CCC Transportation, LLC - Auburndale, Fla.

Commercial Carriers, a division of Comcar Industries, operates its northern-most terminal in eastern Virginia, performing drop/hook service throughout the mid-atlantic region. Utilizing day cabs (and sleepers for longer-distance runs), finished product is transported throughout the eastern U.S., with most runs affording drivers the ability to be home nightly. The fleet is entirely Macks, with Eaton-Fuller Super 10, Six-speed, and Ultra-Shift automatic, transmissions available.

Pro's about Commercial Carriers:
The folk at the terminal are first class- very personable, helpful, and patient. During the hiring process, I found my every contact with the folk at Comcar HQ to be positive, and unlike my experience with other prospective employers, I felt treated like a valued individual rather than just another widget being processed on an assembly line to satisfy some recruiter's quota of new hires.

The equipment is well maintained, and the work process has been refined and stream-lined so the driver can do his day's work with a minimum of things that take away from what he was hired to do- drive.

Con's about Commercial Carriers:
The Company pays its drivers a percentage of the load, starting at 23% and topping out at 26%. Add up the hours in any given work day spent on everything it takes to do the job, and the per hour wage rate is not that high. In that sense, the words of my trainer are particularly poignant- work safely, but don't let other people waste your time.

CCC has throttled back the maximum speed of its tractors. Over the past several years, max speeds have been reduced to the present day limit of 60 MPH for day cabs, and 65 MPH for sleepers. From our terminal we routinely make runs in the day cab that exceed four hundred miles in length. Using a 420 mile run as an example, at 60 MPH, requires at least seven hours of driving. Add to that the time required to take care of pre-and post-trip and other terminal business, drop and hook activity at both ends of the trip, any other on-duty/not driving time required, and it winds up being a very long day- routinely pushing the envelope of the current hours of service limitations.

Being paid a fixed amount for the days' load, while having to push down the interstate at a speed considerably slower than everyone else passing you by, takes a toll on one's psyche. It seems that the inflated income horizons I was lured with as I considered obtaining my CDL are going to remain pipe dreams. The explanation for the double-standard in speeds within the Company is that day cabs are deemed to run mainly in congested areas, while sleepers typically operate on the open road. In our terminal, however, average runs are so long that we rival the daily mileage totals typically accrued by over-the-road drivers, and the reduced speeds are the source of frustration, said to be a contributing factor in driver turn over.

The following observations are of a more general nature, arising out of my impressions as a new-comer to the trucking industry, and as I am learning more of the reality of the life and work of the trucker in America today.

As a graduate of the local Community College's CDL training program, I feel fortunate to have been hired by the company I now work for. With the requirement of most employers for extensive prior experience, it is difficult to land that first job, especially if local work is what one seeks. The work I do with CCC is mainly local work, enabling me to be home daily, even as I am gaining valuable "over-the-road" experience.

Commercial Carriers offered what I was hoping for as an entree' into the trucking industry- a chance to dip my big toe in the water of this new career without necessarily having to dive head-first into a life of extended stints away from home. At fifty-plus years of age, I am also glad to not have to handle freight and risk injury that could interfere with my new career. I have to temper this, however, with the fact that it's an adjustment to accept a six-day workweek as the norm.

One thing I am learning about trucking in general is that the trucks we drive seem to have been engineered for a person of ostensibly "average" size, leaving those of us with long legs, etc., struggling to function in cramped cabs. The driver's seat does not go back nearly far enough, and to compensate we must keep the seat pumped up 'til our heads are in the headliner, and we have to bend down to see out the windows. Then, we wind up hitting the turn signal and steering wheel with our leg every time we have to use the clutch. This, to me, represents a serious safety issue.

The new Mack Ultra-Shift automatics are nice, with no clutch pedal to deal with, and a smart engine/transmission control system that makes driving in heavy city traffic as painless an experience as a driver could hope for.

