My CR England adventure/experience... Hint, It's everything you've heard & then some!

Discussion in 'CR England' started by Big Ugly, Feb 10, 2014.

  1. Big Ugly

    Big Ugly Light Load Member

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    Feb 9, 2014
    North Carolina
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    So I'll tell you the story of how I got involved with trucking... & C R England. This will be nothing new for most of you old timers here but for some fresh out of school graduates or those thinking of taking the England plunge a read won't hurt. It might just help you make up your mind too. :yes2557: This will be a long read so if you lack the patience or don't care then stop now & you'll be none the wiser nor have lost any valuable time for doing it.

    Now before I go too far let me qualify this by saying that C R England was my 1st trucking job & a foot in the door to bigger & better things so to this day I harbor no ill will. I left on bad terms but it's been of no consequence going forward. This experience was mine alone & shouldn't be used as the sole measuring stick of if C R England will be the right fit for anybody else. Both England & myself got something out of the deal & we'll leave it at that.

    It's Christmas of 2006 & I've been accepted into C R England's school in Spartanburg, SC. Now a little background may be in order. I live in Western NC & anybody familiar with this part of the state or east of I95 to the coast is well aware that these parts of NC are like no mans land for jobs & opportunity. Politicians seem to think different but they worry about the big cities & Raleigh & nothing else matters. So when my family & I decided to take the plunge & live the trucker lifestyle (and it's a lifestyle not just for the driver to live but their family too... remember that important fact) after investigating my options we settled on C R England.

    Like I mentioned jobs were & still are scarce in this part of the state so lets look at the plusses. A large, well established trucking company... Check. Guaranteed hire if you pass their schooling & obtain your CDL... Check. The chance to make big bucks driving a big red truck around the nation & be admired & respected (don't laugh I really thought that in my naiveté)... Check. The school was located just a short 25 mile drive from my home so I could commute daily... Check. Oh & did I mention it was free (or so I thought as the recruiter in the front office had assured me)? Check. Minuses? What minuses? I see only good things here & a bright future with this company. Ummm well... Uhhhhh... :biggrin_25512: But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

    Week one & we are off to the races. In a class of 25 or so people, mixed men & women, we start with a slew of paperwork. Applications, tax forms, insurance liability forms, financial assistance forms (Financial assistance? My 1st clue of things to come), etc... & we are getting our medical exams & eye tests & background checks & psychology interviews (??? another clue) & oh yeah we are also cramming for our individual states CDL permit exam. Did I mention they had entire classes of students jammed into dorm style rooms upstairs like sardines living off of Ramen noodles? Yeah another clue. By Friday they had weeded out around 5 or so folks who didn't make the cut for one reason or another & we had our permits. Time to go to step 2 & see Charlie. Now I don't remember his last name but #### he was funny! His job was to start getting us accustomed to the England method of doing things like logging & paperwork, TripPaks, & being a student driver. Passed & on to the backing range.

    I aced the backing range... or so I thought. From the straight line back to the alley dock it seemed to be so easy. Of course you're in a controlled environment with only other students to judge you & your progress. But hey I passed that & went onto the road driving portion. Day 1 here is interesting because now you get to see who you are sharing a truck with & who your road driving instructor is. Mine was a dude named Mark. Mark was a well experienced OTR driver with over a million safe miles & a very laid back method of letting us learn the ropes. He also had this crazy thing he did with his left leg from the passenger seat where he would shift the gears if we couldn't find them! Seeing that the 1st time was a riot! Mark was a firm believer in putting those in his truck into the fire & seeing how we responded. So he never followed the prescribed route the school wanted us to drive. Nope. It was all in the the nearby mountains or deep in city traffic in Spartanburg, SC so we could get a feel for real world conditions. Oh & the nearby truck stops got our regular visits with Mark. And we got all kids of evil glares from the professional drivers already living the life & making money (another clue). So after a week of that I was cleared to go take the CDL road test. Oh boy let the games begin!

