My wife and I are finally going to training for C. R. England

I doubt you will hear from them. It is embarrassing to fail especially when you were warned. I expect they are still in their "training" stage or have hit the road and still gathering numbers so as to reach a conclusion. I wish them well but those who succeed at CRE are few and far between.
I did meet a couple of guys, literally 2 separate solo lease drivers, who were doing pretty good. I must also say that these were not the norm at CRE. They were both very smart, intelligent fellas. Obviously both transplants from other more intellectually taxing professions. They knew exactly what they were doing and were using CRE not the other way around.
Leasing can be good - rarely but it happens. I am getting the impression that if you want to lease Prime would be the place to go. Just going by what I have gathered from fuel pump chatter. If I was going to lease it would be with them.
It has to be borne in mind that just like most industries the companies within the trucking world are fluid. They change with time. CRE are consistent users but others genuinely change. Crete has changed tremendously and is changing again - for the worse.
Prime in the middle 90's was diabolical. Now they have a good reputation. I met a guy with Prime on his 3rd lease. When the music stops you grab a chair and hang on!
Inevitably we change companies because management changes or the people who REALLY run the trucking industry - the INSURANCE companies - force us to jump on another bus. It could be that in 20 years CRE will change their despicable business model and it will be THE place to be (I am not holding my breath!).
Trucking is the closest you can get to being self employed whilst in reality being just another worker. We have the ability to change companies almost whenever we wish. Just keep your CDL clean, avoid drugs and alcohol and try not to bang the equipment up. CSA 2010 notwithstanding we are some of the few workers that control some of our own strings.
Don't complicate it by pridefully ignoring good advice or being stubborn. It is foolish. Listen to myself and Aftershock. I am less cryptic than he but I agree with him wholeheartedly.
Good luck to all of you.

 

You know I just saw this post and I really have to disagree with it. I am going to go through it point by point.

Stormdancer it is true what you say but it is a question of degree. CRE is a diabolical trucking company. They have a despicable history of using new people and ejecting them to the curb. Their entire business model is based on sucking blood from people who are naive and often desperate. It is a giant con trick.
On the other hand at Crete I can't have a pet, big deal.
The difference between these 2 companies is so vast it is like the Atlantic separating America and Europe. Both land masses but gigantically different.
As for 'weeding' are you serious? Cry babies? Absolutely not. They attract the innocent, stupid and desperate. Then they use them until they can't squeeze anymore from them and chuck them out. Does that make them cry babies? NO it makes them victims of some very shady business practices from a company that thinks the word ethics is an exotic aftershave!
As for wanting it all why not? I didn't become a trucker to be poor or misused.
NO.
I live in the truck and work hard every day for a fluctuating paycheck. I rarely stop working and my idea of hometime is a hotel for a reset.
I AM NOT ALONE!
I have been back in the saddle for just over 2 years. This truck had less than 15,000 on it when I picked it up. My runs are reasonable - at present I am on a 800 + to Texas. I have bad times and good times but overall I am winning such that I shall be at Crete for some time to come.
We deserve everything from day one.
It is the same asphalt and concrete that we all drive on. You can do it and be abused and ripped off or you can be reasonably compensated it has NOTHING to do with level of experience.

I don't know where to begin with this. Attitude?? This is a job not the army. The company does not invest anything in new employees. The whole thing is a giant tax fiddle. It is once more part of the business model. CRE 'mines' newbies. Each one offsets their tax bill in many ways. The federal government is very friendly to companies that set themselves up as 'trainers'. Don't you get it?
Driver turn over is a huge issue and it is almost inevitably the company's fault. People don't just uproot from one company and go to another on a whim or because they don't like the color of the truck they have been given! They do it because they have either thought it through and are making a strategic decision OR they have been misused by rude dispatchers or new ridiculous rules.
My first load with CRE was not ######### up as you put it. In fact I only had one weird load in 6 months. My truck was a used Century perfectly fine for me to wander about in. I got along with my dispatcher just fine until he mysteriously disappeared and was replaced with some wannabe sergeant major. He lasted just long enough for me to do an end run on him with his boss.
I don't know where you are getting your info from but it is questionable.


Something I would like to get off my chest is that so many truckers especially trainers want to give the impression that truck driving is rocket science. IT ISN'T! It is a pretty easy way to make a living. It is a bit like dodge-ball but that is easy to learn. However it is a VERY inconvenient way to live your life. Anytime you need a doctor or dentist or accountant or lawyer or have to attend a family event will prove that.
What I did do for a living WAS rocket science and therefore I am in a position to compare the two.
Taking phase noise readings of an new oscillator through an entire band over voltage and temperature or testing half a dozen i/o ports for baseline noise on a new RF chip is waaaay more complex.
Let us just keep a little perspective on the complexity of truck driving and leave the tough trucker talk out of this.
BTW I do this because I like it and it took me many years to figure out what I liked best. I like OTR truck driving I don't like working in labs and offices with artificial light, artificial air and artificial people. I paid my dues so to speak.

