Central Refrigerated ... Good Bad and Ugly

Maybe you should go to this site and ask
http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tr...859-central-refrigerated-truck-stop-1636.html

 

http://ai.fmcsa.dot.gov/SMS/Data/carrier.aspx?enc=ELf6aUtJFN7HuyolKassQw==

 

It can,

yes sir !!

 

See my responses in red.

 

I recently left the company, and the way training works is that is DOES cost you money. Theoretically, it costs you $3,000 but you pay no money up front. The reasoning behind this is that if you go through their "free" program, and decide to quit as soon as you get your CDL, they nab you for $3,000. It goes straight to collections. If you stay with the company, they have a tuition reimbursement scheme where basically you're out $20 per pay for the year, and your debt is gone after a full year with them. They reimburse it such that you actually end up paying only $1,200 if you stay for the full year. What they do is they deduct like $57/week to pay your $3,000 tuition bill, but for every week you're employed with them they reimburse $30 of your tuition. You're allowed to pay off the debt early if you want to quit or change companies before the year is up. Thats what I did (pay off the $3,000 tuition), and they still kept paying out the $30 reimbursement every week.

Trainee pay is/was $50/day when out with a trainer when I went through last year. Maybe it changed. Remember, that is "working days." If your trainer parks at a terminal to go home for a day or two, and you're not moving under a load for those 24 hours, it's not a working day. You don't get paid for that, but you might enjoy the break. You can switch trainers if you don't get along, but thats a big awkward hassle for everybody involved and will lengthen your training time.

When you upgrade and get assigned your own truck as a solo driver, you start making $0.28/mile. For estimating my paychecks, I just calculated it at $0.24/mile to account for taxes/bad weeks etc. The mileage is paid on a "HouseHoud Goods (HHG)" mileage basis, which basically means they calculate mileage from zipcode to zipcode. You're not gonna get paid for the 0.25 miles on maple street or the 0.5 miles on main street before the interstate. It's usually pretty close, but it does slightly underestimate your mileage. I've never had it underestimate by more than 10% though. Something like paying you on a 480 mile basis on a 510 mile load would be common.. it's just an inherent flaw with using HHG mileage. Other companies use different mileage calculators.

I'm not sure about the $0.10/mile bonus. I think you have that mixed up. That may be an owner-operator thing, but as a company driver you simply receive an extra $10 bonus for delivering on time. If you're late, you don't necessarily get docked in pay, but a late delivery means we can't bill them detention time. Detention is billed if you're held longer than 2 hours. For instance, if you arrive at 4:30 for a 5:00 appointment, and are still sitting there by 7:00, you'll receive detention pay for every 15 mins after 7. It's $24/hour and it's billed in 15 min increments ($6 every $15). It maxes out at $96 for 4 hours. RARELY are you held over two hours, and if you are, as long as your paperwork has it all documented, you get well compensated. I was once held all day at an awful receiver in Phoenix.. I lost any mileage I could have earned that day, but I did make $96 from detention pay, so I was happy

Paychecks aren't really being screwed with. As a newbie, there is a lot you'll need to pay for though. They charge you for your first 2 load locks ($20 each). They also charge you for a deposit on a heavy duty trailer lock kit ($120). A truck deposit of ($380) is also charged, just like a security deposit on an apartment, so they can fix it if you decide to drill holes in the roof or something. It all comes out through payroll deduction. I consider them fair, because they're all refundable if you properly return the equipment in good working order when you leave. It's a big drag on your first few paychecks though.

Other than that, you'll have little issues from time to time about payroll losing receipts, etc. If they lose a little $5 toll receipt and you don't get reimbursed, it's no big deal. But these little headaches do come up. Truck stops offer copies for $0.25/page and there are in cab scanners on the market, so if you're concerned you could spend the time documenting everything. I don't think it's worthwhile though. Scales can be paid on your fuel card, and we have EZ Pass, which handles tolls in every state except Oklahoma and Florida. We also have accounts at most major truck washes, so you rarely need to pay cash and worry about getting reimbursed for anything.