I cannot contrast the training I've received at CCC with any other company, as this is my first job in the industry. I can say that The trainer I shared a cab with for two weeks is truly a credit to the Comcar organization. He was a no-nonsense fellow who was pretty tough- accepting nothing less than my best effort and demanding constant attention to every detail of our time spent on the road, ranging from the open interstate highway, to the stress-filled roads in and around Washington, DC, and Baltimore.

While not lavish with praise, he did point out when I was making progress, and encouraged me to keep at it when I suffered any setback. He was very generous in sharing his vast knowledge of the trucking industry acquired over many years of driving. Completing my training evolution left me feeling as though I had just graduated from Boot Camp again, that I had survived a road test lasting many days, and that I had received a thorough indoctrination in how serious an undertaking the work of the professional driver is on America's crowded highways today.

Consider how tough it must be for trainers- to turn their cab over to an inexperienced driver trainee, to bounce around in the miserable passenger seat of a day cab, all the while having to be hyper-vigilant against any life-threatening mistakes the trainee might make during long hours spent in traffic. My trainer was a very special guy, who earned every cent of whatever he receives for training new drivers for the company.

 

Some time after I stopped working for CCC, I received in the mail an Exit Interview Form from them. I have been sitting on it for some months now, wanting to give the issue time to "sweeten with age" before telling them why I found working for them to be an untenable relationship.

"Since you have decided to terminate your employment with our company, we would like to have your comments as to your reason for leaving. We want to improve our personnel practices, thereby making our company a better place in which to work. Your answers will be kept condifential and used only for research purposes. You need not sign this, but I should be happy to talk with you personally about your decision to leave."

1. Why did you leave the company?
There were a number of things which rather turned me off about the operation. I mainly did not like that I was constantly being given a different tractor to drive. The equipment was in what I considered to be average to poor condition- obviously other drivers did not take "ownership" of the trucks, and accrued maintenance issues were not being addressed to my satisfaction. At one point, scuttlebutt was that new(er) tractors were en route to us from Florida to replace some of the worn out junk we had to contend with on a daily basis, but those new(er) tractors never seemed to arrive.
Worn out equipment is one thing, but what finally did it for me was being called on the carpet by the terminal manager- a man who probably never spent a day in his life bouncing up and down in a cramped driver's seat of a day cab struggling down the interstate in a tractor governed to 60 mph being paid a flat rate for however many hours it took to run from point A to point B and to do the myriad other work tasks that make up the typical day. This man proceeded to read me the riot act because I failed to meet my scheduled "pull time". Bear in mind this time had been set arbitrarily by dispatch based on me being back at work a scant ten hours after my last run, and that in order for me to enjoy some of that precious "home time every day" I had an hour's commute each way to get to the terminal, and another 40 minute run to get from the terminal to the brewery where we picked up our load.
In short, I was being worked to death, for a pittance. Drivers, by their nature, may grouse about things, but this was a ridiculous, even farcical situation I found myself in. My baptism as an over-the-road driver was turning into a nightmare where I could readily see myself winding up like so many drivers we hear about on the news- over the guardrail and upside down along the highway, because they are too worn out to drive, pure and simple.
And my terminal manager had absolutely no sympathy for that, obsessed as he was with merely meeting the terms of his contracts with those we haul for.

2. Was your job represented correctly when you were hired?
No- it was not. Home time "every day" was a large part of why I hired on with CCC, as I was seeking a more gradual transition into the life of the over-the-road trucker than my classmates that jumped on board with outfits that immediately sent them on the road for weeks at a time. I knew I would take something of a hit in earnings potential by opting for a job with more home time, but what followed was entirely unacceptable, as I found myself on a veritable hamster wheel of mandatory six-day work weeks, and scarcely enough time at the end of the work day to get a decent night's sleep before turning around and doing it all again. It got so bad that I wound up falling asleep at the wheel while driving home one night after driving sick as a dog that day with the flu, and wrecked my car. And nobody at work cared- not one bit.

