Werner Enterprises, Inc. - Omaha, Ne.

lol okay what is your trainers name.. I'm going Werner ... and a couple lap dances to boot! heheh

 

Gio i have thought about working for seasonal for UPS but i cant for the exact reason you said that i would lose my job at he end of the season and unemployment just would not pay me enough to cover my bills as my wife and i have a 4 children. i worked for CTL out of the brooklyn IL terminal and in my opion they are a joke (but that is just my opion) as they didnt pay me for crap and i sat more than i ran. a good pay check from CTL was $400. but i do apreciate your advise and thank you for that Gio perhaps we can put our bad words behind us meet up for a soda (i dont drink alcahol to much anymore) since we are both from the st.louis area.
IAMGREAT my dispatchers where mandy (48 states)out of the denver/henderson CO. terminal and then Dennis Mquillin (net-ops) out of omaha and then i can remember who it was who replaced him but the guy is not someone i nor other drivers i ran with enjoyed driver under
K7aab unfourtantly my trainer i had is no longer with werner he left them o go drive for a local job near his home in aspen CO

 

Ah a CO guy , knew there was something I liked about him lol. Almost stayed in CO after my temporary duty station there in the Army. Aspen is one of the best places on earth (as long as you have your own place-expensive).

 

Don't know what happened to CTL, I averaged $800 a week driving for them back in 1997. Anyway Slay is better and union and has had an ad in the paper just last week. They haul Solutia loads out and come back empty last time I talked to one of their drivers.

 

I think it had something to do with the terminal manager (i think his name was Ray) and I hated each other

 

I have had 3 interesting run ins with Werner drivers in the last few weeks.

The first one was a driver parked at a pickle park. I saw him jump from his truck like he was freaking out. He was jumping around thrashing like he had a bee after him or something. After a moment he looked around and realized that he had jumped from his truck without any pants on, only a pair of bikini briefs. He quickly jumped back in his truck.

The second was a new driver out for his second week. He had not been trained well on routing, or proper use of his HOS. I gave him directions to there yard in OH. He was trying to follow the qualcomm routing to the letter and wasteing allot of time. He also had had 3 log violations in 2 weeks, because he was not pre planning well. We had a long talk and I think he figured it out.

The thirs was the other night. I was waiting to pull out of a Truck stop when a driver decided he could pull in and beat a 4 wheeler. He went past the nose of my truck at high speed and barely missed my truck with his trailer. He hit the Curb with his front right tire and allmost the sign for the truck stop. In the end, the car locked up his brakes to stay out of an accident and the Werner driver somehow did not blow out his Right steer tire.

I am sure there are many drivers from many companys that these things happen with, just for some reason lately I have seen it with Werner.

 

I am unfortunately still a driver with the Big Blue Screw Machine. I will be looking to get out as soon as I can. Trust me. I post this so hopefully others may not get sucked in to this **** hole. Students, do yourself a favor and go elsewhere. JB, Schnieder, or even Swift have got to be better than Werner. Take it from a guy that has been here for 11 years you won't be happy here for long.

Why have I been here so long, well truth be told the first 5-6 years were not all that bad, but things have straight down the tubes in the last 5 years. I don't think that I'll be able to "stick it out" too much longer.

I am by no means a slacker. I am "supposed" to be long haul 48 state driver, but that's another issue I will get into shortly. I will drive as hard as they will allow me. My goal is a modest 3400 miles as a solo driver, there have been a few times where I have been able to meet or exceed that goal. (Believe it or not). But lately that has been becoming harder and harder to do thanks to Werner's Pony Express.

What is the Pony Express you ask? Well it is what they lovingly refer to as Net Ops. Big Blue Screw Machine in hyper drive is what it really is.

Regional and long haul drivers have to make all the pick ups and deliveries while an army of part timers in day cabs drive all the gravy miles off of the loads. They never have to bump a dock, deal with the 2 lane back roads and in most cases never see the heavily congested areas such as DC, Baltimore, or Chicago.