I've never been given an "illegal" load. If a load is too heavy and we can't manage the weight with fuel capacity, then it goes back to the shipper for adjustment or it doesn't get hauled. A shipper may try to play hardball, but they can't. They need to adjust it if you have documentation saying it's too heavy. ((**Fun fact: A contract for an illegal service can't be held up in court. You can't sign a contract with a drug dealer for x amount of product at y price.. nor can your motor carrier sign a contract saying we'll haul x illegal load.. the contract becomes unenforceable and worthless if it requires you to do something illegal)) Of course, this all eats into your available driving hours..

The equipment is maintained well. Virtually every truck in the fleet (except some old training trucks) is less than 3 years old. Central leases new trucks while they still have the warranty. Once their 3 year warranty runs out, Central gets new trucks. Every time you go through the West Valley City terminal, your truck will be inspected and possibly red tagged (put out of service) if you need something like new tires, major repair, etc. The security gate won't let you out until a tech addresses the problem and clears you in the computer system.

Average miles are pretty variable. I'd say around 2500/week is average. Obviously, if you have some repair or operational issue where you're not moving for a few days, it goes down. If you're sitting idle for more than 24 hours (even if for repair) get on your dispatcher about layover pay. You're entitled for $40/day pay if under repair or sitting due to operational issues/lack of freight. The average length of load depends on your fleet. Some fleets run a certain region and others are true OTR. My average load was probably about 600-800 miles, but I've had loads as big as 1900 miles that take more than 3 days, and loads as small as 200 miles that only take 4 hours to complete.

Electronic logs are the easiest thing in the world. Once you figure them out, they're MUCH quicker than marking up a paper log, gettin a pencil, and a ruler, and a clipboard, and trying to remember the city of the place you stopped for lunch and blahblahblah. Press 4 or 5 buttons on the qualcomm and it's done for you. Takes 5 seconds to change your duty status. The electronic logs also make it impossible for your dispatcher to force you to work over your hours.. the safety department would know about the h.o.s. violation. The truck automatically registers drive time when in motion. When you're stopped, it'll eventually put you in "on-duty" status. You just need to tell it what you're doing every time you stop. Law enforcement also likes them.. I've been told they usually don't even bother checking e-logs during log checks!

Overall it's a good, solid company that treats you fairly.. though there are better options once you get some training and experience under your belt. One competitor of theirs advertises that their average load is 1800 miles.. which is a big pay benefit because you wouldn't have to deal with the unproductive down time of loading/unloading for a couple hours nearly as often.

You asked a lot of questions, so I gave a lot of answers! Hope this helps!

 

JimBad some corrections. The training pay is 67.50 per days and it's paid for everyday you are on your trainers truck. Doesn't matter if his truck is at his house, at a terminal, or on the road. I got paid sitting in my trainers truck while he was on sometime for four days.

Detention pay is $16 per hour, up to $96, paid in 15 minute intervals.

There isn't a 'truck deposit'; however, you do have to have a $280 expense account, which they deduct from your pay at $40 a week. Like you said it's used in a case where you don't or can't pay for something you got charged for. Drilling holes is one of things. Trashing a dorm room will get you billed too..

It not a deposit for the load locks and security locks. You own them, but the company will buy them back. The security locks are only $100.00 ($10 per week). If yourassigned truck already has load locks on it, you don't need to buy them..

All payroll deductions are start after you go solo..

HHG miles are city center to city center. Sometimes you make out and sometimes you don't. Depends on where the shipper and/or receiver are in relation to your direction of travel.

Kansas doesn't accept EZpass either.

 

Yep thats all true. I forgot about Kansas and may have remembered some wrong numbers. Dispatch said the same thing about detention being only $16/hour, but I know for a fact I received the max of $96 once.. maybe a payroll error in my favor though