Can’t beat Crete

The bad outweighed the good.

But here’s my experience with them before I got all my endorsements and left.

So to start I had no problems with the tractor, spotless, low low miles 50k and 2025. This was about the only good I could say cause after is just…

Starting off I already disliked their system. Why are we filling out bubble sheets in addition to scanning in our paperwork. Is a signed BOL not enough? Also the bubble sheets are crucial to getting paid. Good thing I always held on to my paperwork until I got my check. Sometimes I’d have to send in the same paperwork 4 or 5 times as their automated message would tell you it didn’t go through. Good thing I held on to all the paperwork for weeks. PITA. Blows you up with messages while driving, they’d rather message you on the tablet than call you. They only called when it was time to get back to work or when they see your truck isn’t moving. Throughout the work week? Tablet. In an industry where communication is literally everything, this sucked. I’m used to just doing the work and not having to call anyone, but with the system they run I had to be in constant communication with them. They’ll make changes to the load assignment halfway through the drive and you won’t know because it’s on the tablet and I learned you need to pull over when that happens or you’ll be wasting time.

I really don’t understand how the load acceptance truly works because you accept the load it goes to accepted then you have to sit until it’s activated? Sometimes taking an hour for that to happen in my experience, I had to message and when that didn’t work call them to activate it. It’s just outdated or something it sucks. Hate to say it but when I was with Schneider it’s literally just accept trip look at the times and roll. Fuel anywhere you want anytime you want within their network. I feel like it’s really bad when you look back at your rookie company fondly when you are now experienced. I probably communicated more with crete in one week than a whole year I did at Schneider. No joke.

Navigation was ###, prescribed routes also ###. I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt my first week, being a trucker path enjoyer, until it lead me to 2 road closures. Guess I gotta turn around now. I only used TP after that. I was probably too new to the company to be micromanaged about the routes I took I could only imagine the day they’d get on my ### about it.

Hated the way the load acceptance worked, I still don’t know to this day how it works, I can only assume it’s when accepted it sends it to them then they have to move it to active trips. My first time dealing with it I’d sit… and wait… couple hours pass. Thinking maybe it’s just not ready yet. Still under accepted….. I message them “is the load ready to go?” “Yes good to go!”. Uhhh, alright, I pull up the shipper is like yeah we were wondering when you’d come get it. I take it. The tablet still shows accepted…. i just say screw it and off I go. I run out of hours after 550 miles. Needed fuel. Went to a TA. Couldn’t do it, because the trip wasn’t activated. Messaged them they THEN activate the load on the tablet. Put in a fuel solution form then boom, prescribes a Love’s going 50 miles BACKWARDS on the route I’m on.

I go home and get my stuff. That morning I get a call from them saying they had a non compliance issue about the fuel stop what happened. I told them about it and they said oh.. okay. Left me alone.

Same thing, load stays accepted and I’m just thinking this is how things work so I grab it and go. Get a 300 mi run that doesn’t deliver until the next day. I didn’t know that because I couldn’t see the time until it’s “activated”. I do the whole run in just under 5 hours. It’s WM of all places so I drop it off they didn’t say anything about the time, at this time I’m just genuinely confused so I message about the next load, asked if I delivered the WM load it’s then they reveal the times and say “might be a service failure.” Well what the f***. So they don’t have any empties of course, I’m early. I bobtail to the nearest stop down the road and shut down. Next morning I still don’t have an empty. I tell them that immediately. The next morning I get told to go back to WM I did and still no empties. 1 hour passes I get a new place to go for an empty. I get another preplan for 200 miles, I didn’t expect to drive only 5 hours and sit I thought they wanted me to bust out 500 miles that day which is what I would have preferred. Wrong. They wanted me to do 5 hours of driving that day and sit on it. The other load is activated this time without messaging and it was ready at 00:00 - 23:59. Well I didn’t have hours to pick it up at midnight so I had to shut down and pick it up at 5 am. One thing I didn’t do wrong was tell them my PTA I was a PITA with PTA cause I would let them know after every pick up and drop off. So I pick up this measly 200 mi load, says trailer is due for inspection… I call goes to voicemail and message about it… radio silence. For hours. Probably cause it was the overnight people or something, they are terrible. I wanted to take it to a shop BUT you have to have a request the shop sends to them and they have to approve it. Which also takes… you guessed it, hours. I pretrip it accordingly, looks OK. It’s only 1 hour to drop it off. I’m still headed for the shop thats 30 mins away, what could go wrong. Then boom, trailer tire explodes. Call roadside, 30 mins pass. “We got someone coming in 90 mins.” Alright. This 3 hour load turns into a 7 hour load. Drop it off. Pick up empty. 5th wheel handle won’t lock in properly. I lubed it up, banged it with a hammer, backed up harder into it. Won’t fully engage. Got a preplan OH to PA. No window needs to be there early morning. It’s like 2 pm at this point. With 6 hours left. I let em know they cancel it. I inquired about my fifth wheel, didn’t get anything regarding a shop, terminal they’d want to go to or anything. Well my clocks ticking so I bobtail to nearest TA 30 mins away. Their roadside number says you can go to any TA or Love’s for service. I call roadside ask the process. They said go to the service counter and they’ll send a request to us and we’ll either approve or give you another option. I go to their service counter. The experience with the guy there is like something out of idiocracy. I say my fifth wheel won’t fully engage when coupled. “Uhhh so dude what’s your issue exactly?”