    I failed my 1st try because the alley dock maneuver at a shipping facility, with other trucks coming & going just terrified me & I got out of the truck for fear I'd hit something or somebody.:biggrin_25512: Well I have 2 more chances & I'll get it next time. Again I screwed up the alley dock maneuver! One more fail & I'm done & oh by the way that's when the office director of the school mentioned I'd be on the hook for the school training... yeah my 1st real surprise.:biggrin_2551: So a range instructor named Grady took me back to the backing range & cleared all the other students out & we just practiced the maneuver for probably 3 hours or more until I had it down. Using nothing but 4x4 motions he got me to where I could put the trailer in the hole every time. I'll always be grateful to Grady for that. He was the 1st professional driver to work with me to get it right. Oh & on my final try at the alley dock I aced it on one of the busier days that facility had in a while. CDL obtained... check.

    Fast forward a few days & after a tearful goodbye with the wife & kids I'm on a plane to Salt Lake City from Atlanta. Oh & a terrible bus ride from the school in Spartanburg! It was downright scary the way the lady they had drive us down there handled that bus! OK big warning sign straight ahead... I get off the plane in Salt Lake City after a connecting flight from Vegas & the only way to get us to the terminal where they had rooms for us to put our gear in was by company shuttle & it wasn't running anymore that night. Somebody at the front desk took pity on us & sent a shuttle over anyway with another student driver to the airport. No kidding they sent a student driver to get us. :biggrin_2554: And they had no rooms available once we got there... & on & on & on it went. After a week of being basically indentured servants emptying trash & sweeping the halls for a meal ticket to use in their cafeteria, oh & being ever so pressured to sign a truck lease because they "had no company trucks available" (but the lot is full of trucks out there that have no driver assigned to them... the shop even said so)... But 1st there's training. I got assigned my 1st trainer, & he promptly left me at the yard forgetting to even check in with the training office. Ok big hint of things to come. :biggrin_25521: This however turned out to be a major blessing as I got a different trainer the next morning. I was paged to the dispatch center & I caught my first sight of Tim who would go on to be a mentor to me to this very day. His long, slick backed hair & bomber jacket with holes in his pants & steel toe boots struck quite the impression. But boy did I go on to really admire his attitude & his teaching methods. Tim put me in every single uncomfortable situation one could think of too. From going down "Cabbage' in the snow (remember it's February after all) to making me back into a dock in Seattle in the pouring rain & I can't see squat in the mirrors... Tim just put me through the wringer! I never once complained & he didn't push me to do more with the truck than I felt comfortable. He also made sure before I did the tests on the Qualcomm I was completely sure of my answers. He didn't give me answers since they were readily available in the testing materials, but he wouldn't let me just rush through the tests. I aced them all. By the end of our time together Tim had taught me how to save money & avoid the high priced truck stop buffets & driver shops. It was a blast for him & me & like I said earlier we talk to this day at least once a week.

    So now it's time for my upgrade to solo driver & Tim gets me on a bus in San Antonio & bound for Dallas I go to do my upgrade 'exam' & take the next step. My upgrade went fine & I now had to get a ride home for some much deserved home time. I'd not seen home in almost 6 weeks with all the delays at SLC & training. They sent another lease driver to pick me up & he was quite the character. And wouldn't you know his name was Tim too? What are the odds? Now this Tim had an abundance of electrical gizmos & hookups in his truck to let him use the reefer unit to power his window AC & electronics. Pretty smart actually since England footed the bill for the reefer fuel. We didn't get along at all since he wanted me to be on the top bunk while the truck was in motion because he was scared of germs or bacteria in his bed. Understandable but the top bunk is a big no no when the truck is moving & I'm a clean cut guy that showers daily & kept my clothes washed & teeth brushed so he had nothing to fear from me. I almost lost my cool with him but I kept my mouth shut since it was his truck & all that jazz. But I didn't get on that top bunk when he drove either, & I think he was intimidated enough by me that he didn't press the issue.

