C.R. England, my experience

My Experience with C.R. England​

Let me share with you my brief but educational experience with C.R. England. I say educational because I have learned what company NOT to be associated with. I strongly urge anyone that is considering the lease program to do yourself a huge favor by working as a company driver first to see if you can even get along with the company. When I first began looking into CRE, I was also interested in their lease program. After talking to recruiters, I found out that there was a dedicated account available in my area for drivers with at least 2 years experience. Having over 10 years experience behind me, I requested more information. The account pays 93 cents per mile for Private Contractors (lease drivers) and 35 cents per mile for Company Drivers and averaged 2200 to 2500 miles per week. You can get a general breakdown of your weekly costs on their web-sight as a Lease driver. After crunching these numbers, I found there was no way that this type of mileage at this rate of pay was ever going to support a lease. I work to support my family and home, not a CRE truck. Using the same numbers as before, I realized that I would bring home approximately $200.00 more per week as a Company Driver. So here is the story of my experience as a Company Driver for CRE.

I will start with the recruiter that you will be assigned to once you fill out their on-line application for employment. I dealt with several during my process and each had different answers for the same questions. Some just didn’t know the answer and felt no obligation to “go out of their way” to find out for you. I also found that as recruiters, their job is to tell you whatever you want to hear in order to get you to sign on. This is true with many companies but not to the extent that CRE takes it. I live 20 miles from the destination (processing plant) of this dedicated account. Because of that, I was told that I would be able to run through my house either under a load or between loads for my 10 hour DOT break several times a week. OK, several times sounded like a lot to me also, but I would have been happy with once a week. I was also told that it was a Monday to Friday account and I would be home all weekend. This all sounded like a pretty good deal to me so I signed up for orientation at their Hammond, IN location for the week after Thanksgiving. As most companies, they wanted to set me up with a bus ticket but coming from New England, I opted not to take the 27 hour bus ride and bought my own ticket on Amtrak with the promise of getting reimbursed travel expenses up to a certain amount. The recruiter had no idea what to tell me about my return trip because no-one knew when or where I was going to be issued a truck. They would take care of that when I get there. Being an experienced driver I was only going to be in Orientation for 3 days. So off I went to Indiana, with no knowledge of how I was getting home in 3 days. They do tell you to bring bedding and such for your truck when it is issued but when I got there I was told they don’t have any trucks in Indiana, but lets not jump ahead yet. Orientation starts on Monday so they want everyone arrived and checked into the hotel by Sunday afternoon or early evening. I was told to call a number which goes back to the hotel when I arrive at the Amtrak station and they will pick me up. I will tell you that the Hammond, IN station is a little whole in the wall and closes on Sundays. The train will stop and let you off there but the building is locked up, there is no-one around and there is no other shelter. I called the number given to me for the hotel and I was told that they will be there to pick me up within 30 minutes. OK, no problem but it is snowing now and I have no shelter. Please don’t forget about me. Well after several phone calls (thank god I had my cell phone), and 2 hours later a van finally pulled up. Frozen, this was not putting a good impression on me about the company already and I still have not arrived yet.

Upon arrival at the hotel, I was instructed to leave my belongings in the lobby and proceed up to a room set up with a physician for your drug test and physical. This is done before you are even given a room. I am fine with that, but I just spent the last day and a half protecting my belongings during travel, only to be told to leave them unprotected in a lobby full of drivers that I don’t know and could walk out the front door with everything I brought without question. This I am not comfortable with. The physical and drug test I was not concerned with. You should know if you are clean and/or healthy enough to drive before you get there. However, I must say that it was the most ridiculous physical I had ever gone through.

Once that is done, I was to proceed back down to the front desk and get a room assigned to me. The rooms were clean and accommodating, but the Ritz it is not. Continental breakfast in the morning consisted of prepackaged donuts, coffee and juice. However, you had better be an early riser and get there quick because there isn’t enough for everyone. Everyone is given a roommate and they don’t take anything into consideration such things as if you are male or female and whether or not you smoke. Smoking is not allowed in the rooms, however, being an ex-smoker for 3 ½ years, I don’t want to smell someone else. I would strongly suggest that you check on the availability of other rooms because if they are not booked completely you can get your own room by paying the difference in the price. I was not told this until after I spent three sleepless nights with a roommate that snored like a lumberjack. The difference in the price was about $10.00 per night. A price I would have gladly paid for some sleep. Another driver there was having similar problems with his roommate and actually went to a hotel down the street and paid for it himself so he could get a good nights sleep. Had he known that he could have gotten his own room for $10.00, I’m sure he would have.

