Any solo company OTR drivers for Crete Carrier? Considering making the move to them.

A lady left us and went there right out of the gate. She allowed herself to get pressured into lease purchase. She had a rough time getting into a rhythm. She tried to go back company, but they dragged their feet to the point where she quit. I think she went to Risinger. If a driver is recommended to go to Riverside, go company!!

 

Man...this went from questions about Crete to an all out job flex. I get some of you are happy about who you work for, myself included. It's like every time someone gets set on a company, folks have to shame that company and try to sway that driver's choice. Folks have different desires and philosophies when it comes to trucking and its jobs.... it's better to say good luck on your new journey......OP, Good luck at Crete!!!

 

I'm not the one tossing out insults Mr. Go back and read from the beginning.. Those started with you guys dogging who I drive for. I'm gonna respond to it and it doesn't matter if it's a troll or not.

 

Are you not reading my posts? I said HE and HIM, not YOU....that is unless you are using 2 user names. I said HE went from o.k. to sarastic to insulting in 3 posts. I never included YOU or your user name in any of the posts I made about what HE was doing or saying. And HIS sarcastic bs started after @Long FLD pointed out that there are other companies that pay as good as your company...no dogging out occured at that point until HE escalated it.

Nonetheless, I am done inadvertently hijacking this mans thread with a discussion about a company he never asked about..Snackbar out......

 

I haven't been on this site for almost two years because I felt like I was spending too much time on internet forums. But right now I'm a little pissed at Crete and thinking ahead in case I decide to quit and this is the only place I know where I might get good advice.

Anyway, to stay relevant to this thread, I've been at Crete for 6 and 1/2 years now. That's longer than I've stayed with any employer in 50 years of working. (Previous record was 4 and 1/2 years with three different employers.) So yes, I like them. Pay is good, benefits are ok (except deductibles on health insurance but I'm just gonna go ahead and blame politicians for that). Miles are steady, average 135,000 per year for the last four years. I'm at top of scale for western regional at 66 cpm, soon to be 67 cpm. (OTR pay will jump to 76 cpm at the end of the month, but for me it's worth 9 cpm to never ever again go east. YMMV.)

They get me home whenever I ask (I don't abuse that) and let me bobtail 100 miles sometimes to get there. They mostly don't mess with me. I've had a few asset managers (I think SSB mentioned that's what they call dispatchers). Most have been ok, and a couple were really excellent.

Here's what pisses me off. When I started here, I did Walmart dedicated for a couple years. It worked for me at the time but then some family things changed and it was better to go regional. When you are regional or OTR, you are required to do two weeks a year "helping out" at one of the four Walmart dedicated accounts they have unless you are on a different dedicated account. I was on a different dedicated account for the first couple of years after I left, but then they ended that fleet so last year I had to do my time.

And now I really hate doing Walmart loads. They regularly give you runs that will flip your sleep schedule by six hours either way. And many times you will have a day like I did yesterday where you have six different stops (four live unloads, two drop and hooks for loading), hook three trailers, work 14.5 hours, and get paid for 325 miles.

Then when you get a decent 850 mile load with one stop, if you realize you're really tired and need some sleep so you stop for a 90-minute nap with more than enough time (by hours) to deliver, some cloth-eared bint in the office with zero experience driving a truck will call you and tell you to get rolling or you will miss the start of the 8-hour delivery window -- meaning, you will get there at 2145 instead of 2100 for a load with a 2100-0500 delivery window. But don't bump the dock before the start of the window!!

So that's it. That's what has pissed me off. It's the disrespect of being micromanaged by someone brand new to the company with zero experience. This happened once and I got over it. Now it has happened a second time in three days and I'm considering leaving.

In fairness, this is one of the very few times in six years that I felt like I was being micromanaged. I have a very low tolerance for it though.

I probably won't quit because I'm within a few years of retiring (maybe) and it would upset the missus, but that's where my mind goes. And obviously I have not hesitated in the past to switch jobs. But if I wanted to be micromanaged while running these crappy short Walmart loads, I'd go whole hog and add the uniform and the slip seating while making another $50k per year working directly for Walmart. (No offense intended to those of you who love your Walmart gigs!! But as someone here once said, I'm way too cowboy for that job, even with the extra pay. It ain't for everyone.)

Anyway, just be prepared for that. I agreed to do this week because they had sort of gone above and beyond to get me where I needed to be the last few times (I don't do home time in the same place all the time). After the phone call and message on the tablet, I looked again at the original dispatch for this Walmart "help" and realized that it is for 11 days, not for 7 like usual. So either I'm going to call someone tomorrow to get that modified or I'm going to tell them no every time they ask from now until next summer. I did turn them down a couple of times last winter since I had done more than 3 weeks last summer.

TLDR: Crete is a great place to work overall, but it is guaranteed that something will piss you off eventually. It is a trucking job, after all.

 

I go to Washington State probably a half dozen to a dozen times a year on average, but I'm western regional, not OTR. I haven't had a real problem parking there except for the time some broke-### owner op Florida flatbedder stole all my fuel (90 gallons) while I was taking a shower at the Love's in Ellensburg a couple of years ago. Caught on dashcam.

 

I have had very good luck with the equipment. The DEF system went out on one truck a few years ago. If it takes more than two days to fix, they will almost certainly push you into a loaner truck until it is done, even if you explain that it will probably be ready the next day. (Lesson learned btw: pay for the hotel room for one more night.) I also had one old truck they gave me after coming off a leave of absence to deal with some family issues. They were about to retire it, >450k miles on it, and they wanted me to run until my brand new truck was ready. That old truck crapped out after two weeks, went into the shop for a couple of weeks while I drove yet another loaner, then drove the original old truck for another couple months before they gave me a brand new one.

Other than that, no major issues. The shops are really very good and usually reasonably fast when you go in for scheduled maintenance.