I Quit (if Roehl had an exit interview it might have gone like this)

Roehl H.R.
So Oldguy what drove you to quit after over two years with the company?

Me
Four major problems, miles, fighting to get home, running east most of the time (I live in northern Il.) and maintenance problems.

Roehl H.R.
Can you be more specific, (ho hum like I realy care)

Me
Sure, lets start with miles.
I'm on national van out 11 home 3 and most outings I total between 3,500-3,900 miles. As you can see I have many checks in the $300.00
range.
Then there is fighting for home time.
About 8 weeks ago on a Friday I was to relay a load at Gary and head for home, sounds great. I had just sent in my dropped at relay and wasn't even parked when I received a load plan to pick-up a relay at Gary and take it to Central Wi. for a late Saturday morning delivery. I called my F.M. who wasn't available and was told by fill in FM that I must take this load and could head for home when empty. After delivering the new home load I was about an hour south when I received a load plan to live load south of Madison Wi for a some day delivery to De Kalb Il. When I called the weekend F.M. he went to great lengths to tell me how hard Roehl works to get drivers home, and how lucky I was to drive for them. He must have laughed his ... off after he hung up thinking I belived his line of crap. I delivered the load with two hours on my day, just made home late Saturday night. Two weeks later I drop a relay at Gary for home time, have to set for two hours waiting for an empty only to have a flat on my drive tire. I write up the flat and check with maintenance, one truck ahead of me, check back in an hour, three trucks ahead of me ( since I am not under a load all loaded trucks go ahead of me) check back at 21:00 (I am now out of hours) eight trucks ahead of me. At this rate I would never see home and no one was there with the power to override the system, so I asked to be removed from the list and drove home in the morning with the flat feeling guilty all the way home. Tuesday morning at launch I called breakdown with a flat tire and was sent to a tire repair place that took 45 min. for complete repair (the tire was O.K.). Two weeks later sent to Cottage Grove on Friday to drop a relay and head home. No empty trailers so I called FM who was not available and was given Katie to help me out. Katie says I should not go home (70 miles) bobtail but should wait for an empty, she told me she would E-mail planner as they did not answer her call as to a location of an empty. When I told her it was urgent to get an answer from the planner as I was running out of hours she sternly told me she would not be rude to the planner. When I called back an hour later and asked for Katie I was told she had gone home and nobody seemed to know about my problem (seems she was rude after all). An empty came in at 02:30, I hooked it and went home later that morning. Launched the following Tuesday with a deadhead right back to Cottage Grove to pick up a relay.

Head East (not the rock group)
I almost always go east with a run through New England most outings. I have not been to Denver ,Salt Lake or beyond in almost a year. Even if the 80% of Roehls freight goes east I should still go west 20% of the time.
I do seem to get to Canada a lot but thats not a good thing either.

Maintenance
While my truck had 550,000 it still was a good truck. It did have an engine problem that caused it to cough and puke black smoke when under a load. The problem grew steadly worse over the last year but every time it was in the shop the tecs would tell me there was no code in the computer so there was no way to fix it. By the time I turned in the truck it was coughing almost every time it had to pull under acceleration or on a hill.
One time my truck had a turbo problem ,and when I called breakdown and told them I could hardly go 45 MPH they told me to check the oil and water, then asked if I could make it to a terminal almost 500 miles away. I had to almost yell into the phone that the truck was unsafe to drive and that I was not going anywhere but to a shop for repairs.

Roehl HR
Gee Oldguy you certainly complain a lot, you probably weren't a good employee anyway.

Me
In over two years I never had a sick day ,was never late for a launch, had only one service failure (miscalculated travel time totally my fault) was less than an hour late. I have several MPG quarterly bonuses, and just received a two year safe driver award.

Roehl HR
I really must be going, I have 8 school grads and about 15 drivers fresh out of orientation fighting for your truck.

So ends my time with Roehl, the company could be so much beter with just a little concern for its drivers, but I think management wants to be just like the other big trucking companies.

Good luck to all who still work for Roel and the power of faded red.