WERNER: Greg Werner says "just take the truck".

One problem with this, you don't get paid to sit at a terminal.

But what about those who do have a house payment, a wife, and children? Just because they have a life outside of trucking, they must sacrifice their person life to lease/own a truck because of the payments, which means more miles on the road and basically no home time.

Hmm.. eighteen years with a company, which has got him all of 17 pieces of paper, 17 tie tacks, and two plaques with last years bonus I believe for continued service around $600.

Nearly 1.75 million miles accident free, which got him a million mile sticker, a million mile plaque, a million mile certificate, a million mile patch, his name on a wall, his name on the Werner website and no bonus.

And for every mile he drives per year without an accident, he gets about $0.005 per mile bonus or somewheres around that.

On time for nearly 8 years which has gotten him a spiffy collection of "on time" patches.

As someone recently said to him, they would have rather him gotten a better truck on his own merit, rather than having a complaint on a message board. That many years with a company, and that kind of a record merits no merit?

They give it to whoever has the hours. Or they give it to whoever is closest, no matter how many hours they have, and have them swap it out several hundred miles down the road when they run our of hours.

You've only been a driver for 0-1 years according to your profile. Lemme know how you feel about recognition after 22 years of driving and nearly 18 at the same company.

 

Perhaps you are not understanding my point. If a Werner driver goes to a terminal for service, do you have any idea how long they will sit waiting to get that service? Obviously you don't work for Werner. I think they have tried to change that a bit, by turning some of the terminal services to road breakdown however, if you call, it literally takes hours to get said service IF they even approve it. Its basically gotten to the point that unless you are stopped due to a maintenance issue, safety issue, or DOT OOS, then you don't get your road breakdown. Tires are notorious for this.... and I think all Werner drivers will agree with me on this one. And its said because Werner has a contract with Bridgestone for tire replacement at $30 bucks a crack.

Its a little difficult for anyone, and would not be normal in Highlander's situation to NOT get negative. I mean, his previous truck was running fine, had fought to get it where it was, took care of it, and it was sold out from under him (which isn't really a big thing). What the problem was not his truck being sold, it was the issue of getting a POS truck that took nearly two weeks to get fixed before he could drive it. I mean, here, lemme spell it out for your in simple terms. A good truck gets sold, and a POS truck that can't be run replaces it...... and then takes forever to get fixed. And he's suppose to be thankful and have a positive attitude out of this? Please don't make me use the "D" word on you, because this seriously sounds like a Democrats attitude.

Again, you missed my point. Highlander was sitting not because of lack of loads, but because of a POS truck that had been given to him. I don't think you have any farkin idea how often he gets a phone call on what is suppose to be his day off at 6am with "You are our only hope!" to deliver a load that is scheduled to be delivered at 7am.

Or being told "the load is assigned to you" when he tells them its his day off and he already has plans.....

At Werner for such a load, you would make $20 no matter how long it took. This case would not be allowed any mileage pay on top of the shag pay. So if you are happy with making say $60 a day for three shag loads that take 9 hours, then you are making little money and Werner would be perfect for you. BTW, that's less than minimum wage.

Still wont matter. What you don't realize, and you have false hope in is that if you do a good job, and go the extra mile, you will eventually get recognition. Maybe in a small company that has say 10 trucks, but it aint gonna happen in a company that has 5,000+ trucks. If you think you will get it for a "job well done", then you are in for a big surprise. I suggest you talk to the senior drivers with good DACs (12+ years with companies such as Swift, Schneider, Werner, Hunt, etc) to find out exactly how well they get recognized.

Because at Werner, on dedicated accounts, those who have less than 6 months experience get paid the same as a senior driver who has +15 years experience. Those who have million mile records make the same as a person who has a preventable accident. Tell me, if you worked for any production company, do you really think a person who has less than 6 months experience gets paid the same as someone who has worked at the same company 15 years? No. THAT is the problem with trucking. Pay is not compensary to experience in MOST cases.

Now OTRs are a bit different when it comes to pay however, with Werner, well... lets just say that the bottom of the barrel makes $0.21 per mile, and I think top for experience is around $0.29 per mile. This is nothing more than slave wages, and a serious pay cut, while corporate continues to sponsor things such as fireworks at baseball games, jobs are lost, pays are cut, and upper level execs and board members continue to reap the rewards of their positions with no losses and continue to make the same, if not more, than previous years.

If you really care about a company that if a family company, seems your ETHICS and MORALS would want you to KEEP your family company in business as it once was, instead of getting the reputation of being nothing more than a company of POS trucks, crappy customer service for drivers, disrespecting the drivers, pay cuts for drivers to the point of being called slave wages. ($0.21 per mile x 500 miles (10 hours) = $105 bucks. $105/10 = $10.50 per hour. Most can make that at McDonalds or MORE working for Walmart as a door greeter, and only work 8 hours and be home everynight)

And obviously, you with your "single man" blinders on are missing my point.

Are you sure about this, because all you keep saying is that if you do your job, and do it well, you will get recognition. Sweetheart, it ain't gonna happen.

Kinda hard to take pride in a truck, when you did take care of your previous truck, and get a POS in its place that hadn't been cleaned out (including a used condom and not one as I previously stated, but TWO large trash bags of trash that were picked up from inside the truck and thrown away), a POS truck that broke down within a day of driving it, a POS truck that took two weeks to get fixed, a POS truck that has more body damage on it than I care to continue to talk about. You talk about image? A million mile plus driver that has to drive a truck that looks like a bad rookies truck... and how is a driver suppose to take pride in himself and the truck. It takes a LOT of coaching and support to get him through this. If you don't understand it, you will if you do this job as long as he has.

ANd as for company image? Driving a truck that obviously has been in an accident is a good image for a company? What crack are you smoking?

No. The gold badge doesn't get him any respect with Werner or most of their employees. Those who have worked for Werner for more than 10 years, yes.. but those who have worked for Werner less than 10 years, especially those in "customer service" at Omaha. I can't tell you how many times he has been hung up on because he's on a cell phone, "I don't talk to people on a cell phone, *click*" Or how many times he's gotten attitude for simply asking a question. Or just plain out rude people on the phones. Or people that just simply dont know what the hell they are talking about.

Maybe for a less than one year driver........

Yes, and one day it's gonna smack you in the face.

 

His goal WAS to stick it out to 20 years and 2 million miles as that was his personal goal however, lets put it this way, he's keeping his options open for the first time in nearly 18 years.