Crete Carrier Facts

If Crete had pressured him to drive unsafely I'm sure they would have payed the price as well...no matter how high priced or high powered their lawyers were. If there had been any proof and yes there would have been if they had been sending him threatening text messages even if he had erased them from his phone for some unknown reason. Believe me I know. I worked on the engineering side of the wireless communications industry for 20 years before being laid off a couple of months ago and am very knowledgeable about how the system works. There are records kept...lets just leave it at that.

Being laid off at my age (over 50) has shown me how hard it is to make a comeback in that industry and how hard it is to get a start at a decent wage in anything else that would keep me close to home. This has given me the chance to reconsider jumping into becoming a truck driver which is something I have wondered about doing since my early twenties. The kids are older now so......If something doesn't shake loose soon......

 

Just a small point to quibble, but even now every company and driver operates illegally to some degree. When you are waiting at shipper or receiver in your truck or the driver 'lounge' for door assignment or have to monitor the cb for them to call you (or dozens of other scenarios) -- it is all very clearly defined as on-duty time in the fmcsr. Yet everyone turns a blind eye towards that. Yes, there is the specific instance when you are at the vendor and released of all duties. But more often than not, you have to keep checking the light or whatever and can't truly be sleeping or resting.

 

OMG, I thought I was just experiencing some kind of weird exception. I just started back with Crete and am experiencing the same thing. I usually have to refuse at least the first load and sometimes even the second and third. What is worse is that it's a vicious circle because each time you have to calculate true loaded and empty miles since Crete's are usually off. While going through all this nonsense it's not unusual to waste an hour or more going back and forth with them.

 

I have a question for the drivers who drive for Crete? Do you get paid weekly or bi-weekly? Do you get to take the trucks home with you or do you have to park them at a terminal. We are looking into Crete for the home weekly runs out of Muncie, IN, and my husband and I were just curious. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Paid weekly on Thursday

Take truck home with you

 

Ralph, what I've been running into the last few weeks..with these wonderful short loads. They offer you a load that is tight, either you run out of hours (14 hours) before the reasonable pick up, or if you pick up the short load, you don't have time to run it and deliver in the time they have told you it needs to deliver...without taking a ten hour break first.....and not making the delivery time.
Maybe 80% of these loads that are drop and hook have very flexible delivery times, maybe a 24 hour period, in many cases, then why does the deskjockey who enters the info into the computer automatically enter a narrow 3-4 hour window?

If they want us to deliver and pick this stuff up on time, why don't they tell us in the 'load offer' whether it is a live load, or drop and hook? How much weight, etc.

I can't tell you how many times I have been offered loads late in the day that look legal on paper, pickup times, HOS, etc, but you may not be familiar with the shipper. You accept the load, it's a live load, or some screwed up place that takes forever to preload. You go there at the 'appointment time' and either sit at the dock while your 14 hours runs out, or sit in the parking lot. So, what do you do? cover it up....pull out of the door 2-3 hours after your hours run out, and the paperwork and load is ready, hope there is a place to park to pretend you took ten hours off at the shipper..then send your load info in after your imaginary ten hour break?

When you try to get some info on the load, beyond what they have in the 'load offer', you may end up waiting 1-2 hours to get partial answers, and you equally have a chance whoever is at the switches in Lincloln will get pissed off, and void that load, and offer yet a worse one...and here we go again.

 

And, again.

Unloaded late at night, after picking up and running all day. The load they offered me had a set pick up time in the morning that had no room for a legal ten hour break, and delivered with no provision for a ten hour break before you delivered, and ran 500 plus miles. I need the #### miles I'm not fixated on ten hour breaks...the safety department at crete is, and they will nail you if you don't run legally, and you will be screwed.
Told to 'pick up asap', after waiting an hour for a reply, then the load info shows a 24 hour delivery window, not a fixed, impossible to meet, appt time.
This is a real annoying way to get 2000 miles a week. You can't 'automate' some of this dispatch stuff. You need to have a live human being, with some intelligence and preferably knowledge of trucks, (Beyond that trucks are those annoying slow things I get stuck behind on back roads).

They know when you started running that day, they know how many times you farted that day. No, they don't force you to run illegally, but the incompetence of the night dispatch people sure as hell makes running illegally easy to do, or inevitable. I get tired of playing '20 questions' trying to get sufficient load info so I can make a good decision to accept the load, and frankly, I just accept some of them, and deal with rescheduling later, probably creating more work for the office people...but it's the system THEY created. They waste enough of my time.

 

This is the truth. Unless the load offer or pre-plan is going to be obviously impossible for me to complete legally, I just accept it and take it from there. If the pre-plan info was just more accurate, they could avoid some of these issues. But I doubt that will happen anytime soon.

 

I agree with you 100% OFTOTR. What kills me is when they want you to commit to a multi-stop load without even knowing the locations or appt times.

 

It sure doesn't sound like this is the way to run a company. Thought they sounded good till reading some of your posts. You can pay a million dollars for a load, but if you can't run it legally, it isn't worth it and if they can't protect your back and send decent loads then they need to change what they are doing and get some good folks who can.