anyone have any info on Roehl or Maverick..?

Absolutely correct. HOS violations are always my responsibility - never dispatch's. I will say i haven't been pushed to violate before like i have here though. They know exactly if i can make it or not. Yet they just send the load info over whether i accept or reject the preplan either way.

Frankly it's dishearting in ways, and embarassing in others that they even attempt it at times. As if some days aren't challenging enough, you then have to battle the carrier also in the name of doing what's right. But again - you're correct. You have to push back or possibly pay the price.

 

I don't know why companies have an accept and reject.They're going to force you to take it anyway and they'll tell you if you don't have the hrs I can repower it or change the appt.Or they want you to call them.I know the drill all too well.

 

In larger companies a real person doesn't even send out the preplan. It is done by a computer based on the closest available truck. I know at Roehl the dispatcher gets the preplan at the same time as the driver. At Roehl when you reject a load it forces a real person to actually look at the load. Like any company they have some real winners in logistics. However, it is rare that you will find a dispatcher that gives a wink and a nod to violating hours. It is common for them to have a driver pick up a load and then worry about the delivery later. I'm in the o/o fleet and they will beg me to do that from time to time, it also happened when I was on the company side. They do not expect us to fudge our logs, in fact that is a big no no. They are serious about their CSA score. Before I ever came to Roehl I asked every driver I could find and came to this forum as well. The universal answer was that they expected drivers to run absolutely legal.

Some of Roehl's equipment has most certainly seen better days. I think they are trying to decide what trucks to use in the new fleet and a lot of drivers would like to keep their old trucks over the new 58" sleepers. 70" is bad enough, but cutting another foot is even worse. As far as the Gary terminal they get 30% of the fleet through there in any given week with inexperienced mechanics and a shop that is too small for the amount of work they have to do. Roehl isn't perfect, but they are a good place to start.

 

Yes I did work on their reefer side for a whole 90 days, in that time in only ran 21,000 miles. I sat 3 days out of the week waiting for them to scrape a broker load to get me back to their one customer in Wisconsin, When they bought BLume Farms they fired all of the personell and stuck the drivers with any dispatcher. You can't do that in the reefer business, it is complicated issues arise that are not normal for flatbeds or vans. Also when I went to work for Roehl Refrigerated I came with 16 years experience,all of it reefer! they treated me like I just came out of driving school, trying to micromanage me.I knew more about the reefer units than their shadetree mechanics. My point is if your going to go into a new business, you should by god know what your doing, and don't try to run 100 trucks with 1 customer to load them, things may have changed by now, but according to a couple of their drivers I've unloaded with they haven't. If yopu are a new driver more power to ya! have a ball seems like they have a good training program, but If you have over 5 years experience get ready to be treated like a rookie, because 80% of their fleet are rookies and thats all they know.

 

Also when times got tough I tried to talk to them, no one listened, wanted to switch to vans, or flat, they said no guess they didn't want to lose a seasoned reefer driver off that division, so I returned my truck to Ellenwood and said bye. Another thing the first new batch of trailers they bought, this is classic, hang on, some moron that didn't know the reefer business speced them so that when the doors were open the reefer unit didn't run. Now anyone that has been in the reefer business for 5 minutes knows that 90% of the shippers and recievers want the unit on when loading and unloading. I sat in Collinsville,Alabama for 6 hours while Roehl fought with a customer about the unit not running when the doors are open, finally the customer took the load away and told me to get out.Oh yeah and the mandatory presets on the temp too that was fun

 

That simply cannot be true. I brought home 500-600 dollars a week in 2002 fresh out of school with Schneider. I hardly think I'm special, just a hard worker so based on that, I would think a new driver would make AT LEAST the same amount now, a decade later.

 

Roehl is a great place for new drivers as far as teaching them rules and violations. As a trucker's signaficant other I feel they set their new drivers up for failure. They are so worried about their drivers being out of route, but they don't send their drivers directions to get from shipper or cosignee to the highway. They send directions for the highway you are suppose to be on, but one wrong turn can put you out of route 1 mile to 100 miles or more (Remember the NEW drivers are new to this and don't know the highways like drivers that have been around for awhile). Another issue I have seen is where they sent directions to a driver and the driver was suppose to go north and their directions said to go south. We all know that north and south will never meet, so how do you stay in route?

 

Call your customers to verify all directions.

 

Get on the phone with dispatch when you need help with directions. I don't care how much experience you have, or how many tools you own when you are driving with no place to pull off you need a navigator. If that isn't someone at home, then it needs to be someone in dispatch.

 

does any1 know any thing about martin trucking