Ok dude, “When I COUPLE to a TRAILER, the RELEASE HANDLE won’t fully GO IN. It does not PASS VISUAL INSPECTION.”

“So you need a whole fifth wheel replaced? We don’t really know what the issue is.”

I’m done, I tell them send a request to my company and see what they gotta say about it. He said alright and did it can’t get me in until midnight though we’ll call you when you can bring it in.

I spend all night there, until 8 am, no one called not even crete. My tablet stops working so now I can’t even send messages to them. I’m ready to just say f*** it and quit. I go to their nearest terminal they finally call me as I’m driving, they ask what’s going on, pulling up messages from 3 days ago. I’ve been contacting them non stop for a night straight and you can’t tell what’s going on? Not the ones I sent about the mechanical issue. I explain my issue, why it’s unsafe. They ask “so you’re headed to a terminal?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright put it in the shop let us know when you’re ready to go out again.”
“I probably never want to go out again after this experience I had and the people I have to rely on when #### goes bad.”

click. I get a rental and I’m out.

So I wasted days of time, unpaid for all the f***ery bussing the truck around shop to shop. Terminal was 2 hours away. I really dislike deadheading anywhere as it’s not productive.
Didn’t even want to badger them about breakdown pay cause getting them to do anything about an issue is already like pulling teeth. If they want a trailer to come detached and crush a bunch of people that’s cool, but it’s not gonna be me.

I decided that their night shift is useless, weekends are like the night shift all day long, i couldn’t tell if they’re genuinely clueless or just acting like it. You’ll screw up an entire day trying to get ahold of someone who will actually help you. I personally like to start my day off at 3-4 am but the only people who are of any assistance when s*** goes wrong are only available at 8 am it seems. I imagined something like this happening thousands of miles from home in BFE and ultimately just pulled the cord while I was close enough for it to cost only a hundred bucks. I’m hardcore when it comes to pushing miles and this sitting around waiting bs just isn’t for me.

In conclusion, the best part of the job is they leave you alone, the worst part of the job is when you need them they also leave you alone, leaving you in the dark until I can only assume their productivity alert kicks in and they realize you’re not moving the truck. I was under the assumption if I had died they’d probably find out days later.

When I left orientation they said they hoped this would be my last driving job. (Assuming we want you to stay here for a long time.) Well, with the way they ran things it burnt me out so fast that it was actually accurate. I wanted it to be my last driving job. For them at least.

 

Also I’m not venting just posting my experience.

 

they do but I don’t mind that. It was the fact that my tablet completely locked me out of everything. Couldn’t go on duty, see my loads, messages. They told me to take the tablet to the shop as well.

 

It’s just my biggest gripe is doing too much for free. If they want to cheap out and not let ta or loves fix your rig that isn’t an engine issue they’ll deadhead you to the shop terminal even if it’s 200 miles away. I’m used to getting paid miles or breakdown pay to bring it to the shop. #### that.

 

you just click accept load and it just moves it to accepted. It didn’t move to active for me for hours sometimes and if it wasn’t in active I’d have no idea where to fuel. Call roadside after hours and watch how long it takes to get your problem fixed. Just lol. If you turn down loads it can take hours to get a new one. Sitting not getting paid isn’t what I came to do. I knew who to call for every issue. It’s lowkey punishment when you have mechanical issues cause they’ll never let ta or loves fix anything unless its a mudflap. Just deadhead 200 miles for free to our shop when you have a bigger issue. I understand #### breaks but I’m not a slave bro lol.