3. Did you receive adequate job instructions?
This is rich. I was assigned a trainer who was as tough and demanding as any Parris Island Drill Instructor in the Marines. He never praised anything I did right, and never missed an opportunity to criticize me roundly for any miscue I made along the way. He was a poor communicator, and it was very difficult to follow his instruction, especially while trying to watch the myriad things one had to attend to while manuevering in traffic in Washington, DC, and Baltimore. He would doze while I drove, and I even went so far as to seek out a pothole every now and then, to give him a good jolt, and to get my licks in.
Listen, I know it must be tough to ride shotgun beside some newbie, having to sweat what lies around every bend in the road for fear that he/she will make some bonehead mistake that gets you killed, but it takes a special person to make a good trainer, and this guy clearly did not have what it takes. I know what I am talking about here, because I am a
Virginia Certified Driver Education Instructor, and I have always received praise and positive feedback from my high school students for how I taught them to drive. I know what works, and that positive reinforcement is better than negative, all the time.

4. Did you understand the importance of your job?
I believe that I did. First and foremost, in my mind, was the safe transport of my load, with the utmost respect for those sharing the road with me. Everything else is secondary. I was always a safe driver, even if relatively inexperienced in the niceties of wheeling an eighteen-wheeler around. Beyond that, I appreciate that customers want their product delivered in a timely manner, and I worked diligently to meet their expectations, and to be positive in my interactions with all I came in contact with.

5. Did you feel your work was appreciated?
No, I did not. I felt like a cog in a machine that could easily be replaced. I felt like we as drivers were viewed more as a necessary evil than a valued member of a team effort. For example, when I brought any maintenance issue to the attention of the Terminal shop supervisor, he was terse to the point of being downright ugly about it. Here we were, trying to be proactive and to prevent breakdowns on the road, and it was unappreciated. And that's just one small example of how little regard we were held in.
Let's face it- in this day and age, jobs and work are more about the pay you take home than being able to invest one's sense of personal pride in the effort. When you do encounter an individual who takes pride in the workplace, like the time I took it upon myself and fixed the door closer to the men's bathroom at the terminal, so the poor dispatchers wouldn't have to listen to the door slamming a thousand times a day, when you encounter such an employee, you don't ignore that sort of effort, and you don't take it for granted. I know we are all busy with our own job assignments, but there has to be more to the effort than just doing what your job description requires and nothing more.

7. Was your pay adequate?
How many drivers who read this question enjoy a quiet chuckle at the irony of it? Adequate pay? Hardly.
When you consider that countless people are lured to this industry by the prospect of high earnings (myself included), the reality of the true pay situation we encounter borders on the criminal.
Get this- the new president of CCC Transportation took it upon himself to visit each of the terminals in the company to have face-to-face meetings (attendance mandatory) with all the drivers in the company. When we met, the first words out of his mouth were that we were not going to even talk about money, because that was something that he could do nothing about. The company, he averred, had experienced a tough year because of a downturn in the business niche they serve in part of their territory, and that was that. Additionally, he let us know from the "git go" that he would not entertain discussion of the issue of governed speeds for our fleet.
Recall my earlier concern about being paid a flat percent of the load, no matter how many hours it took to get the job done. We endured the additional handicap of having tractor speeds governed to 60 mph for day cabs and 65 mph for sleepers (bear in mind that we are both running on the exact same routes- mainly interstate highway miles). The hypocracy of this policy was never defended or in any other way justified by management. The President merely passed it off as being the will of the company's owner, and that was that.
Between absurdly governed speeds, extremely low pay rates for loads delivered and contracts that were fixed for years into the future, and performance bonuses adversely impacted by VORAD scores, many of us felt that the company had absolutely no regard for how we felt about our compensation.
When you factored it out to an hourly rate of pay for the typical work day put in around CCC, I was lucky to be earning little more than minimum wage. For example, a work week that typically ran to more than sixty hours would be hard pressed to net me five hundred dollars in take-home pay. That, is simply untenable, for a man or woman you entrust to haul forty tons of goods down our nation's highways.

