Adventures of a Flatbedder at Roehl

Many thanks to TheTank for creating this thread and others who have contributed. This is my 2nd post on the forum (the other being on a Maverick glass thread). I have spent many hours over the last couple of weeks reading posts and am grateful for this source of information.

Just got my CDL-A with Tanker & Doubles/Triples endorsements (HazMat background check in process) on 08 Feb 12 after attending a 6-week community college trucking school. Already have a passport and a TWIC from a prior endeavor. Have been looking at trucking companies for about 3 weeks and applied to more than a dozen. At this point I seem to enamored with flatbed for some reason.... although I would be happy with something else if the total package was right.

Actually my dream trucking job is to haul sailboats around, since I have done a lot of sailing... Of course if I did that then the truck's steering wheel might need to be modified... lol

Anyway...I am now in the pre-hire phase with Roehl flatbed division and my application has been approved with Maverick glass division. Both seem to be good companies from what I have read here at TTR.

The Roehl process thus far has been extremely easy and moving along rapidly. It took very little time (all within one day) from application submittal to approval and pre-hire letter. I believe in taking a path of little or no resistance; as long as things keep moving smoothly I will stay on that path; if not then it will be time to take the next fork in the road...

Next step is to call my Roehl recruiter (Terry) on Tuesday next week to confirm a local (near my home) medical exam at a place of their choosing. It seems they have recently started a process whereby an applicant gets the initial company-sponsored med screens first, rather than waiting to get it done at orientation. This makes sense, since apparently 'medical issues' is a primary reason that pre-hires don't make it. Why pay for travel and waste time at a distant location when medically disqualified folks can be weeded out near their home before orientation?

I am looking forward to the next stage of getting my orientation date established and getting back into the trucks...

Once the orientation is confirmed, I may start a new thread to document the experience, following the excellent example of those who came before me.

Thanks again for all the great info and be safe everyone.

 

Roehl did some boat hauling in the past and from what I've heard we lost our shirts on it! No money in it at all!

 

Thanks for that info. I know lots about operating sailboats but really know nothing about hauling them on trucks. It probably would be a very difficult load to manage...

 

I was offered that fleet! I didn't make sense to me, and they couldn't answer the questions I had about it so I turned it down. Cool idea, just a mis-fire on the execution. Probably would have been better to do more research and figure out how it needs to work to turn a profit.

 

When I started there was an o/o that leased on for the boats. He quit twice and then finally a third time. They never had him hauling any boats he said they kept promising boat loads of $$ but never hauled a boat... lol

 

i hate sitting in gary as well. i'll go there, do whatever business i have to do, then go to the Pilot or the TA up the road a mile.

TA finally has decent coffee now. much better than the stuff out of the machine at the gary terminal.

 

Lol... sounds about right...