Starting with Werner on Monday

Werner is the first to send me a pre-hire (matter of hours), and even though not high on my list, I am considering them.. My hope is to have like 3 or 4 pre-hires to choose from, but we'll see.. Should be finished with school by Friday the 10th.. but will probably milk out another week after that and leave for whatever orientation I go to for whatever company on the 15th.. so that I have given all the companies I applied for a chance to respond.

My cousin is on his 5th week of training with them.. His trainer happened to be Western states, and he lucked into one he gets along well with.. Not sure if it's the fact of the Western states as opposed to 48, but it seems to be taking him a bit long to get hours.. His situation at the start was a little more desperate than mine, and he did not listen to me to do more job searching prior to graduating.. he almost just went with Swift out of laziness.. whether or not Werner is a step up is to the individual I guess, but I tend to lean to the opinion that it is.. and he seems to be satisfied with them.

The training pay seems to be low, which is a downside.. but not a total dealbreaker. I am a realist, and I know that starting at this time of year, that I can not expect large checks in my immediate future.. and it is a bit of a concern to start with the weather fixing to change.. In ideal circumstances, I would like to find a company that I will just stay with, and this is my goal.. however if I am given limited choices then I will have to choose the best that will at least get me through the winter to around April or May when I will have increased opportunities (although not the ideal 1 yr experince).. I really want to be a solo driver, but in thinking about dealing with winter the team idea has some appeal (although if you examine it, it is twice the opportunity (driving time) for an accident).

Well, my post seems to be rambling.. and as next week progresses I'll probably be on a whole other train of thought.. but for now Werner is a possiblity

 

No pork here D. But I DID check all the fluids on those "ratwagons" at school every morning. TMC ring a bell?
Luca was going to TMC also.
Good luck with "The BigBlueScrew".


JoeC

 

Driving for Werner is the equivalent of dying & going to hell. My "new" truck has a leak in the seal around the windshield right above my EZPass that was supposedly fixed before I got it. Nooooo, it wasn't got on the East Coast where it was raining all the time during the last hurricane that had blown up & soak 2 large towels in a couple of hours. Asked to be sent to the nearest terminal to get it repaired, got a message on my QC that I could go to the Peterbilt dealership in Maryland & get it fixed. It was 4 pm & i was in Virginia 160 miles from the place. Needless to say they were closed by the time I could get there. Got to the Allentown terminal where it was suppose to be fixed & sat for 4 days. Guess what....it still leaks. Not to mention I am now dizzy from all the changes they have made in my trips, change this load swap this load turn around & get this load. Do these folks walk around with their heads up their ***** all the time. All in all Werner is BS and the sooner I can get away the better.

Go with Werner if you're looking to get screwed without dinner & a movie first!!!

 

Can you ask for anther truck while your in the repair shop?Personaly, I wouldnt sit 4 days at a termainal.You sould ask for anther truck,I would,and if they said no,I would ask bus home.





























home.

 

well gee that's something i never thought of. of course i've asked for a different truck, if i'm sitting i'm not making any money. but they always have some line of bs to dish out, especially when it comes to the more than 100 brand spanking new tractors they've got in Omaha. I even requested one of those, but noooo, they were reserved for other drivers. hello, need a truck, they've got plenty but they are reserved, looks like a potential tax write off to me. Same situation at the other terminals, new trucks just waiting to get some miles on them. this is my 3rd truck, each one i get always has some kind of maintenance situation. My favorite was putting it in to have engine work done & one of the monkeys in the shop decided to use my cab as a toilet by doing a #2 in a 5 gallon bucket topping it with newspaper & leaving it for ME! Complaint did no good!!! Final Words....WERNER DOES NOT CARE!!!

Do your homework before signing on with any company. I wish I had & as soon as I can get in a position to switch to another company I AM.

 

I'm going with Transport America myself.But thanks for the enlightening info!

 

I am a happy Werner employee, and I would be happy to answer all questions, however, I am having a hard time for some reason reading anything but the last page of this post... so if you have something to ask please repost.

Werner is not the equivalent of dying and going to hell. Please quit exaggerating, in fact, from your post I can see you are a kind easily peeved person. Like most truck drivers really though, but you have to take a breath step back and breath a minute. Your situation is one of 2,000+ drivers in a company. It is not hte norm.

Ever heard of the squeaky wheel gets the grease? Sure you have, well how about content people are quiet and angry people are not. Look at how many drivers Werner employs, then compare this to the 'negative' posts here. Do you think that only one out of every 1000 drivers would be here angry if Werner was nearly as bad as they say?

Am I saying they are lying? No. Sometimes people have bad days, their dispatchers, their maintence persons, their truck assigners, their SDMs, or their Trainers are probably in the wrong, or maybe, they both are. I mean again, look at the WERNER SUCKS MONKEY BALLZ posts closely, judge character from the typing, and then tell me if you think most of the posters reacted with the tact any problem with an employer/boss requires?

Just saying...

