Life After Roehl

At the mothership sleeping in truck tonight. Hand my keys over in the am. Beyond happy my ride will be here 9am ish to bring me home.

Drug test for my new company on Wednesday.

 

Good luck with your new company! I'm sure it'll be better than Roehl lol

 

Oh yeah will be much happier seeing my family everyday. Plus its a small 8 truck company. Laid back easy to deal with owner.

 

I hear ya, I'm going to a way smaller company I've met the owner already really cool guy. Roehl was a good place to get some exp but that's about it

 

Since I started driving I have worked for 2 companies and 2 mistakes. Roehl is one of the companies and not one of the mistakes. Still I am moving in the direction of leaving either in the early fall, or just after the holidays. The reason is simple, I am moving in a different direction than what Roehl's system and pay will allow. One of the positive reasons to switch companies is that you are moving in different directions. Over the past 10 years since I left CDL school my life and career have been in constant change. The result has been that from time to time I have had to take this career in different directions. Now it is getting ready to change again, because once again my life is changing. My question to any driver who contemplates making a change also applies to life in general, "Are you moving towards something better?" "Is your life moving in a positive direction?" If this is the case, then best wishes and congratulations.

Something my dad ran across many years ago is that decisions should be based on the climate and not the weather. Weather changes day to day, but climate is the overall condition. You will always have conflicts with dispatchers, payroll, management, safety and the list goes on, but how is the overall atmosphere? Some who drink the company kool-aid at whatever company they are at miss the point of a forum like this. This is a place for drivers to not only tell the positives, but also the negatives.

The key to making changes of any kind in life is to know what you are looking for. Many drivers who are constantly switching companies have no clue what they are looking for. The result is that they spend their entire driving career running in place, they never realize how much money they lose every time they switch companies. On the other side, because companies never are willing to look at themselves and what they could do to retain drivers spend a fortune trying to replace drivers that leave.

 

I left Roehl with my truck a month ago and went to Schneider choice board. What a difference it has made. I'm not as stress out. I run my own pace, decide what I want to haul, the weight I want to haul and where I would like to go for the week. I actually know what I am doing for the whole week. Plan a week at a time. Easier to trip plan when you know what you are doing several loads in advance. Getting more rest and not working nearly as hard. Getting better paychecks overall. Wish I had made the decision months earlier instead of holding on hoping that Roehl would change their ways and get back to 2700-3000 a week. All communication is done on the QC and there is very little communication with the company which again goes back to less stress as you are not dealing with a planner and a FM. There is life after Roehl.

 

Ahhhh, very good point preacherman!

One thing Roehl can do to improve and retain drivers is to rid themselves of that BS computer routing system! Sure, it picks the shortest route, and at time it makes total sense! However there are far too many times the routes do not make sense! It occurs to me that the use of this computer generated routing saves the company money in fuel and very often at the expense of the driver in time. Time = miles, miles = earnings! Loss of time to save a little fuel at the expense of the driver frustrates drivers and for some that may be the straw that broke the camels back.

Just my two cents!

 

Great post Preacher..

 

I am not going to fault the routing since if I have an issue I simply call the routing department. I only call if tolls are involved since I can go whatever way I want to, but there have been times that they scratched their heads in the routing department over why the computer had done things the way it did. Then they made permanent changes. If you have an issue with the route don't call your fleet manager, call the routing department directly.

There are other issues that push drivers away and leave Roehl with the kind of drivers that need hand holding. Not being able to edit our logs is an illustration of what I'm talking about. If you treat your employees as children, all the grown-ups will leave and all you will have are children. The result is a self fulfilling prophesy. Look at Texas Phoenix's post for another set of issues and her reasons for leaving.

 

It's not that hard to do better than Roehl, at all. Roehl is EXACTLY like any number of these huge mega company's, you ARE a truck number, that's it. Load is number one, and driver is 2nd. And they do not care about the driver, aslong as the load is there on time, and if im late and let them know before I even take the load that I don't have enough time, then I still get treated as if I'm just lazy and slept in or goofed around at the truck stop. This has happened to me several times, or they will say "we will relay the load in route" then they NEVER do. The only time I consider Roehl being a halfway decent company is the time through training, and your first 3-4 months on your own, after that it's exactly like swift, Werner, and all the other company's with a bad reputation. It's not the drivers necessarily, but it's the operation that is messed up. Even on my good weeks with Roehl I would only see 550.00-650.00.
and lately I'd be happy if I got that, because I haven't been getting ANY miles, finished off last week with just over 2k. If your new and thinking about Roehl, sure pick them over a swift company, but as a last resort try to find something small, where your not just a warm body filling the seat and holding the steering wheel.

i think SNI choice program is hands down one of the better lease deals, roehls among others does not give you the freedom that you SHOULD have since after all, it is "your business" and your paying on a truck and paying for the fuel, yet... You have to go where they want you to go? Someone please explain how that is running a business, sure your paying for everything... But have no say when and where and how much for a load. I'm glad I opened my eyes about Roehl and leasing a truck, the small company I'm starting with next week as a lease deal, and I will check it out, but I won't lease a truck thru ANY company and not have the freedom I should have. I think lease operators are just a glorified company driver.(no offense to anyone leasing) but it really does benefit Roehl way more than the driver.