CRETE - A Year in Review

That is going to change very soon, once they put OBR's in the truck. All you have to do is look at how the EU run their trucks. That is the system our government and the anti-trucking lobby is looking at for your future.

The US trucking system is going to be made up of regional runs, no more than 500 miles. Just look at how many companies don't run solo freight coast to coast any more. Most coast to coast freight is moved by train or if speed is needed by team truck.

Mark

 

I will admit to giving some free time while at a customer, and I would estimate it to be about 50hrs a year total. Since Crete has a good volume of D/H loads and a good detintion policy for customer delays, I would submit that I don't give as much free time as other drivers may. And I'm sure you can tell me how I should be paid for those 50hrs because you get paid for all you do for your company, but quite frankly I'm not interested. The extra time it sometimes takes at a customer is not Crete's fault.

For you see, those 50hrs I don't log at the customer; I can use them to log as driving time which increases my ability to earn income. Is this fair? No. But then again, life is not fair and I shall never be King.

Another poster had good insight to ask how many hours a small business owner works for free. I would suggest way more than I do.

Again, OTR is a different animal than LTL/local. It's not jus a job; IT'S AN ADVENTURE! One I rather enjoy.

So do us all a BIG favor; get over you it.

Oh btw, would I be opposed to being paid by the hour for every minute I'm working OTR? No. As long as it is compairable to what I make now.

The only problem is that OTR has always been a piece-mill type of job. How do you reformulate that into an hourly pay rate without making productivity suffer. If productivity suffers the company must hire more workers. More workers would probably translate to lower wages, higher benifits cost, and more machinery on the road pulling less freight. More machinery means more pollution ( you wouldn't want that, WOULD YOU? ). More machinery leads to higher operating costs, again translating in to possibly even lower wages.

Just pass the cost on to the customer you say? Guess who the producer passes their cost onto? That's rigth! YOU & ME. Now we need a cost of living wage increase. But how's the employer going to aford that? Now about he pass that onto the producer? Oh wait, been there done that and see what it go us! Vicious cycle!

The free market has always served our economy well, and will continue to do so if the Federal & State governments would get out of the way.

Where did that rant come from? I digress.

The bottom line is that some jobs a paid different than others to insure productivity. No productivity, No America, or any other country or civilization.

Welfare? I don't need no stinking wefare!

 

Hi ever, got your pm and tried to respond but couldn't due to that silly 50 post bs this site has. Therefore, I must expose myself here in the forum for all the world to see. Children please close your eyes. jk

In Jan. I drove 14500 with no time off. This month I'm avg. 2800 with 3 days at home. This has been a tough month and you are correct in thinking that it is an industry wide event. But, this to shall pass.

Crete treats O/O's as company drivers in the area of freight allocation. i.e. first in first out. No favorites as far as I can see.

The big difference is who pays for medical ins.. You. Meaning, based on what I made last year ( see post at other msg board ), it's probably better to remain a company driver.

The pluse to being an O/O is that I make my own routing and fueling solutions to fit my ability to be more productive. However, it ussualy a good idea to follow the fueling solutions due to the discounts that positively affect my bottom line.

Safe Traveling

 

I agree that, in comparison to most other large trucking companies, Crete is one of the better ones. But, I worked for Crete for 2 years and it ain't quite as rosy as you paint it. I had plenty of instances in which dispatch blundered my load assignments, had light weeks (less than 2500 miles), and I almost always had to argue with dispatch for my home time. I agree that the lack of layover time was good with Crete... in two years, I think I had 2 layover days. But lost days due to breakdown was a different story. I went thru 4 trucks in my last year because they kept issuing me pieces of crap. That's ultimately, why I left them. Crete is a good first company to work for, but there are better options out there for experienced drivers.

 

I think your right. obr's are coming, i think companies are more worried about them,than drivers. They will eventually have to pay drivers by the hour.