    I was able to get as close as Columbia, SC & my wife & kids drove down to pick me up for my home time. Needless to say I was thrilled to see my family & they to see me. After 5 days I called into the training dept so they could send my level 2 lease operator to pick me up. His job I would learn was to basically sell me on how great the leasing program was & I shouldn't delay signing it & buying my own truck because golly gee it was just great & all! It took a few hours but I got a phone call from Charles to let me know he'd be there by nightfall. My wife & kids took me to meet Charles at a nearby Love's truck stop & my 1st sight of him was quite the event. He climbed down out of a big Freightliner Classic (which I hadn't been behind the wheel of at all) looking like Santa Claus with a thick white beard & jovial laugh. But it was all downhill the next morning!

    Now Charles was an exceptionally nice guy. He was always happy & jovial but very political. And he hated President George Bush & ALL Republicans with a blind passion I've never seen before. But let's recount this adventure from there... briefly. Charles started the next day with a discussion on how we'd "do our logs so that they matched up" (big, big, BIG yellow flag). I told him I'd stick with what I had done thus far that I knew to be legal. He simply laughed & said I'd learn how to "cheat the system if I wanted to make a living" & nothing more was said about it. Later that day, Charles managed to clip the corner of a flatbed trailer pulling out of the TA in Roanoke, VA & damaged the left headlight housing on his truck. Charles just said let's get in the truck & leave quickly before the driver knows since it's only our truck thats's damaged (our truck???) He also managed to get the truck jack knifed sideways on a suburban road with an ice covered hill outside of Green Bay when he made a wrong turn leaving a shipper. That required an expensive tow. Charles lost a huge chunk of change gambling in a casino one night in Nevada. I don't remember exactly where it was but there was a TA connected to it. That much I remember. Thankfully I have never cared for gambling or most other vices of the type so I simply passed the machines without any thought. But the mother of all screw ups was still to come...

    We cross into California on I80 around Truckee & there is a weigh station there. You know it if you've been through the area. I was in the sleeper & awoke to a loud speaker & a buzzer going off. Charles it seems didn't stop for the red light on the scale & they were pulling him in for a Level 1. Now I'm in the sleeper & thank God for that because I can't be harassed or disturbed by law they say. Good to know because Charles hadn't done his logs in the last 2 days & as the inspector was sitting there he was trying to write them up! Wow! :biggrin_2551: After being requested by the nice officer to produce my logbook for comparison, which was up to date right to my sleeper time, we had a long wait while the folks in the scale house decided what to do. The solution was wait for me to get my 10 hours in the bunk in, only 2 more to go, & then put Charles OOS with a huge fine I might add... couple of grand as I recall, & I had to drive the rest of the way into CA were we were to pick up another trainee & bring him back to Salt Lake City. Nice guy & all & I warned him from the start to be vary wary of Charles & his 'advice' on just about anything. That was a long 19 days friends let me tell ya!

    I get back to SLC & I'm ready to get my 'final upgrade' for solo duty & give my training exit interview. Sorry Charles I couldn't recommend you to be a trainer or even a driver based on what I saw & experienced. Now to get my truck assignment...not quite yet. Again they say we have no company trucks available. Ummm... The lot is full I say. Oh those are assigned to other drivers. The shop said all of them in that row are available with no assigned drivers. Not true I'm told as the shop doesn't have the most up to date info. Huh? Ok another big warning flag is waving in my face. Oh & when we had to sign on the dotted line, with Eagle Atlantic Financial that was "not affiliated with England in any way"... Ummm yeah right! :biggrin_25516: It's in your building staffed by your own employees getting paid by you. Just like the England's had an ownership stake in the Freightliner dealer down the street from the HQ building, they were using this shell company as well to take a cut. All in all a pretty nice pyramid scheme if you ask me. But nobody did & I didn't listen to those warning bells.

