Orientation with Werner

Arrived at the Holiday Inn Plaza on Sunday night in Bowling Green, KY. Let me me tell you, I was very surprised with this place. I was an upscaled hotel with some good looking attendance After the first initial presentation of the hotel I knew the rooms were going to be great. As you can guess, they were indeed pretty good. Esp coming from three weeks in a 2 star hotel when in school. There was two beds but all 5 of us were by ourself.

Lets FF to Monday morning. I wake up feeling pretty fresh and grab a shower, shave, brush my teeth, etc. Feeling hungry I venture down stairs looking for breakfast since we were told Werner provided Breakfast with the hotel and provides lunch at the terminal. I get down stairs and I smell something good! Sausage, bacon, egg, syrup, etc and now I'm getting really hungry. As I'm following this wonderful smell of breakfast, I pass by a guy I went to school with and ended up going with the same company and account. We catch up right quick and we both mention the smell of breakfast but didn't know where it was. We continue to venture and find the source. Finally come to this bar and man does it look good full of fresh food. Then bad news, you have to pay for it, what really we were told breakfast would be provided to us by our employer. We go back to our rooms hungry and very disappointed.

We were to be in the lobby of the hotel at 6:30 to be picked up by the company's shuttle bus. Was suppose to be there at 6:45 sharp. Didn't show up till 7:10 or so. After we all loaded into the van he asked how our rooms were and slept good, how was breakfast. Boy did he get an ear full from everyone of us saying we had to pay for it b,ah blah blah ... Well come to find out, when we checked in at the hotel they were to give us a voucher for the free breakfast and they failed to do so. The guy said he would call and take care of this immediately.

It was about a 25-30 min ride over to Scottsville, KY to the DG DC. We met the head safety guy that was in charge of our orientation. His name was Freddy Beard and a real standup guy that just happened to live 10 mins south of me in Gallatin, TN.

First Day
Paper work, videos, paper work, videos, drug test, physical, more paper work, and more videos.

Second Day
Finished paperwork, watched many many more videos. One very emotional one on a little boy and a million mile safe driver accident. Lunch and computer work. By that afternoon we knew who our trainers were. Well if luck wasn't on my side, they ran out of trainers there and wa being sent to the Florida DG DC right north of Gainesville, FL. Some might actually like it but I'm 11 hours from home with a pregnant wife. So I will be gone 3 to 4 weeks till 140 hours and I get my week PTO.

Will add more as I get time to add.

 

The bus ride was horrible from Bowling Green KY to Gainesville FL! Got on in BG, KY and rode an hour south to the Nashville, TN terminal for a 30 min lay over. Get back on the same bus and have a 6 hour ride ro Atlanta, GA to arrive at 3:00am. From there it was a 3.5 hour lay over at one of the busiest terminals. That place was packed! So we left from there at 6:30am made 3 more stops and finally after 17hours I was in Gainesville, FL. Well I had to wait two hours at the bus terminal for a driver to pick me up and take me to the DG DC. I get there and call my trainer. Well great I was sitting at the DC for 6 more hours while he was doing his run. So I started out 3 hours of sleep in 44 hours. Since then I have struggled to catch up on sleep and stay exhausted.

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Lets get down to the actual work. If you are lazy, don't even bother thinking about this account. I'm not saying this is a hard job, but it is doing work, you physically unload the truck. Now when this job becomes hard depends on the store's location. First lets look at a good example of.a store and a normal unload.

You show up to the store and have a good area to do a 90°alley dock flush with the store's back door. Change your log status and go speak with the manager. Have they come out, break the seal on the trailer and you once again change your status on your logs and go to unloading.

90% of everything is in roll containers. They are about 6' tall by 4' long by 2' wide give or take a few inches. Some will be light, some can and will be heavy, in upwards of 400-500lbs est. at times. Weight like that is usually roll containers full of dog food, bleach, can soda, bottle water, etc.. You pull three containers on the life gate, lower them, step on the brake release and push the container into the store. If you were lucky to get a good store it will be a straight shot and will have someone waiting at the door to take the cart and put it where it needs to go.

Bad stores. Some stores it will take 10-30 mins to back into depending on how well you can backup. That is something you have to do very well to run this account. Sometimes you have to push the carts uphill to the store. Sometimes.your trailer is on a slope so its hard to unload the trailer.

If you are lucky you get a few stores with ramps and can get a straight shot to the back door. Unloading will fly by then.

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From what I have heard Werner is a great 1st year job. Its known as get your year and get out. Your mileage pay sucks at 21cpm with a 5cpm saftey pay. Where you make the money on this account is you get paid unload pay ($36) per store and per stop. Don't remember how much it is for per stop. It averages out to around 45k first year.

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Glad to hear I'm helping people see the truth of.this company as for what it is.

No test as of yet. I think I have some test when I have my meet and greet with the saftey director but your trainer will make sure you are ready for it.

DG DC = Dollar General Distribution Center

I do know when you go to pick up your truck you have to test out on a driving test but that's after your training is done so no worries.

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Not in Dallas. Don't believe everything a recruiter says. If his mouth is open and moving more than likely its a lie.

Make sure you are on a dedicated account, do not go OTR with them, then the pay really sucks. I will be getting 26cpm after saftey pay. So its actually 21cpm way lower than anyone else.

I will be making my money on the Dollar General account by stop and unloading pay. I will get $16 for every stop then $36 when the whole trailer is empty. Plus your mileage pay.

If you do get dedicated, don't try to get any runs over 500 miles. Most new drivers brag about getting 8-9 even 1000+ mile runs but that will take you 3 days to do being solo and unloading a truck. If you try to keep them around 500 miles a day you can usually knock a trailer out a day and get more stop and unload pay.

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