route but it isn't very accurate, no matter what they tell you it never gets better. I tried to follow it for 8 months before I finally gave it up. You can only fuel at Pilot/ Flying J, so I hope you like pizza and subway. Most cfi drivers cook in their trucks at this point. The nail in the coffin was they started paying every 2 weeks, which I withstood, but then they started messing up the miles on the settlements. When they mess up paying you what they owe, it will take a month for them to make it right, thats just the facts when you get paid every two weeks. They don't pay hub mileage but they wouldn't even match the dispatch miles. they try their hardest to not pay detention either, even though its a ludicrously small amount of money anyhow. Their layover pay is ridiculous, it's $75 after 48 hours, and you won't get paid if you don't hound your fleet manager about it, under every dispatcher I had they would routinely forget to get you paid right. Home time is alright, they don't really care how long you take off if you produce, but that said they don't have enough miles for teams. they string together short trips with long layovers to make sure you always have enough recap to run endlessly. CFI also requires HazMat. They haul xpo hazmat which is never really anything truly dangerous which is nice, but you have to call in for hazmat so they can insure you're totally covered and their wait times on calls are a bear. They've cut office staff so you can expect to wait for an hour to almost two hours to get done with that call and its not reading the bills that makes that call long, its the wait time. They have switched to peoplenet but stripped a lot of options out of the system. The other day I had a load from L.A to Dallas, and when I got to Dallas there was no preplan. There's no reason to not have a team with hours preplanned but its something you can expect here more often than not. I told my teammate we needed to move on, and we had already had several options. They had us running such terrible short loads with such long layovers we just weren't earning enough, or what we expected to earn as a team. it wasn't even as much as I'd earned solo, and the reason was that CFI WILL MAKE YOU WAIT FOR HAZMAT FREIGHT IF YOU ARE HAZMAT ENDORSED. A day, two days, it doesn't matter. they'll piss you around 200 miles a day while they keep you in an area waiting for that hazmat, and the only reason they're giving you anything is because they don't want to be accused of making you wait for freight even though freight has patterns and their lies don't stand up. I once waited 18 days for kenworth to fix our truck and in all that time the company couldn't get us a different truck, ended up only paying 7 days of layover, then forgot to put it on our next check so we went a month without ANY PAY. They just don't want to pay extra for wasting your time is all, and when I told my fleet manager that I need more miles or I'll have to move on he told me verbatim "Look, You're a good team but I don't have it in me to care for every single driver I've got. Do what you need to do". My very next call came to him about an hour later, I'd gotten a rental car, was emptying out the truck with my teammate and was leaving effective immediately; just because you all decide to become cheap, petty, and worthless doesn't mean I need to stay. My truck was in the Dallas terminal and good to go for their next victim". He wasn't surprised, CFI is apparently losing teams left and right because their miles suck and he knows it. He said it himself and when an office worker comes clean that's when you know things are bad. He's not a terrible douche of a guy, but he puts in as much effort as I did as a kid working at Kmart Layaway. Only difference being that when I half heartedly did my job as a 16 year old kid, I wasn't busting up anyones livelihood. From incompetent road service, bad trip planning, bad equipment despite it being new and as basic as possible (the inside tractor tandems rims are steel to cut cost basic), bad hiring choices, terrible customers, awful new fleet managers, terrible fuel routing, bad yet expensive insurance, cut benefits, limbo miles that only get lower and lower, and avoiding compensating you for your time, this company has become total trash. Trash trash trash. choose anywhere else, choose any big box company and you'll be just as happy, meaning not happy at all. This company is in a race to the bottom with a falling rock, and it's beating the rock. I have never written a bad review for a company and I'm only doing it now because I know how this company is marketing itself and its just not true. its worse than SWIFT. its as bad as CR england. my last paycheck (for two weeks mind you) was a shade over 900 bucks before tax. Do Not Come Here. You'll come to regret it.
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You sound like you got fired.

I worked @ Cfi from 2012 to 2016 ( Conway truckload > xpo truckload > cfi) and I never had any real issues. Always had a pretty new well equipped truck, got my home time when I asked for it, and made decent money.

Roamin48 · Jul 26, 2017

8thnote said: ↑

If you're an experienced driver, which your post leads me to assume, then why are you talking to these mega-crap-carriers that have a documented history of underpaying and expecting you to spend weeks at a time away from home? Texas is a major trucker-friendly state. Surely there are better options which are closer to home?
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CFI is definitely not a crap carrier. If you do your job as they ask, treat there customers well and pick up/deliver on time: you will enjoy a great career at CFI. You can get all the miles you want once you prove yourself and they take great care of there equipment. Also, teams do very well at CFI, especially if both of your settlements are going to the same household.

Brokar · Oct 28, 2017

Beware of Werner

Stay away from Werner, just another shotty Mega Carrier out there. CFI is great I currently work there. Lots of miles, friendly with a small Company feel. Beware Dispatch will push you though, don't let them.

subseaguru · Oct 28, 2017

I’m heading to cfi tomorrow.

JourneyintoTrucking · Nov 25, 2017

mitrucker said: ↑

I also think that CFI has better equipped trucks. I know they have 1500+ watt inverters.
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I drive for Werner right now. No inverter unless you have a C-pap, the biggest invert allowed is 150 Watt (basically, laptop, TV and not much else - no appliances). Pet and rider policy, I have my dog with me $500 non-refundable deposit + $5/wk. The people have been great, 1st trainer was a nightmare but second was fantastic.
I'd stay but my miles have been terrible. You spend a LOT of time waiting for or going on fruitless searches for empties.
I've spent weekends waiting for Monday morning and my fleet mgr to get me rolling. Weekend and night dispatch are awful. .34cpm, no bonuses of any kind that I know of for safety, fuel or productivity. Nothing extra for holiday.
They have gotten me home for hometime with no problems. There wasn't any sign up bonus either. I paid for my own CDL tuition at a private company so that wasn't comped either.

JourneyintoTrucking · Nov 25, 2017

subseaguru said: ↑

I’m heading to cfi tomorrow.
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Please update us on your experience. Chinatown recommend CFI to me so I'm really interested.

subseaguru · Nov 25, 2017

JourneyintoTrucking said: ↑

Please update us on your experience. Chinatown recommend CFI to me so I'm really interested.
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Bare in mind that im on the O/O fleet at CFI. I love it. im preplanned one and sometimes 2 loads in advance. i had 1 load less than 1000 miles. im averaging 2800+. local dispatch in joplin is easy to deal with. i only had one experience with night dispatch and it was because it was a live unload and the dispatch said drop and hook. ive been paid on time and i was paid detention for that live unload even though it only took about 45 minutes. All in all, CFI is a much better and more driver orientated that werner ever will be.

Truck998 · Feb 6, 2019

What should an individual be aware of entering the industry? What are some of the better companies to work with? Class A CDL with KO restrictions,10 years in the electrical industry with air break experience ( extremely clean driving record). Realize I will have to update CDL. Do I pay for school or find a company to assist? Just looking for different opinions other than recruiters.

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