Crete Bit Off More Than They Could Chew

"They say they want me to run an average of 120,000 mile a year, thats 10,000 a month, thats 2,500 a week which is about 415 miles a day (6 on/1 off). Pay me my 46 cents/mile as I have earned by loyal employment since 1997..."

Maybe you've become too expensive for them, BB. Just an idea. Maybe they're celebrating in Lincoln now that they don't have to pay you so much. They now can rely on a cheap newbie to take all the runs you were taking the last few months.
Sometimes you have to think like an insider when trying to figure out the mysterious behavior of trucking companies.

 

I asked a driver with sixteen years at Crete if he pulls Sterling. He refuses when they ask, and waits at a truck stop until they dispatch another load.



They language they used when I took a week there was, would you help out? It was my choice, and that is what my terminal told me when I called inquiring to what this duty was. Maybe issues are deeper here than they appear. Notice he was asked to quit, not fired........

The OP is right about the fueling deal. I have had to fuel three times this summer at out of network stops to make sure I did not run out because of the fifty or eighty gallon stops left me at risk at running out. The last time i had two inches of fuel in my left tank. If you run out of fuel with Crete you pay, and its sometimes hard to guess if you have enough to make your fuel stop. I definitly do not enjoy the frequent fueling which robs my hours. I usually get right through the pilots though, but I run a lot at night.

 

This is the exact reason I left CFI after almost 3 years.

NOBODY tells me I am going to take a 25% cut in my average pay, and be happy with it. Once every couple of months...maybe. But for weeks on end...never.

Tom H. himself sat in his office, and told me to my face. That this was the way trucking worked, and I might need to find another job.

Which I promptly did. Now I make as much or more...and I am home every week. There is not a single CFI driver on this board (or any other) that can match what I get now.

I was offered this job over a year ago...I kick myself every time I think about not taking it the first time it was offered.

 

It is good to see that we have a couple different opinions on this situation. Would love to hear from other Crete drivers that have been presented with this situation as well and see how they handled. it.

Personally, if it is just something that you do once in a great while for a week, I don't see it as a big deal, but that is just me. A driver has no way of knowing the reasons that a company takes freight contracts like this. Crete may have been forced into it somehow by Wal-Mart in exchange for other freight, and the last thing any trucking company wants to do is alienate themselves from Wal-Mart.

It sucks that Wal-Mart has this much influence on trucking companies, and other businesses for that matter, but that is just how it is.

 

Tip, you are, I think, right. Its obvious to me that with the heavy recruiting they have been doing in the last year, and with the increase in driver turnover, they are quite happy to bring in new labor at a 10 cents per mile reduction in their payroll, a savings of $12,000 per year.
Remember, they are self owned and self insured, and about to lose their butts when the lawsuits from Florida start being settled.

Barney, "Maybe issues are deeper here than they appear. Notice he was asked to quit, not fired......."
You are way out of line. I was NOT asked to quit. I was was the one who initiated the refusal telling them I had just done that assignment 4 months earlier. They did not ever threaten to fire me if I refused, I told them I would go home before taking the paycut and had hoped, at that point, my manager would stand up for me.
I have a perfect record with 10 years at Acklie, no accidents, no tickets. I have no service failures, and no safety points.
So what if "would you help out" is the language they used with you? They used the same language with me. It was also the fourth time in 6 months they tried to pull me off the road to go there (January 31st when I had been scheduled for time off, February, and last month, when they allowed me to turn it down because of my prior assignment).
Your terminal has nothing to do with it. If you didn't notice, when you get the message to respond to Illinois, it is coming from Kevin's WalMart fleet, not yours. HE has to return you to (in my case) the national boards for dispatch.
I had to phone my manager to get him involved when I told Kevin it was unacceptable and I would prefer to wait for a load even if it meant a 24 hour layover. Kevin had first told me there was no freight in the OH/IN area, but then when I told him I wouldn't accept the assignment and wanted to return to Georgia, an OH to Atlanta load 100 miles away suddenly appeared.

 

What exactly is going on with those lawsuits from the Florida wreck? What's the latest?

 

Suzie sounds like a stoogie.(bend over for lower pay than you were told to get) Sterling is not far from Rockford, or chicago(2hrs), Freight moves like crazy up here, and like I said a place like KB, in Sterling, has dedicated accounts starting at 900/week. Heck you're based out of Chatt, TN and they think you'll just swallow turd pay. Is there a company without a terminal in there?
Im not sure how the pay is during the downseason, but 150/day is the minimum advertised pay by companies running local here.(Saw one in the Rockford register star starting 21/hr today) I don't blame you for telling them no. It's your responsibility to decline all freight you don't think you can safely carry.

As fer Wal-Mart accounts, if companies stopped taking them, then Wal-Mart would have to hire more drivers(never heard a Walmart trucker complain about pay) and would lose money rather than ripping these companies bottom lines'

BB you did the right thing, truckers are supposed to turn down bum jobs, companies are supposed to figure out why nobody wants to do them. You think it'd be obvious to Kevin that he's not offering enough money for people to run Wally World, maybe he should advertise it, and see how many guys laugh at the pay. A beginner might love this pay, but an OTR wouldn't {we live to drive, or is it drive to live?) it's about half as much as you'd expect. Where's the common sense?

 

bbmylstgo said, "You are way out of line. I was NOT asked to quit."










This quote is from your first post,


"CRETE WILL FORCE YOU TO ACCEPT THIS FLEET CHANGE OR YOU MUST QUIT. "



So which is true?


Unlike your implication, I was never moved from National dispatch until I agreed to pull at Sterling.

 

BB, you should give Crete a couple of weeks, and then go back to work for them. Take some time off, let them realize they lost a good driver, and go back. I'd go talk to the folks in Lincoln in person. CCC is one of the best companies, even if that isn't saying much. They'll stay relatively good until ol' man Acklie passes on, so you probably have a year or three left there.

 

What a trip. I started with Schwan's Enterprises a few years after the old man died. All I heard about the entire time I was there was how good things were before he died. So now the one company I've seen so far that can accommodate my expectation of taking my daughter with me before she's 10 is in the exact same boat, or will be soon.

It's looking like I'm going to have to sit back and wait until she's about 9 and a half to start my training since I'd have to be driving safely for some time before they would let her come anyway. That's 3 years from now. Then my options for companies would widen dramatically and hopefully the idling laws will be fought between now and then.

So the big question is for all of you... What are you doing about these laws? I read there are 3 million OTR drivers? Is that the right figure? Anyway, everyone has family, wives, girlfriends that care about them. So multiply that figure by at least 5. If 15 million people sign a petition and then a good percentage of them should belong to churches.. You all need to get organized and collect around 20 million signatures or more and make people look at this issue. The average every day citizen couldn't possibly have ever given this issue a thought. I know I didn't before coming here. When I thought about driving for a living I didn't even think about how you all lived in those nice trucks. All I see are the fabulous pictures of the new super trucks that look like little homes on wheels. There's nothing in those nice ad brochures that tell us that the trucks turn into Ovens and Freezers! We should be able to think it through. But considering some 90 people die per year in hot cars nationwide, it's obvious that too many people never give this a thought.

Suzi