    Whatever I finally broke down since I was broke broke broke & had depleted my initial cash on hand that was supposed to get me through til my 1st real paycheck (sound familiar?) & I signed a lease on a brand spanking new truck! It wasn't even fully specced out like most of their lease trucks either... it was what they called a company-plus specced tractor??? :biggrin_2552: Meaning the only difference between it & a company truck was... a 13 speed transmission instead of a 9 or 10. Oh well I needed money... BAD! So get the keys & away I go. Into 3 months of pure Hell! :biggrin_25510:

    1st problem is my newly assigned 'driver manager' Matt doesn't even show up to the new lease operator orientation. I had to wait until the following day to meet him. Oh & that was a blast too. In order to get into the 'restricted area' where drivers aren't allowed I had to go thru a metal detector & a rent-a-cop security guard wearing a gun, pepper spray, night stick & handcuffs! They even had one upstairs to escort you around too. Ok alarm bells are going off in my head! Why the need for all the security? Am I not a gainfully employed driver? Are they afraid of me? They think I'll steal confidential company papers? What a head trip I was now on.

    Matt & I didn't get along. I had a ridiculous amount of issues right away. For starters my key broke off in the door & I was locked out of my truck. Call the company asking for help but I'm on my own. Oh & I'm in a receiver lot in South Philly waiting to deliver while this happens. But no key to get in & I also get hit with a late load because I wasn't in the dock at my scheduled time! Expensive lesson learned so I had a spare key around my neck from that day forth. Oh & then there's the flat tires, missing lug bolts, electrical shorts in the cab wiring that cause the gauge cluster to not work, broken handle on the window in the sleeper, & frankly too many other issues to mention. I think this 1st couple of settlements were all for barely a few hundred dollars. And my wife was letting me hear about it too! But we were determined to stick it out because it could only get better right? Nope.

    What finally did me in was on a load that delivered in Texas I was sent on a back country route & driving into a headwind all day so my fuel economy, such as it was for new driver with no concept of staying off the throttle or using RPMs properly, was in the toilet. At best I was averaging around 6 mpg on a good day to begin with. On this day it was really bad at near 4 or so & I was literally fighting the steering to keep the truck on this 2 lane back country road heading to Lubbock in the cross wind. But I was also using England's $1.25 fuel cap program that had various rules & stipulations. You had to fuel where they told you in your dispatch & get only the amount of gallons they told you. Guess what? No fuel stops where they routed me through & the truck was low on the go juice. So I call into the fuel desk & get permission to fuel out of network for 100 gallons. I would learn a few days later that would cost me dearly at full price since it was out of network. I pleaded my case that I got permission to fuel there but no matter the leasing dept says. Oh I have a penalty attached to that fuel stop too! I was deep deep deep in the hole on this week & England said I actually owed them over $300.00 for fuel & related penalties. Enough was enough! :biggrin_25512: Did I forget to mention around this time I had to have along conference call with the leasing dept on how I would be required to carry NC Workers Comp Insurance on myself? Yeah they never mentioned that at the orientation & contract signing but now whoa nelly! I had weeks & weeks of back fees associated I was now on the hook for. My weekly workers comp was somewhere around $200.00 just for me! And this was a state law that I had no choice but to pay for myself. Like I said I was at the breaking point & I just had to find an exit strategy.

    My next dispatch had me going to Chicago with a load to be dropped on a satellite yard & bringing frozen pizza from there to Gaffney, SC. Oh goody! More home time so I could clear my head & get over my anger. Nope says Matt. I need you right back at it & running harder now to catch up our fleet since we are in the hole with bad driver performance all week. HUH??? Now I'm supposed to be an independent contractor & sorta doing my own thing (not hardly) & now I'm being lectured that his fleet is not doing well & we all have to chip in & make him look better?!?!? Sorry end of the line. They sent me a load that I never acknowledged & I promptly made my delivery & bobtailed home with a new plan.

    I cleaned out the truck & shined it to a mirror finish. The next morning my wife followed me to the school in Spartanburg where I dropped off the truck. But I planned ahead for this you see. I typed up a paper on my computer saying that my driver manager had agreed for me to leave the truck in Spartanburg at their school on the yard & have the school director sign off on receiving it & the keys. We kept a picture of the exchange as well since my wife brought along her camera. We photographed the truck in the lot as well as it condition. The school director signed the paper almost unwittingly then asked what it was. I told him he was accepting the truck as is on England's company property so it was not an abandonment. He instantly went into a rage but too late I had what I needed & my wife & me left. Oh & poor Matt had no clue I threw him under the bus in the process.