Next we were all transported to the school location in Burns Harbor, IN about 15 miles away via several yellow school buses. These guys drive like maniacs; I hope they didn’t graduate from the CRE CDL School.

Once at the school, the classes are split up between drivers with a CDL (not necessarily with experience) and students without a CDL and are there for the CRE driving school to get one and get signed up as an employee. Little do they know this will take them almost 4 months to do after all the “training” and “Second Seat” time they must go through before they get their own truck. (My snoring roommate was a student and had some pretty bad horror stories of his own). During Orientation we went over a lot of company policies and how to run a log book. A lot of information was redundant to someone who already had experience. There were 4 drivers in the class with experience including myself. One left after the first day of class. He said he didn’t think this company was for him. Little did I know at the time he was actually the smartest in the class. Another driver with 30 years experience was going on to the same account that I was. This individual I am still in contact with on a regular basis. (He also left the company the day after I did). The 4th went on to be an OTR driver and I don’t know if he is still with the company or not. There were about 35 other drivers in the class that were fresh out of school with a new CDL. Orientation was definitely set up more around them, understandably, because of the quantity.

At lunch time on the third day, I still have not spoken with anyone familiar with the account that I am going on and I still have no idea how I am getting home and class is over in about 2 hours. Finally, the administrative assistant in the office finds out that there are two experienced drivers coming onto a dedicated account and will be ready to roll this afternoon. It seems now panic sets in for a while to try and find us trucks and loads to get us home. After a brief conversation over the phone with the manager of the account about what is expected of us as well as what we expect from the company, he seems to track down a couple of trucks for us. One small problem, they are in Indianapolis and they can’t bus us there until tomorrow morning. OK, well, at least I have an idea now how I am getting home. The next morning the hotel brings us to the bus station with reservations to Indianapolis and there is supposed to be someone waiting there to get us when we arrive. Apparently, we are picking up these trucks from a different account and bringing them to New England. When we arrive at the bus station no-one is there. This is where the communication breaks down between the employee and the company for the rest of my short lived career. We had several different phone numbers on us to contact people to help us out, including the person who was picking us up. For an hour we were unable to contact anyone, we just kept leaving voicemails everywhere explaining that we were stranded here and no-one would call us back. Finally one of us came up with the phone number for the administrative assistant that helped us in the office. Low and behold, she answered the phone. She contacted the person who was supposed to pick us up and 2 hours later he showed. When he got there he told us that he didn’t know why we were sent to him because he has no trucks for us. After sitting in his office playing phone games for over an hour, he had one of his workers take us over to a couple of trucks sitting in a lot… Whew, finally a truck, maybe I can get out of here. Nope, we were left with the trucks and three hours later still had no Load Assignment to bring us home and no empty trailers to run with. Nor were we given any supplies for the trucks such as “Trip Pax” envelopes (this is how you get paid for your runs) or logs or anything else. Now we have to chase these down back at the office that we came from and have no idea how to get back to.

Finally, the load that will take me home comes in. It is a Live Load in Lawrenceburg, IN, only about 70 miles from where I am and going to Avon, MA for Monday morning. Plenty of time to get me home for the weekend, right? Sure, but I can’t load until Friday at noon. It is now Thursday afternoon so I must drive to the Truck Stop about 15 miles out of Lawrenceburg and sit and wait. Friday afternoon I am finally loaded and on my way home on an 850 mile load. Not too bad but the routing they sent me does not send me anywhere near my house which was the whole reason for giving me this load to begin with. It takes me at least 3 more hours to get hold of someone to tell them to route me through RI so I can go home only to be told that I can get “Home Time” if I need after I deliver the load on Monday. WHAT?? You want me to sit at the receiver for 2 days when I could be home 50 miles away? They will have my “Driver Manager” call me soon. Soon turned out to be never. Sometime during the next day (Saturday) I am talking to the driver on the same account as me from Orientation. He tells me that he also has a load going back to MA for Monday morning. He also tells me that we now have a new “Driver Manager”. He found out from our old one when he called him the night before when he had a problem with something. So, I have been in my truck for 1 day and I already have a new Manager and didn’t even know about it. Seems to me this should be a pretty important contact for me out on the road. My friend gives me the phone number that he has to contact her so I give it a shot… Holy Moley… Voice mail, I never would have guessed. So I leave another message about where I am supposed to be going with this load because I don’t want to be accused of being “out of route” when I go home for now only ½ the weekend. Only about 2 hours later she actually called me back to my surprise. She seemed very nice to talk to and easy to work with. We spoke for sometime about the dedicated account once I start on it Monday after delivering this load to Avon, MA. It seems we may have things organized. She sent me the new routing to get me home through RI but did not change my “Paid Miles” so it seems I will be driving home for free. Oh well, at least I will be getting home.

