Just sharing my story

OK, so to start my experience with this company off, we got to Waterloo the day before our classes started. The Super8 was full, so CRST was supposed to book rooms for us at the Motel 6 up the street... They never bothered to do that, so a bunch of us got to spend most of our Sunday sitting in the motel lobby while everyone was desperately trying to get someone from CRST on the phone. After about 5 hours, we finally got our rooms. The motel was decent, there were a few problems, but they were all caused by other people in the driving class, and after you actually see these people that are getting brought out there, you'll understand why this company has such a bad reputation on the road. Now, you have to pay CRST back for your room, and expect them to make money off of it. The weekly rate for 2 people in the motel 6 rooms were $169. EACH person in that room pays CRST back $150/week. Now, for me, this wouldn't have been too bad since an important phone call made me the last one to get a room, which turned into having my own room the whole time there, but the motel manager, while talking to me about all of us finally leaving soon, told me about how she can't wait to get us out because we're staying there for free. CRST never paid the motel, the manager was just being nice enough to let us stay there since it wasn't our fault. Yet, CRST still wants their money back.

Hawkeye was a joke. The first couple days seemed promising, but then you start learning on the trucks. Most of them are barely drivable, and they send you for your tests at the DMV with their 2 worst trucks. One of them, the instructor couldn't even get it into gear. The guy that teaches the pretrip is one of the best ones there, he teaches you everything you need to know. But when it comes to your skills, they only teach you how to pass the test. Your alley-docking is pulling out of the cones, turning the wheel, and backing up without moving the wheel so the trailer goes right back in. You graduate with no backing experience at all. ANYONE can pull a trailer, backing is a whole different story. The physical was even more pathetic. They take 5-6 of you and put you in a room, you see the dr and do the drug test in a different room. But for your vision test, the 6 of you stand in a line and read the line farthest down on the chart that you can see. As long as the first guy in line gets it right, just copy what he said, it's almost impossible to fail. Someone failed. He read about 5 lines and didn't get a single letter right. He was there wearing his friends glasses and couldn't see. She passed him. And the school brought him out on the road, letting him drive. The instructors are just as bad as CRST when it comes to organization. Rick, who ever other instructor hates, will send you to one instructor, then call you back over to him and ask why you're not with a different instructor. There's people who didn't get out on the road until the day before their road test.

There's also the reality that girls exist in truck driving. Something fun to watch during the classes is the huge group of guys that follow every girl around. And then see how they all suddenly stop when they find out she won't put out. And be ready for your roommate one night to ask you if you can leave the room for a while, or not even bother and just go at it in the bed next to you.... Remember, these guys getting hired in this company are literally the bottom of the barrel.

Orientation was OK. It was a lot of info about the company and laws being thrown at you, and all the main guy, Guido, ever wanted to do was brag about being Italian, and being from New Jersey.

Getting on a truck for training, was like what everyone else says. It can either be good or bad. My first lead driver told me that he can't actually teach me anything, so I got a new lead driver. This one did a good job when he taught me stuff, it just wasn't exactly too common that he'd actually do it. I spent about 2 weeks pulling through fuel pumps to change drivers or go to the bathroom because we didn't work on my backing at all. There was also a soap opera going on between him and his gf, and him and the girl that I had to wake up to the two of them on the bed under me, which both of us had to use that mattress.... We ONLY ate fast food, I've never been so sick before. I actually managed to make almost nothing during my training because everything I made had to go to pay for Burger King. He doesn't know if a truck could get to Walmart, even though every Walmart in the world gets their stuff delivered by a truck, but when HE needed something from a store, that truck could suddenly get anywhere he needed it to go.

Then our fleet manager found out he was trying to quit... 2-3k mile runs suddenly turned into 100 mile runs, moving empty trailers around. My 28 days took about 7 weeks to finish.

Now onto the pay. We all started here understanding that we're getting paid a lot less than every other company. But when CRST is your last chance, you gotta take it. But what we didn't know until we got to Iowa and were already on a contract... Your raises as a contract driver are less than someone who already had his CDL. If you average 3,000 miles a week, that difference in pay is going to add up to about what it cost you for your school. Then they're taking money out of your paycheck to pay them back for sending you to school. So already, if you finish your 8 month contract, because of your pay difference, you paid them back $8,000 for a $4,000 class. If you don't finish the contract, and you can be fired for hitting something with your trailer... That your lead driver is supposed to teach you how to back without crashing, you owe the full $4k, regardless of how much you already paid. SO you can potentially have to pay them back 3x what they paid for you. They force you onto this perdiem pay. The idea is that you get paid 10 cpm untaxable instead of getting your $49/day standard food allowance, but there's no record on your pay stub of that other 2 cents. But in orientation, they admit that the 2 cents goes to the company. So now, you're actually paying them for you to drive. It can make you more money in your paychecks, so it can benefit you too, but it's a lot harder to track your income and makes tax time a bigger pain. Just tell your FM that you want to be paid the straight 22cpm and you can get off of that though.

When you finish your 28 days, they used to test you on your driving and backing, but too many people were failing, so now they just have the lead driver say whether or not you can be a driver. Their grant relies on being able to show that they can make drivers of people and give them a job. Failure isn't an option, it's not even a possibility.

On the road, you're going to be yelled at and get mean looks... I straight backed my trailer next to a guy who was mad that I picked that spot, and his reason he told me was that he doesn't feel like getting hit by a bad driver. You're going to get a lot of that from people on the road. They see your truck and expect a bad driver. Luckily, if you ever need to be spotted with your backing cuz your codriver isn't in the truck or won't wake up, you'll actually get a crowd of people around your truck making sure you get backed in without crashing. And yeah, we crash that much. Our daily goal on accidents in my fleet is no more than 9 per day, we can't make that goal most days. And even worse, most of our accidents aren't on the road, they're not even backing into a parking spot, they're at the fuel pump. If you have common sense, and know how to at leas drive a car and can figure out "I should make sure the trailer isn't going to hit anything while I turn" you'll stand out as an amazing driver in this company.

You can make great miles, and maybe enough money to pay the rent, but it's going to come at the cost of a lot of headache. CRST does get a lot of business. One of your top customers that we drive for is another trucking company. The miles are there to get, it just sucks that you're not getting paid too good for them. If you can go anywhere else, don't pick this company. They're really not worth it. But if you have no other options and want to get started in driving, they'll take you, but you need to pretty much put your entire learning completely in your control.

Once training is done, then you get to go through another 7 months of the same exact bs. And you're not going to find a good codriver. Expect to spend a lot of time being "unemployed" if you value your life... There's scary drivers out there