Deciding between Roehl and Swift Flatbed

Former Roehl.

The "Your Choice" pay plan leaves far to many variables in the hands of your "fleet manager", who gets bonuses for saving the company money.

Roehl flatbed is cheap, garbage freight. You will only rarely see a smaller carrier or owner op hauling the same cargo.

Roehl is German for cheap. Tarps are heavy, over patched garbage anyone else would've thrown out. Trucks are only maintained at terminals, and only a few mechanics know what they are doing. Dispatch has final say on maintenance, NOT shop.

Unless you are on a slipseat fleet (7/7 or 7/14), home time is at the discretion of dispatch.

Go to Swift. Or go to a cdl school, and open your options.

Get two years experience in flatbed and message me. I live in NWPA, and work for an absolutely fantastic carrier. But we require two year experience, and prefer steel hauling experience. PGT out of Monaca, PA takes students out of the local cdl schools. At least they used to. I THINK they still train.

 

Roehl

 

@FerrissWheel and @Lepton1, any input?

 

Huh... I never had any problems with maintenance or hometime. I was dry van though, on a dedicated acct. so maybe it’s a different story with flatbed. I certainly didn’t haul garbage freight.

Op, they also have a curtainside fleet if that tickles your fancy.

 

I ran dry box on the 7/7 fleet, myself. But two of of my close friends (one of whom was a trainer) ran the open deck side and it flat sucked. No way on God's green earth would I have put up with HALF the crap they went through.

I considered jumping to their flatbed fleet, but I like actually getting PAID to work. Roehl was a brief vacation for me. Then I went back to work. For actual money and everything.

 

I was open deck for Roehl, brsims is dead straight on his take of Roehl flatbed. The your choice pay plan is determined mostly by planning, I was going to get a pay cut because they couldn't keep me loaded, and hometime was always late, they claimed they had no fright headed toward home when I had friends running into my area

 

During my two years at Swift I never met a flatbed driver that complained about too few miles. If they had a complaint it was having more miles than they wanted. Again, I wish I had gone flatbed from the git go when I started at Swift. The one week securement training would have been nice. My understanding is that there are only about 20 active mentors (trainers) in the flatbed division, so getting trained might be difficult. All dispatch and planning for flatbed is from Phoenix, so there's more consistency. In van you are planned from whichever terminal is closest, with little regard for the bigger picture.

 

Current swift dedicated flatbed. (Was a mentor when I was OTR.)

Mentor phase is 200 driving hrs. Can be done as fast as 3.5 weeks, but don't be shocked for it to take 5 weeks.

Driver facing cameras allegedly don't record. You are allowed to put a piece of tape over the lens anyway (so definitely do that.) Long story short, they deactivated the driver facing portion of the camera for a multitude of reasons.

Having to take van loads to get home is a possibility. The few things that I can think of that specifically went to that area are usually team freight. Or have dried up for the moment.

As for the east of 35 thing. There is alot East. But we have a ton of freight out west too. However it's fairly typical once you get on the west coast to get a long run back east. Or it was anyway, haven't been out of CA-NV in 6 months so I'm not sure what freight is up too ATM.

As for Swift, it is what it is. It'll get you in a truck. If your a competent driver, and land good management you will have an easy time of it. And on average the FB staff are much better than most of the van staff.

When I was still training they on more than one occasion flew a student too me. So yeah, @Lepton was spot on there. But it's better than the old way where flatbedder we're ending up with van guys. As far as I know though, they were supposed to not hire more flatbedders than they can train. So you shouldn't have to wait to get a mentor. (Granted this was 6 months ago.)

And typically when you get into securement training is when they route a mentor your way. If he's there before your done you go straight to the road. If not they get you too them if they have too.


As for Swift in general, there's worse, there's better. Id recommend if you have issues here, be upfront about the problem. I can personally say I have at least never been "screwed over." And anytime I had an issue, a few phone calls was all it ever took to fix it. Its a giant OTR company, thier checks don't bounce. You have all the usual headaches, hassles and horse#### that comes with OTR and trucking in general. The only difference is that 1000 opinionated ###holes will give you endless crap about whats painted on the door.

And if you get a load in the wrong direction when your supposed to be headed for home time, tell someone.


I was gonna leave for something local, but this account opened up and it met my requirements. I don't love em, I don't hate em. I just fit in thier system.


If you have any specific questions just ask.

 

I started my career flatbedding with Roehl. They didn’t have any Great Lakes regional when I was there, but everything I hauled was normally a full tarp headache lumber load. I’d assume Great Lakes regional will be doing more steel, and being in Wooster, you’re in a pretty good place to run some steel. I never had too much trouble getting home in NW PA.

Their CDL training was exceptional, but when I started, there was only 9-14 days with a trainer. That itself was a core cause of me not staying long and could’ve well ended my career right then and there.