CRETE - A Year in Review

^ I had beautiful weather sitting in N. Little Rock ALL WEEKEND LONG making for a 1903 mile week ... I've got a D&H going to Apple Valley, CA (1591 miles) that picks up later today, so hopefully I can get a long one back out to make up for it ...

I get that back road/stuck-behind-Amish-buggy routing with pay for running the interstates, too. Mostly in OH and PA. I've gotten where I just go ahead and plan to eat the toll when that happens on the reasoning that I'll at least come close to making up for it with the time saved getting back out.

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Crete has started to cheat its drivers on miles. Loads that used to pay a certain # of miles now pay less. How is this possible? Have roads begun to shrink? Have new heretofore undiscovered routes miraculously been found? It is appalling to me just how far Crete has fallen in such a short time.

 

I have my first complaint, I can't get home. I was suppose to be home on 2-4 and now on 2-10 I'll be delivering 330 miles from home. The hometime request has vanished from my truck. East coast dispatch wouldn't never preplan me a load home. I was home 1 day in Dec and 3 days in Nov, by my choice.
I guess the freight picked up and they can't spare me.

 

What's more likley the case is that freight is so bad that they don't have loads to get you home from where you are empty. The lesson I have learned at Crete is whenever you know you are going to be reasonably close to home call your terminal and put in for home time after you make your delivery. Most times they'll let you. Unfortunately home time is no longer a priority of Crete's. I've had dispatch so much as tell me so.

 

ya know, if it is going on, someone in mgt may be trying to pull a slick one on the drivers. pay and miles still same but changed for the drivers figuring that most wont even pay attention to is so they can fly under the radar and make a few extra grand off of a days dispatches to help out the company to keep it from goin under or looking like it is on the stockmarket maybe. dunno just an idea.

 

Yep, that's Crete for ya! We always had a hard time getting home and the longest we were out was just over 7 weeks. When we got into it with the dispatch, he said that's how Crete does it! Oh well, Crete is no longer for their drivers and yese we did notice it prior to quitting.

Hopefully they'll get you home soon!

 

Hi Knighton,
Reefer is doing very well all over. Especially with the economy trouble. I'm not sure about Shaffer as I don't see them as much as we use to. Our company continuously get us the miles. There was only one time we had to sit a night and that was in Spokane where they don't have much freight coming out of the area. They did dead head us to Quincy for a meat load. They pay dead head miles with no problems. Marten is almost a debt free company...They said they were going to be out of debt by the end of last year but I haven't heard anything since then. We don't do 48 very often, but when we did twice, we raked in the miles big time.

I am not familiar with JCT so not sure what to say about them except for I've heard complaints about them. But what is new? No company is perfect. <G>

Good luck on your search and get a job before you quit Crete. How are you doing?

Take care, Keep SAFE!

 

I recieved a response to the above email I sent upper mgt..

John, I checked with Scott when I got your message. As you can see from
his reply below we have not changed the program from several years ago when
we first went to paying practical route miles. Here is Scotts explanation:


Jack, we continue to pay all of our drivers on the Rand McNally practical
mile scale. About a year ago when that scale was revised and updated, we
saw changes in the amount of miles of certain lanes. Most of those changes
were minimal (3 to 7 miles), but others were somewhat more dramatic with
the addition and expansion of some US highways. The addition of miles to
the suggested routing was done as a convenience to the driver. Often,
drivers call in and ask how long they are supposed to be on a particular
road, or why they can't find a certain road on a route. The addition of
the amount of miles to the suggested route should help clear a lot of this
up and help distinguish the minor roads on a route from the major roads.
This addition of information has not changed the routing in any way. Our
suggested routing program is PC Miler. I have nearly 6,000 route
exceptions currently in place to help rectify some of the differences
between PC Miler and Rand McNally, so as to route the drivers as close to
the paid miles as possible.

John, hope this answers the question. Thanks.

J P,
Shaffer Trucking
Crete Carrier Corporation


I realize this may not satisfy all who read the response. That's not my intention. I'm only the messenger.

However, I will say that I do appreciate upper managments willingness to respond.

 

I've worked for crete for 2 years and i have never had any problems getting home. I go home quite often as well.......

 

Pretty much the same as one of mine toward Michigan from Maryland. The miles matched my GPS pretty closely if I were allowed to use the toll roads, which was not in the "suggested" routing. I ended up about 40 or so miles out of route.

I know the FMs get a weekly or monthly report with out-of-route percentages for drivers. I just hope they don't use it against us some way on these wierd routes.

I believe Schneider used (uses) some decendant version of Mapquest, which is notoriously not a good system to use, especially when compared to Google or GPS.

So far the bizarre routing happened on three out of four loads since last Monday. My current one is hard to mess up - Atlanta to El Paso; there is really only one route to take: I-20 to I-10.

Let's keep an eye on this to see what happens. I too am here primarily because of the practical mileage pay, so I hope this is just a fluke.