 

Ahhh Pineville. The last time I was there with Crete was a few years ago. Had a load that del'd there, a transfer from one of the other P&G plants. Got there, there were 20-25 outbound loads ( I knew this because when the guy at the receiving trailer signed my bills, he pull out a major stack of out-bound b/l's and said 'and which one are you picking up?') It seems as though it's easier for this company to deadhead you out, and deadhead someone else in instead of thinking ahead and planning on a certain number of drivers del'g and picking up at the same place. It isn't tough. You have 10 drivers coming in with loads and 30 loads coming out... Simple math says you only need to deadhead 20 drivers from other areas to pick up the rest of the loads. And staying with the load select, the 1st driver there gets the best choices, the 2nd gets a choice of the rest and so on. But instead, they had me wait on an m/t, and as I was going out the gate, another Crete driver was coming in with an m/t. The stupid thing was, I was sent to pick up a load near Opelousas, and this driver just came through there from western Louisiana. All that wasted deadhead miles for both of us. Makes no sense to me, I am by no means a rocket surgeon or a brain scientist (I know I mixed it up) but if they are so dead set on saving a penny or two on a gallon of fuel that they have you fuel 50 gallons here and 70 gallons there on a short load because of the price, think about how much they would save if I had 0 m/t miles on 2 loads. And these folks running the show are suppose to be college educated brains. Maybe that's why Mr. Acklie was so much better at running things, he was a college educated man, but never let that advanced education get in the way of common sense. PLEASE MR. ACKLIE, BOOT OLE' TONN OUT'A THERE AND COME BACK INTO THE DAY TO DAY OPERATION. Before it's to late.

 

I have tried to lessen the time out, the problem, I live in FL. With Crete and the majority of companies I worked for, FL freight sucks unless you haul a reefer. Then you end up in South or Central FL where all the produce farms and cold storage whse's are. There are few up in the northern part of the state but not close to where I live. And with Crete, it takes a week or so to get you back up to speed and in 'the system' so I would have too many short weeks. When I was with Arnold in the early days, when things were good there, the dispatchers I had the best luck with got my 'be honest' speech. I told them if there's bad news, tell me, don't beat around the bush, just say it and be straight up with me, and that's what you get in return. So, some days when I get grumpy on the Q/C, I am having a bad day, don't take it personally. And they asked me to do the same...And we got along great. When freight was slow, they would warn me with a 'I know this load sucks, but we'll take care of ya by the end of the week' and I took it without a complaint. And as long as they did what they said, they never heard a peep from me. Even after I left there (see other post from me about why) I would stop by in the office to say hi and was treated like family...Wait, better than family. Too bad Roadway had to come in and screw things up, or else I would still be there.

There are a few dispatchers here at Crete that I get along with, I don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. A couple of them will communicate with you, and give you a heads up before you get to an area thats notoriously short on freight. They will communicate with you about the progress of getting you a load, and make you feel as if they are trying to take care of you, and actually care. Not all do that here. In fact most don't. That's the reason I think the system Crete uses for dispatch sucks. Zone dispatch is too impersonal. If I had one person to deal with for all my loads, problems, home time requests, payroll issues (which I have to say, have been very few here)it would be better. A person that know you, and knows what kind of mood you're in just by your Q/C msg's. A person who gets bonus pay based on driver productivity and driver retention. When that happens they push and fight for their drivers. They take care of their drivers, and the drivers take care of them. That way they fight with that zone's planner, if they have to, to get you moving. And if they get an attitude, they have the extension numbers to call right in front of them to get upper management involved quick if needed. They still could be a 'load select' type system just not as formal as they are now. They could just ask, 'would you like to go to XYZ, OK or ABC, NE' and pre-plan you on it based on your PTA. (which Crete insists you keep updated, but don't seem to pay any attention to when it comes to HOS or M/T calls) I think part of the reason I am so down on Crete is because when I came here there were still a few glimmers of what it was like when Mr. Acklie was at the controls, and I have seen it change a lot in the last 4 1/4 years.

I was in our Wilmer terminal over this last w/e (2/23). I delivered NW of Dallas, and the dispatcher msg'd me with a little 20 mile run, that didn't deliver until Monday morning and that was all there was. I asked him if I could just run to the terminal instead, I had laundry and some personal biz to attend to, he said sure and asked me to tell him what m/t I picked up at the yard so he could set me up on a load for Monday(the customer I was at didn't have any m/t's, and all loads on their yard were inbound except that 20 mi one) When I got to the Wilmer yard, the place was packed with drivers, sitting under m/t trailers. Some had been sitting there since Friday evening. There were no m/t trailers to be found. Luckily when I msg'd him about the lack of m/t's, he had a load that allowed me to get my laundry done and still have some time start to roll towards New Orleans for a Monday eve. del. So far, this will be my best week yet this year, I will be at 1975 miles on Monday evening with plenty of hours available. Maybe me jumping up and down until management noticed did some good after all. (I jumped up and down so hard, they registered a 6.+ earthquake in eastern Nevada late last week... ) ) If they don't get me over 3000 this week, then I'll admit defeat and throw in the towel at Crete and let a newer driver have my truck so Crete can make better money with him/her.