Upon my final hour on the road Saturday night, I pull into a service plaza on the side of the highway to get a cup of coffee and stretch my legs. I was out of the truck for approximately 10 minutes when I tried to leave again. “Click” is all that came from the truck. Unfortunately, I ended up with a truck with a bad starter. I looked through the information that I received in Orientation and found the segment on “Road Service”. Something we never went over in class. I sent in a “Macro 21” (request for road service) on the Qualcom computer they have in the trucks. I also sent a message directly to my “Driver Manager” so she would know of my situation. According to the literature we received, every message sent in for road service will be answered in a timely manner and response would be quicker than trying to get through on the phone. Well after 45 minutes with no reply from either the road service department or my manager, I called in to Salt Lake City. There was never going to be a reply from road service because he didn’t see the message sent until I called and asked about it. Now that I brought it to his attention, he was very helpful in getting me in touch with a local road service provider and getting me back on the road. About an hour later, I sent a message back to road service asking what they wanted me to do with the truck when I get home because I wasn’t rolling out again until Monday morning. The only message I got was “Don’t shut the truck off!!!!!!” then I could no longer get hold of them again. If you have a company truck, they have idle limiters in them that will shut the truck off after about 5 minutes of idling. The only exception to this is if the outside temperature is below 20 degrees or above 65 degrees F, then you can override the idle limiter and let it run. The temperature that night was in the mid 30’s. How am I supposed to let it run and they wouldn’t respond to anymore messages. Furthermore, if you let the truck idle more than a certain percentage, you loose the fuel bonus of 1 cent per mile. I don’t want to give up my money because they gave me faulty equipment. Once again, my manager never replied to any of my messages or voicemail. At this point I was getting very concerned about the communication in this company. I went home and shut the truck down.

Monday morning I made my delivery in Avon, MA as scheduled then began to run for the dedicated account that I was hired for. My first load was in up-state Maine going back to CT. No problem, I’ll be there in about 4 ½ hours. At this point I find out that they will only load me between the hours of 7 AM and 12 noon. This means that I will arrive around 3:00 in the afternoon and have to wait until the next morning to get loaded. Am I getting any “Layover” pay for this? Nope, I must sit there on my own time and make nothing. The next morning I show up an hour and a half early for my appointment only to find out that there are 3 more trucks ahead of me. This will take about 3 hours for me to get onto the dock. Am I getting paid “Detention” pay for this? Nope, once again, working for free. I finally get loaded and must be in CT by early evening. I have plenty of time to drive there then take my 10 hour DOT break. Now, remember that I only live 20 miles from the plant that I am going to and I will be within 2 hours of having to take my DOT break anyway. Remember I was also told that I would be able to run through my house during these breaks. Well here is what happened. I sent a message to my “Driver Manager” asking if there would be a problem getting home for my break tonight after my delivery. It took about 3 hours for a reply which informed me that it is against company policy for me to go home during the week. What?!? Where did this come from? They need me to get turned around and headed back up to Maine for the next load. OK, I’m new so I didn’t want to stir up any trouble so I do just that. The next morning (Wednesday) they send me up to a farm that is not taking anymore trucks for the day. I’m then instructed to head up to another farm about 120 miles further north. No problem, this gives me more miles. However, it took them over a day to change the paid miles on my load assignment. During my travels up to the northern farm I was instructed to go to a truck stop in Bangor and have my trailer washed out. I’m already 50 miles past Bangor but I will gladly turn around as long as they correct my mileage. Of course I cannot get a reply from anyone either on the Qualcom or on the phone again. So I turn around and drive 100 miles out of route and figure we can fix this later. I arrive at the truck stop and ask for an “approval number” to get the trailer washed out and find out it will take about 2 hours just to get the approval. Didn’t you send me here in the first place? I didn’t want to donate another 2 hours of my time for free so I just paid for it myself ($34.00) in hope that I would get reimbursed and get back on the road. At the end of this scenario, I did get the money back but I had to call payroll several times and it took 2 weeks to get it. Yes, I did send in my receipt with my trip report. I was also refused the 100 miles that I drove out of route at their request. I’m beginning to realize that I am doing a lot of work for free here.