Now dude with truck in shop, try this, had to do this once before. Call Fleet manager, tell him oh crap I need to go on Emergency Leave! Make up dumb but plausible (preferably emergencyish) reason. They will put you on LOA, the truck will be deassigned from you. Wait 2 days, preferably do this on a weekend, call back, say you are ready to go back to work. Maybe pick another Terminal to get your truck out of, viola, new truck assignment. No they cannot give you a new truck because you asked. Those trucks have to still be inspected, reigstered, etc, and many will not be used at all because Werner is in a tail spin right now due to the economy. You are not the first driver to be stuck on maintence, our first truck was in the shop 5 days. You should get 40.00 a day its in the shop, not alot but it is something. But if you really feel fustrated and angry, try calming down a bit and trying what I suggest.

I can tell you this. I am a veteran of the training program, I came of CDL Mill (TDI) in Dallas which is BY FAR the worst Werner Terminal. I have been through three Werner Upgrade trucks, and have waaaaaaaaaay more then 100,000 miles under my belt due to teaming. I think anyway... I've been through every conceivable part of the friggen us, in every form of weather! All 48 lower states anyway.

I reached 1 year driving June 8th of this year, and will be 1 year senority with werner Dec 12th this year. Heres what I can tell you.

I team, I make .38 cents a mile with school loan deducted. My pay rate is based off my husband whom is first seat with 7 years exp. My base solo rate start with Werner was .32 cents. I have made 26k this year thus far, expect to breech 30k by the end of the year.

I was not running as hard as we could/should be as a team however. I travel with my do... er husband, and my dog. I have been home everytime on time save for 2 times other Werner drivers failed to meet for a swap and we had to go on to deliver a load instead of getting our home load. Both times Werner apologized and rushed us home, in one case renting us a car to do it.

I love Werner.

 

No I am not an easily peeved person, but when someone has had their fill of bs they should be able to vent their frustrations. Which I had my fill & then some. I am a usually patient person. Then so far you are one of the few that I have encountered that does. Every driver I have come across has had nothing but bad feelings for this company. I have been there for more than 1 year and have had nothing but problems with dispatchers everything from long pre assigned loads being given then at the last minute taken away & be given a load that is maybe 1/3 the miles of the original load, to my QC not working, having to try to get road breakdown & HAVING to call my dispatcher who tells me he'll contact road breakdown (3 hours passing & nothing, calling him back & being assured that he has called & that they'd be there by 2:00 pm only to find out 8 hrs later that no he hadn't because I finally was able to get thru), not to mention my particular favorite being told to hurry to my drop & being chewed out because i'm late because of an ice storm just west of Cedar Rapids this last winter that had EVERYONE stopped & at the side of the road. I could barely see out my windshield & had to stop at a truck stop.

I'm glad your experience with them has been so great, wish I could say the same but I can't. The only reason I haven't quit yet is because I have a family to think about, so basically its income & benefits that keep me there not because they are a good company to drive for. Good Luck & be safe.

 

I have never been chewed out for stopping due to weather, though I have gotten stupid questions about stopping when I am too tired to drive but still have hours. This is one of the things I do get peeved about with my dispatcher. When I am tired, I am stopping. I once told him he had two choices, I could stop and go to sleep for an hour and then deliver. Or I could keep going and end up turned over somewhere. Either way the load would not be on time. He hasn't bothered me since.

Right now they are splitting up long loads to get drivers miles, we are team and we are having the same thing. The only long loads we have run are time sensitive that a solo could not do. Just now we got a load from VA to AR split off in TN to get another load that was SPLT off in TN.

When loads are soft this is how they will go about getting everyone a fair amount of miles. It sucks, but you will find most other companies are also having the same issues. No one is buying anything right now really. The ecomony is bad, the stocks are crashing, companies failing left and right. The only good news is the price of diesel coming down which means nothing if you have no loads to run to pay for it. You are expecting too much from a soft economy, trucking is one of the first to hit hard times when money issues crop up, stuff still needs to be delivered, but MUCH less of it.

See if Mr. Smith doesn't go buy some stuff at the store, then the store won't need to restock, so we don't get to ship from the distrib to the store. The distr senter wont need to buy more of the item, so we won't need to ship from the maker to the distrib center. The maker won't need parts, so we don't get to ship the parts to the maker. The part makers won't need materials, so we don't get to ship the materials.

The only thing I can see staying the same right now is food shipments, and shipments of like toilet paper, cows, stuff like that.

Breakdown does suck, they always will. Especially at night or on weekends. Most of the other Werner drivers I speak to, and I speak to many, are content, if not happy. I have talked to some angry or quitting ones... but really... if you are quitting Werner to go to Swift... you are not thinking things through. They are both large companies, the treatment between them is not going to significantly change.

Was it your dispatcher or weekend dispatcher? Weekend dispatch is fairly unuseful. And I have found they fib alot.

 

Werner was said to be laying off 500 drivers. It does not surprise me as they are one of the worst companies out there. I feel sorry for anyone that is stuck having to go there. They have a well-known bad reputation to be sure.