Most of the drivers I talked to while my clothes were running were in the same boat that I was in for miles, except a few...and you guessed it, had only been working here a year or less, and they were doing great. Go figure... One lady had been here almost 7 years and had only been able to run enough miles to get a raise 1 of those 7 years. And this was one of the most friendly, upbeat people I have met in a while here. So I don't think attitude has anything to do with it, because she had a pretty good attitude. Maybe it was because she said she only had to work a couple more years before she could retire and gave up trying to get ahead here, was just putting in her time.

 

The way I was raised, you respect the ones who respect you. Hence the reason I call Duane Acklie, Mr. Acklie. Because of his reputation for how well he treated his drivers. If the supervisors treated the pee-ons of this company with a little respect, they would get it in return. But here, we are treated worse than mushrooms, we are just kept in the dark...Not fed S!#$. Now that Mr. Acklie is not involved with the day to day operations, his company is losing drivers 3 to 4 times faster that ever before. Those few dispatchers that make you feel like they are truly doing things with the drivers best interests in mind are leaving as well because they aren't getting the respect from management either. I run into one driver who has spoken to Tonn Ostergard in person. He said Tonn's attitude is simple, the man puts up with drivers. See's us as the necessary evil in order for this company to function. He was told by Tonn 'if you dont like it here, leave,I will have another driver just like you in the seat tomorrow, and paying him less per mile than what you make!' With an attitude like that, does that deserve respect?? And his satellite exec's (the exec's that revolve around him like moons to a planet...with out his gravity they would be lost) are not going to have any different attitude, because opposing Tonn would mean they would actually have to find a job in the real world. I think if he could figure out how to train chimps to drive, he would. 2 chimps and a trainer are cheaper than one driver.

The reason I got along with the planners and dispatchers at Arnold (before Roadway) is they could count on me. If they were in a tight spot, and needed a little extra, they called and I would make a sacrifice to help them. I don't call that brown nosing, I was a valuable asset that they could count on. In return, they rewarded my sacrifice, for bailing them out and helping to keep a customer happy, and kept me rolling when the other drivers weren't. They did this so that I wouldn't leave the company, they needed drivers that would go the extra mile for them since they were a small company at the time and they couldn't afford to lose drivers that were truly dedicated to seeing the company succeed. I didn't walk into the office and buddy up to them. I just was a loyal dedicated driver, and was treated like it. But all that changed when Roadway bought them out and turned them into another corporate driver treadmill. I have tried that here, it doesn't work since we are already a corporate driver treadmill. You get the 'do me a favor' from dispatch, but you never reap the benefits for your sacrifice here. Thats why my attitude changed over the last few years here. Like I said, there are a few dispatch/planners here that still treat you right, and those people have earned my respect, but the rest are just putting in their time, and make sure you feel how uncaring they are. And next week you see a whole bunch of new names on the msg's that come over the Q/C. So just like their maintenance shops, people are just putting in their time in order to get experience so they can move on. That doesn't make a company strong and successful. The same goes for the driving force. If they made me feel that they were giving their best, and I got to a customer that was having a bad day, or had a beef with the company then I would do what I could, as a dedicate part of the company, to smooth things over to keep them as a customer. But when dispatch and management see me as a necessary evil...that troubled customer gets the same attitude that management gives the drivers. 'There are plenty of other companies out there, you do not have to use us'...

The flies and honey deal work both ways. Respect is a two way street... You get what you give. I gave, repeatedly, only to get nothing in return. If you mistreat a dog often enough, sooner or later he will turn on you and bite you. But if you treat that same dog good, he/she is a loyal faithful companion for life. And you know what they say about us being dogs. ( Truck drivers are like dogs, they live in a little box, chase 4-wheelers all day, and pee on tires...well at least the guy drivers I mean)

 

What is a OBR?

 

Well if what you say is true then all I can ask is why in the world would you stay? Quit belly aching and do something about it. People only treat you the way that you let them!