    Sure enough I was threatened with legal action & having a truck abandonment put on my DAC & I'd be blackballed in the industry etc etc etc. Oh & my poor poor DM Matt. He was just too stunned to believe what I had done. He had never had a driver quit on him yet. I'd learn that he too was extremely new to the company & hadn't any real idea what he was doing either. Seems that was an epidemic out there huh? He even promised me he'd give me the money for a bus ticket out his pocket if I'd just bring the truck back to SLC. I told him to send me the ticket & after it was confirmed & in my hand with no chance to cancel it allowed I'd make the trip. Well that didn't happen so the truck stayed in Spartanburg & they had to send somebody to get it. Oh & I did some months later have to send DAC the photos & signed paper showing it was left on company property. They promptly removed the abandonment from my record. However... Those sly rascals at the "independent not affiliated with England in any way" Eagle Atlantic Finance did try to collect a few thousand for my schooling. They even went so far as to put a negative charge on TransUnion & damage my credit. I sent in paper copies of my settlements to show just what England had done to me in those 3 months & it was promptly removed from my credit report as well.

    Now you may wonder what became of my trucking career? Or maybe not. Either way 3 days later I found myself going to Concord, NC to attend orientation at J B Hunt. Now just like with with England I went into J B Hunt knowing full well the companies reputation & I'll say it was the most enjoying experience for me & very productive. But that is for another post on another thread.

    Bottom line is I used England for a purpose. I needed a CDL to get my foot in the door of the trucking industry & they gave me the opportunity. For that I am forever grateful. They however used me too & in the end I'd say they got more from me than I did them. It's all about perspective. If my experience here taught me anything it was to be wary of the pie in the sky promises of a trucking company. It was hard learning these lessons but I came out better for it. Having said that would I do it again knowing what I know now? Yes I would! Like I said it's all about perspectives.

    I hope some of you can use this story to come to your own conclusions about England & whether it's right for you. If you are looking for a way to get into the industry it's a place to start if nothing else appeals to you or you are financially unable to get schooling elsewhere. Just be wary of all the stories you have heard & read & come to an informed decision. It's your future after all & your possible career. Just be sure to protect yourself at all times & keep your goals in sight. You'll be fine if you do.:biggrin_25525:
     
    Last edited: Feb 10, 2014
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  3. KeithT1967

    KeithT1967 Road Train Member

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  4. Badcable

    Badcable Medium Load Member

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    This is everything about 1000 posters have said all in one complete post. Do your homework before applying!
     
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  5. 77smartin

    77smartin Road Train Member

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    Man just think there are tens of thousands of people out there who had this same experience...and tens of thousands more who are going to...sad...good read, thanks.
     
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  6. Big Ugly

    Big Ugly Light Load Member

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    It never hurts to share with others a fresh viewpoint. I hope others will look before they leap if you know what I mean. Desperation I understand because I was there. Just practice CYA & be ready to pull the plug.
     
  7. biggare1980

    biggare1980 Medium Load Member

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    Long story but definitely a great read and worth the time it takes to read it all.
     
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  8. chicknwing

    chicknwing Medium Load Member

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    Nice play leaving the truck at their school!!
     
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  9. popcorn169

    popcorn169 Road Train Member

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    I think that it is funny the way you described them and I applaud you for the way you protected yourself with the report that the guy signed.
     
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  10. Big Ugly

    Big Ugly Light Load Member

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    Yeah my 1st trainer Tim believe it or not advised me to do that LOL. He said it was a sure way to avoid them putting an abandonment on my DAC. Worked like charm & if nothing else it's a smart tip for others reading this.
     
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  11. Big Ugly

    Big Ugly Light Load Member

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    As the old saying goes... Fool me once shame on you fool me twice & you know the rest. I was a fool to get so deep in he hole with them & I wanted to be sure it wouldn't follow me the rest of my time behind the wheel.
     
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