Crete/Shaffer Trucking

Oh... I have no problem mentioning the account. Overhead Door. After Vietnam, not a whole lot scares me including mentioning an account. Just check with the Overhead door suppliers in Ohio and the Overhead Door operation in Grand Island. Case closed. It was poor service. I had a long conversation with the Overhead Door operation in Freeport, OH and a second pickup (darn... can't remember the town). I am not sure if rates also played into it, but I get a better compensation rate where I am at than I ever could get at Crete.

 

I dont have a horse in this race but if you look at other threads you'll see why he said that...

 

FYI Overhead Door is quite happy with our performance thank you very much. I pull several of their loads a year and never heard complaint one. Another item that makes me sure you don't have a clue is that the vast majority of loads we haul for them are 24hr drop and hooks (including all of the Grand Island loads) therefore no need to keep a shipping clerk sitting around collecting overtime. Check your facts next time insteading of making them up on the fly.

 

He posts quite a bit on this forum, not just this thread. Look it up. I am still waiting for an answer from him.

 

Keep in mind that if the budget carriers keep underbidding other carriers, they too will be out of business. When you cut rates, something has to give, cheaper equipment, cheaper drivers (at least in the cpm category, cheaper pay equals either less experienced or accident prone drivers generally, and that ends up costing them in the long run) or under maintained equipment (which will fail or breakdown more - thus costing more to fix). It costs a lot of money to be in business these days, and when you cut corners, it has to come from somewhere. Sure, we've lost customers here to cheaper rated companies, but it isn't long before we have the account back because the cheap carriers find out you cant haul it for what they were charging and are forced to raise the rates.

 

Ok... Whatever. You can believe that Overhead Door is completely and totally satisfied with Crete. I really don't care. I still am running more average miles that what is being discussed here in this thread and I am getting more compensation than I could get at Crete. Frankly, I don't want anything to do with the Overhead Door account pickups in Ohio. They are a PITA to get in and out of. Not looking forward to ever seeing them again. I remain hopeful that your comments are correct and that Crete will continue to service them. I won't lose any sleep if I never see them again. So, my best hopes are that you are right. May I call you names if I ever have to do their stuff again?

Oh.... mine was a drop and hook in Grand Island as well. There is no drop and hook at the shipping end for anyone. No room. So that tidbit of info you provided lent nothing to the discussion. I never meant to imply that we took over ALL of Overhead Door. I did mean that we took two shippers from Crete in Ohio and 1 in Penn. A lot of Crete drivers couldn't handle the little two lanes in Amish country Ohio and couldn't show up on time. Not my words... the shippers. Didn't really chat to the people at Grand Island. They seemed to be the type that I really didn't want to chat to anyway. The shipping end was a lot friendlier. But, either way, you and Crete can have it. I service a lot of real fine customers and getting that Overhead Door load was outside my normal routes. It just wasn't worth the time or trouble.

 

Hate to bust your balls again but every pick up I have ever made for OD has been a drop and hook. I have never had a live load in 3.5 years. The only live unloading I do is at the retail level at the individual distributors.

 

Well I can say this about CCC. They have the cheapest piece of crap trucks I have ever driven or seen. The only way the could spend less money on them is to not buy them. I had three trucks with shaffer and each one of them blew an injector within two months. Have never blowen an injector with ANY other company.

 

I am not sure how you are "busting my balls". I only did the load once and I am not convinced you have done the pickup locations I did. There sure were not any dropped trailers at either location and there was no real room to facilitate that. Again, I never referred to ALL OD locations or suppliers. You can't seem to get that thru your fogged mind.

Again, I am glad you enjoy doing OD. I have enough great customers that I would prefer not to do OD. Just like I avoid Walmart. I don't need these types of customers. I get a pretty good compensation rate and I deal with real friendly customers for the most part that make it to where I don't miss the generic one size fits all customers that Crete, Schneider, JB, and Swift do. Unfortunately, I occasionally will cover a load that one of these carriers can't seem to do. But, I am not doing it at a reduced freight rate. If they want to hear the tune, they have to pay the piper.

It really doesn't matter about the frequency of drop and hook. I rarely spend more than 30-45 minutes at a customer even live loading or unloading. That is called planning. Something that few of the big boys can get right. I can do my paperwork and update my spreadsheets while waiting to load/unload and by then I am usually ready to roll. I do drop and hook about 50% of the time, but I have learned over the years that it is not that great of a deal. Leaving a good trailer for one that the last driver wouldn't fix a light on or left me a flat tire.

I am not convinced at all that Crete has a great deal going. I have pulled just about everything there is to pull, livestock being the only exception, and done this from the Rio Grande to above the Arctic Circle and dealt with a lot of strange customers. Crete is no different than the other large carriers in whom they deal with. I like living in a more niche market and we never have more than single digit percentage of commitment of equipment to any one customer. That way if one of them takes a hit, it doesn't hit our overall freight structure very hard. We have 80% of our trucks preplanned on freight for the next day before 5 pm. I am usually booking my next load by mid afternoon for the next day. Sometimes I get booked up to 3 days in advance. I average more miles than the fleet average of ANY of the bigger carriers (over 145,000 a year) and I am by the house a couple of times a week and off on the weekends. Even in this economic downturn. And I do it at a higher rate than any of the big boys are willing to pay me.

So when Crete can beat all this, then maybe you will have "busted my balls"

 

Having read your latest post, it seems that you are the perfect driver, in the perfect truck, picking up the most perfect freight, in a perfect enviornment. In fact even your one customer is probably perfect too. Now, if I was a smartazzz, I might debate whether or not you are being perfectly honest, but I won't do that. LOL