Is Watsontown Trucking Good?

I have been looking for an OTR/regional position without mileage-based pay. Also, getting home for the weekend is important to me. I want to be able to go to church on Sunday. I saw an advert for Watsontown Trucking in Milton, PA, offering hourly pay for drivers in a regional position. I applied for that, did a drug test, and long story short, I'm going to orientation next week.

I saw an attachment in an email that mentioned something about "Cell Control". Sounds creepy. did a Google search and is IS creepy! That is a device that disables my phone when the truck is rolling. It works by connecting to the vehicle's diagnostic port, and an app in the phone that makes it unusable, but you can still receive calls.

I have a lot of resentment for the hand-holding and nannying that characterises the industry, these days. It makes me angry. Sometimes, it gets in the way of me doing my job. Honestly, this kind of crap makes me suspicious that they treat drivers poorly or fire them for petty reasons. In my experience, companies that hold your hand the most are the ones that treat you the worst.

Obligatory, I don't mess around on my phone while driving. I don't text or play games. I hate texting, anyway! It's a pain, trying to type on a touch-screen with my fingers! I do use my phone to play music or podcasts. I also use it to navigate with a trucking app, and I try to avoid traffic congestion.

I've done some searching and I haven't found much. There are some bad reviews (of working at Watsontown) that bring up things I am concerned about, and there are mentions of poor equipment maintenance. I've also seen some positive reviews that talk about the hourly pay and how great that is.

What is their equipment like? What speed do they run at? Does the cruise control turn off if I turn on my windshield wipers? Do they have driver cams? Is there any way to avoid the Cell Control thingy? I don't want to put something that is probably a bunch of spyware on my phone. I'm kind of spooked about that, and the more I think about it, the less I like it.

If they aren't too bad, and I can make the kind of money they're advertising, I guess I can tolerate some nannying for a while, but I really DON'T like it.

 

I've been thinking about getting a new phone for work, something a little more basic. I do want to be able to run some apps, but it doesn't need to be a feature phone. I like the idea of keeping my personal/private life and my work life separate, especially when that includes banking apps and stuff like that! I really hate how every store, every gas station, and now employers want to force me to load another app on my phone, as if its memory isn't already full from all the other apps I had to load, and use my data, to do something I used to do offline, so they can mine me for data and sell it to advertisers.

There are other concerns, but this phone thing has got my attention. If the pay is on-point, I'll deal with that for the time being. I've had a harder time this year finding a regional job that pays good. Everything is mileage pay. I know that's common, but it's a lousy way to get paid, especially when it's zip to zip! You can easily drive 50 miles for free getting paid that way, and that doesn't even mention getting robbed in traffic, at docks, or by a dispatcher splitting your load and taking away a nice 1500 mile trip so you can hang around for a day 300 miles from where you started and wait until the next day to be told to pick up the loaded trailer you spent the night beside at a drop yard and take it back to the terminal you left from! After getting burned a few times, pretty badly, I refuse to drive for mileage pay. Funny thing is, when I am on a daily rate or something like that, they keep me moving.

This year, I have also seen a lot more misleading advertising! It's way worse this year! I don't just see "Make up to $xyz", I see adverts all the time for positions with guaranteed minimum pay, but when I contact the company, they only have CPM available, but they keep running the adverts. I'm hoping Watsontown is different in that regard. At least when I contacted them, they didn't change their story. I might have to tolerate some BS in order to get the pay I want.