Answers from a driver who stuck it out. 1 year with CRE

Thats something I would have paid to see.

 

Well I'm back at the main terminal in Salt Lake now. I might very well bust out the gloves again tonight. Good times, good times. Now back to editing the Qualcomm logs and pondering what to call my LLC.

 

I am sorry.....I did my time with CRE for 5yrs. I could prob TRUTHFULLY answers more questions concerning how they operate and treat their drivers. I dithe lease thing and even running as a trainer or as a team after maintaince/lease/fuel/ect was taken out I sometimes was able tomake a check bigger then $700 a week. And I was on their fuel program everyweek in which I only paid $1.25 a gallon no matter what the price was. Trust me your eyes will be opened one day to how they really treat their drivers.

 

So talk to us about your experience with the lease program. I am curious to know how it went for you personally, and what decisions lead to those results. I've met drivers who it worked out for, and drivers who had poor results. It seems that individual experiences are based largely upon miles received, personal driving habits and preferences, and the responsibility level of the individual driver. I plan to lease soon, and am always interested in hearing from other drivers who will be honest. If a driver wants regular home time, and has multiple elective deductive deductions like insurances, it doesn't seem that leasing would be a good route to take for example. It's difficult to find drivers that will give you the whole story.

 

Are you saying that they treat them badly here? I know a lot of people online are saying it isn't worth it to go with them. But then again, bad news spreads quicker and farther than good news.

I'm at the end of my rope on unemployment. Have bills I can't pay any longer and am looking at CRE as an option. If I get saddled with a crappy trainer so be it, I am not the type that quits easily. I've been through 7 circles of hell with previous employers and stuck with it because it was what I needed to do.

If after 6 months I hate them what does it matter? I have fulfilled my commitment to them and they have gotten me my class A without me having to pay my local driving school, get this, $12,000! (Honestly, that's what I was quoted when I went. They tried to pressure me into financing the whole thing through a program they ran there. Was almost like getting pitched a time-share. I'm not dumb enough to get taken that easily!)

 

Hi Corona36,

If you go through CRE's school, you will have to drive for them for six months, that is true. The alternative is to pay $3,000 or take a hit to your credit report (though some people don't care about that for some reason). You may or may not get a crappy trainer. You don't get to choose your trainer. You get a preference fir a smoker or a non-smoker, and that's it. CRE is a major carrier like Swift, Werner, and many others, so no, they don't pay top dollar. They do have a lot of turn over, because many drivers use them ti get their CDL's, and one to two years experience, and then go elsewhere. The company isn't the demonic entity that some try to make it out to be, but it IS a business. Businesses have a bottom line, and while they do offer some means to accomodate their employees, the bottom line is that they need freight moved.

If I were you, I would check out all my options and choose the one that best worked for my family and myself. You're doing the right thing by researching and asking questions, and if you have any specific questions, the community is here to assist you. We're just fellow drivers who're trying to look out fir one another, and encourage each other when and where necessary. Ignore the hateful types and the show offs, and pick through any advice given to weigh it and see if it is useful to you. Good luck!

 

Well I went to their school in SLC in Jan '06...passed with no prob. The classes arent hard but the stick you ion a dorm type rooms that arent the cleanest. And if you have a snorer in the room forget bout sleeping. Once I graduated I did 4 weeks with a trainer, he was a 20yr driver and we got along well. Then for Phase 2 they stick you a another trainer, this was a ####y kid who was only 21 and thouoght he knew all. He had just got his truckn a month earlier. He flat out did nothing but ##### and complain all the time and degrade CRE and all the students that we were destroying his truck and he was only using us to get extra mis. Finally when u get ur own truck they don't tell yu anything bout what m ight be wrong with iot and only give u a partial warranty. Even tho mine was fairly new, this and that kept breakin down. I was going thru my maintanance funds within a month. Then they started taking more out because they said the fund had to have a min of $500...so that was leaving me no check even with trainees.

 

The day we got our hard copy CDL there in SLC over half the class grabbed theirs and left. One guy even called JB Hunt from the payphone and got a bus ticket there.. Once you lease be careful they will put you a waiuting lists for repairs at any of the shops. Everytime I was in SLC just for the oil change/checkup, it should have taken 4hrs I waited over a day and a half. They were bringing in company trucks first for the same. And whatever CRE tells you as a lease driver, You will be first with load dispatchs...don't believe it...Can't count how many times I was passed over for loads by a company driver even tho I had more hrs or a complete reset.

 

Thank you Roger. I plan to do a six month demo-lease, and see how it goes. I look at it as a kind of "try it before you buy it" situation. If it doesn't work out for me, at least I'm only screwed for six months, and can go company again. But this will give me a little taste of what it's like to be an owner operator, to see whether I really want to take that next step. If I find that I like it, I'll be putting a down payment on a Freightliner Cascadia, which my fiancee and I plan to team drive in.

 

Ok Good luck. I will warn you tho if you go company at first beware of the DM you get. as a company driver u are stuck with who u get and is he or she doesnt run the miles u are stuck with them. As a lease driver if they do that u have the right to fire them. BTW what fleet r u in if u dont mind me askin