Now I am back on the road heading north to Houlton, ME, of course it is late afternoon again so now I have to sit at the truck stop and wait until tomorrow to get loaded again. At this point I still have not received my new Load Assignment for going to the farm further north. I was left here at this truck stop for the next 18 hours. And believe me when I tell you, it was not because I wasn’t trying to get hold of them.

The week continued this way till Friday. On my way to my final destination for the week, I finally got a phone call from my manager. She informs me that she wants me to leave my house again on Saturday afternoon to pick up a load on Sunday morning. What happened to being home for the weekends like I was told? Oh, I’ll get home on the weekends but it may only be for 1 day. Another example of the recruiters misleading you just to get you to sign on. I ended up with 1600 miles for the week and never made it home at all in 6 days. This hardly seemed worth it to me.

After talking this over with my wife, I figured it was best if I just cut my losses here and move on. This was not going to work for me. There was just too much working for free as I saw it and the account was not what I was told that it was. Saturday morning I actually got hold of my manager and explained to her that this just was not going to work out for me and where she would like me to bring the truck. She actually had no idea where to bring it and was talking about me bringing it to Salt Lake City, UT. Are you kidding? I didn’t pick the truck up there, I’m not bringing it back there. Throughout the conversation she actually talked me into staying for one more week to try to make this work. Alright I’ll give it another try but the communication has to improve.

Monday, it took me about 16 hours to make a 568 mile round trip because of all of the waiting around and not getting paid scenarios. The second day, I broke down again with the same starter problem and once again could not get hold of anyone for hours. This time, I was stuck in front of the shipper’s only dock who then had to send two trucks away without freight because they couldn’t get loaded as long as I was stuck there. This put me deep into violation on my log book. Now they want to take tomorrows load assignment away from me so I can sit at a truck stop and have the truck fixed. Not only do I loose my load and a day’s mileage but I’m supposed to sit with their truck for free, too? Remember, this is a company truck, not a lease. 18 hours after starting the day I finish my 568 mile trip and let them know I will be cleaning out my truck tonight and bringing it to the plant in CT in the morning.

That was my driving experience with C.R. England. Now let’s talk a little bit about the pay. When I started receiving my pay vouchers which you have to obtain on-line, things just didn’t add up. My first load from Indiana to Mass that was to get me home, I was only paid 25 ¾ cents per mile for. They have a Per Diem program set up for your mileage pay. That means that a part of your mileage is tax free. In this case it was 9 cents per mile. That means I was being paid 16 ¾ cents per mile at a regular rate and 9 cents per mile Per Diem. Maybe this is acceptable for a new comer to the industry but there is no way that I am driving for this rate with over 10 years accident free experience and a million miles under my belt. So of course I questioned this but could not get any answers and had to accept this as my pay to get home. On the account that I was hired for, it was explained to me and it is also advertised that the pay is 35 cents per mile. Again the Per Diem program is involved. Combined, the actual pay is 32 ¾ cents per mile. This they say is the “EQUIVILENT” of 35 cents per mile because I’m not being taxed on 9 cents of it. Well, I did not sign on to paid an “EQUIVILENT”. Furthermore, you will not convince me that 9 cents per mile untaxed will save me 2 ¼ cents per mile. There’s no way. Now, remember the guy that was hired on with me at the same time for the same account? He sent me a copy of his pay voucher and was getting paid 35 ½ cents per mile on the dedicated account - 8 -and got paid 36 cents per mile for his trip home from Indiana. Why are these pays so different for two experienced drivers on the same account? No-body wants to answer any of these questions and I refuse to be taken advantage of.

My thoughts back on this whole experience, is that I am thankful that I did not get tangled up in their Lease program or I would most likely be loosing my house at this point. Use caution when dealing with this company do lots of research. After weeks of fighting for my ridiculous pay because of their “computer glitches” I finally have settled with them but it is 3 weeks out of my life that I will never get back. Thank god it was only 3 weeks and not the 3 year lease they were trying to talk me into. One of my pay vouchers was for 0.0 cents for all the miles driven for the week (1600 miles). I only got paid for reimbursements for scales and such. 2 weeks later I got it straightened out. Not something that I can say to my mortgage company.

Good luck and best wishes to all drivers.

Stay safe…

 

I actually left a local company that paid pretty well to go these jerks. Sometime you need to try the grass on the other side to realize the grass you had was already greener. I am back now with my previous employer who was happy to see me return. Getting stuck somewhere isn't so bad now that I'm getting paid for it again.