8. Was overall treatment both fair and impartial?
No. See my earlier comments about the terminal manager, driver trainer, and maintenance supervisor. While I never felt singled out unfairly for any purported violation of company policy, I always felt that I was being led by individuals who cared not a whit for me as an individual with a family to care for and a life beyond the requirements upon me as a driver for CCC Transportation. All they cared about, as far as I could tell, was getting loads delivered, pure and simple.

9. Did you get along well with your co-workers?
With the notable exception of my driver trainer, as described earlier, yes I enjoyed a very good working relationship with my fellow drivers. Working with dispatchers could be problematic, but I took that as the nature of the beast, as it were, in them having the less than desirable task of telling other people what to do and having to put up with their whining about it...

10. Did you get along well with your superiors?
My sense is that those in management were trying to get the most work possible out of a situation where resources, human, logistical, and financial, were less than optimal. Put another way, they did not respect us as individuals, rather treated us as regrettably necessary tools of the job to be bossed around, used up, and then cast off and replaced like any other part of a truck that breaks eventually. The work week was unmercifully long, the hours spent behind the wheel every bit as lengthy as the law would allow and then some, and they were relegated to enforcing whatever absurd mandate was imposed from above. With that said, my interaction with management was always cordial in nature, and I eventually left the company feeling as though I would not feel uneasy were I to encounter my former managers elsewhere in my working career.

11. About how long did you work with us?
I began orientation the first week of January, 2007, and gave the job until the end of March, 2007, when I at last determined that there was no hope that working conditions or pay would ever improve significantly, so as to justify my staying on.

12. Was your equipment maintained properly?
Perhaps I should have read all of the questions on the exit interview form before beginning my answers...
No- I do not feel that the equipment that I had to use was maintained well. The Mack daycabs we drove ran the gamut from reasonably new to quite old and worn out. Because I was routinely assigned to drive a different tractor from day to day, it was quite typical for me to have to delay starting my run in order to have some bit of neglected maintenance performed by the terminal shop before I could even begin my work day. This happened quite often. And no sooner would I get one truck running well than I was moved to another rig and the whole process started over again. All I know, judging by how drivers let their trucks go to pot, it's no wonder the shop supervisor was always in such a bad mood...

13. Did you feel as if you were a part of the company?
This is a joke, right? Please review my earlier answers. Let's put it this way- as the meeting with the company President broke up and we drivers were dispersing, more than one of my fellow drivers nudged me and remarked how I ought to become their union representative...

14. What department did you work in?
I worked as a driver out of the West Point, Virginia, terminal (between Richmond and Williamsburg), mainly hauling product out of the Anheiser Busch brewery to distributors situated throughout North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia, the District of Columbia, and Maryland.

15. Would you consider working for the company in the future?
If the shortcomings that I experienced as referenced in the foregoing were rectified, I would value the opportunity to work with CCC again one day.

16. Is there anything else you would like to say?
Yes. I realize that these are difficult times, and very challenging for a business venture like those in the trucking industry to be successful. High fuel prices, spiraling insurance rates, and myriad other costs of doing business above and beyond the need to recruit and retain a skilled work force that takes a sense of pride and personal ownership in the organization make the daily grind of work less than fun for owners and employees alike. I expected to come into this industry having to "pay my dues", and am doing so to this day, in the company I went to work for after leaving CCC. I did not expect to be routinely abused as a human resource, in terms of the amount of work expected for the amount of pay earned, and in terms of utter disregard for my life outside of work.
The fact that I saw my own experience mirrored in the lives of my fellow drivers at CCC, with little to no prospect for any dramatic improvement in that situation, turned my enthusiasm for my new career into rather bitter disillusionment which has been hard to shake over the intervening months since I left the company. I feel great empathy for those countless drivers I share the interstate with every day now, knowing better the vast sacrifice they are having to make in order to earn a living in this industry.

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