Freight may be slow, but these golden child SOB's would never know it. It's the long haul and regional drivers that have to sit around and bear the pain. Another fine example of how the big blue screw machine does things back asswards. These part timers should be making all the pick ups and deliveries and the long haul drivers should be driving all the miles off the loads. Oh wait, they unofficially retired that term, there are no long haul drivers any more the 48 state drivers should be getting all the gravy miles.

But why do that when you can pay all these part timers a lesser wage because they get home every night? It just makes me mad when I see how little they really care these days. This is not the same company I started with almost 11 years ago.

I have up until this year never had any problems getting to home time on time, but here in the last 7 months I have been late 4 times. I think that part of this may be due to the fact that the Blue Screw Machine may have caught on to the fact that I have been taking my time off on opposite ends of the country in order to get out of the regional ruts that they love to keep you in. (Part of the reason that I was getting better miles).

I have done this now for the past year and a half. You know just trying to work within what the system can offer me. Now every time I keep calling in to @#%$! about my low productivity, all they can do is suggest that I become a trainer. My response is always the same, "if you can't keep the drivers you have busy why in the Hell are you hiring more?" After reading the posts here I can see that the turn over rate is much higher than I had thought. And given the fact that these students are used as slave labor, I can see why they are always pushing for trainers. Another sign that it's time to move on, Werner in an effort to keep the driver pay scale low is actively looking to hire Mexicans. Come on guys we're already the lowest paid drivers on the road. How about a little more fair compensation for the sacrifices we make to be out here? It's time to update the pay scale. Especially for things like Long Island pay. You guys are stuck in the 70's. $25 a day layover is a joke. That may have been fair compensation in 1975, but this is 2007, some places that won't even get you a pizza delivered. What a joke.

Sorry guys, but I have morals and cannot with a clear conscience promote, encourage, or lead people into becoming fodder to the big blue screw machine. Quite the contrary, I tell them the truth as I know it, as I have lived it.

I will keep on looking at all of the other companies out there until I find one that I feel comfortable going to. But trust me. When I do make the move I will not put as much time in there as I did here if I can see that it's not a good move.

Bottom line, at this point in time don't drive for Werner.

 

No the relays are used to make more money for Werner. The relay drivers get paid less per mile than the road drivers and their tractors cost less. He is correct in pointing out that these day cab drivers should be the ones in the cities delivering and picking up loads and bringing them to the yards for road drivers to haul across country. Instead they are backwards and send big Peterbilts into Chicago and Philly to make deliveries and pickups and then drop it at a year for a snot-nosed kid in a day cab to relay.

 

Poor Tired Driver, I agree with you in recomending Werner.
I am on a dedicated account and run 6 days a week. The pay is ok but not had a raise in 2 years and no late loads.
The problems I have seen getting worse
1. Screw the Solo Driver. Doesn't matter if you are Regional, "48 State" or Dedicated. Seems they want to use Trainer/Students alot on the account I am on and all they are worried about is the miles not Customer service. I too have seen these jokers driving the NETOPS trucks up and down I 80 everyday. Just taking the miles off the loads while trucks sit.
2. Being treated like you don't have any brain or common sense. This would be like the Qcomm messages sent out everyday by safety. If they would take a real hard look at what they are saying it would become real obvious that they have a training issue. They need to pay trainer based on expirence and performance. Not miles and 6mos without an accident.
3. The equipment is getting worse all the time, although they have been replacing the older trailers the new stuff is getting torn up at a record pace as you have probably noticed. I check every company trailer for current documents. 75% of the time the registration is missing as well as the DOT inspection report.
4. I got sent to Omaha for a whiz quiz. Truck was red tagged for tires (which I tried to get replaced earlier and wasn't because" it is too expensive to do over the road") and a tune up. I spent 2 days trying to get out of the shop and lost 4 loads that week. Too expensive for whom?
I guess next time park the truck @ Sapp Bros. and take shuttle into Term.
Well I guess at this point were just kickin the dead horse hoping he'll get up. Would I recomend them. NO! Not until they can address the above and then some.