Sorry for the rant but that post was nonsense.

 

I am also going to go with CR England and I do not have a family to feed. I am hoping that they actually give me a team driving position as I do not want the lease option. Why anyone would lease a truck with not one ounce of exp is beyond me. It is a decision that should be made atleast two years after being in the truck. I am not sure but one way or the other I do not want to sit in a hotel waiting for weeks. Its a little insane I think.

 

Actually from a company point of view, leasing really is ideal. Just think. Your fleet inventory is being paid for by your drivers. If you can get 300 drivers that sign that leases for 3 years, then you the company will make money on loads being hauled.

Its good for profits, bad for representation to the driver. Alas it is the driver whom is doing the most of the work while the company sits on its thumbs and calls you terrible things because you want to take 34 hours off from a 75 hour week.

 

Very well said

 

I talked to a friend the other day who now works for Pride (an England company BTW). He said that CRE had actually emailed him the other day with an enticing offer to drive for them solo at the dizzying amount of 28c/mile.
OOOOHHHHH!!!
Somebody hold me back!!
Crete STARTED me at 38c/mile.
CRE are completely out of touch with the real world and hurting for drivers obviously.

Fawne,
Even if you go team with CRE they will be looking for one of you to lease from them. Leasing is rarely a good idea and certainly not with one of the bottom feeders. I think 2 years is optimistic, it is a very big decision. 5 years wouldn't be unreasonable.
I do not understand your comment about sitting in a hotel. There is no hotel at CRE. There are dormitories and they try to make a big deal out of it. I lived out in the carpark in my MPV Mazda minivan - much more comfortable. This also took the pressure off. If anybody is thinking of going there try to take your car with you or make sure you have enough money to rent. They will happily leave you in the lurch.
I am glad that you have found this forum and took the trouble to plough threw 16 pages of stuff just on this one thread. YOU are in the minority.
Many at CRE are barely literate.
Good luck to you.

 

This is true for Salt Lake City area.

However, Burns Harbor Indiana is not the same. Burns Harbor has a hotel in Hammond and it is a rundown cheap company hotel living on shoestrings and rotten food on third floor.

 

They have dormitories at Burns Harbor also. You access through the guard shack. Actually that facility is much better than the wannabe hotel in West Valley City.
Originally they wanted me to go to Dallas and stay at a hotel. There was no long term parking for my van so I went to SLC but I looked the hotel up on the internet. It was a sleazy run down dump. God forbid that CRE would make a newcomer welcome with a nice place to stay.

BTW when I went to Crete they put me up in a Comfort Inn for the 1st night (over $90 / night) and for orientation in Marietta, GA, a Red Roof Inn all very nice.
There are trucking companies and there are trucking companies.

 

Almost forgot
Crete also gave me a $10 card for food at the Smoky Bones in Marietta and sported for a good lunch every day.
CRE of course spared no expense by providing nothing.

 

It's been said, and I agree that,
You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
First impressions are considered to be important, to which I also agree.
First impressions tend to stick and remain uppermost in our memory for a long time, ---- maybe even forever. For that reason, it's not uncommon for folks to go all-out in their attempts to make that first impression a favorable memory.

Keeping that in mind, along with the consistency of reports pertaining to the condition of C.R. England's lodging facilities, causes me to wonder -------- why?
Why are the facilities that way?
Surely CRE can financially afford to provide a more inviting environment if they so desired. If for no other reason than out of decency and respect for the people they've chosen to be employees of the company, as Izi mentioned about Crete.

In the past, --- up until right now, I assumed it was some oversight that whomever is in charge of that department hadn't gotten around to correcting, ...... yet. But "yet" has turned into several years already. Enough time that if CRE wanted to send a different message by improving those facilities, they've had plenty of time to accomplish that, ......... but haven't.

The only logical conclusion I've come up with is that the condition of those facilities are what they are by CRE's choice. There's no oversight involved. The powers that be CRE intend for the condition of those facilities to be exactly the way they are. They're sending a first impression message containing a visual look into what the future holds in store for their drivers. It ain't a pretty picture, but it seems to be pretty accurate.

It's almost as though CRE is displaying contempt toward the newBees. Reminding them, or informing them, of what CRE thinks they're worth.
Don't come to our front door, ---
Use only the service entrance.
Front door arrivals are intended and reserved for those with class, --- which is something y'all are lacking.
How embarrassing it would be for CRE if someone of stature were to see a peon at the front door.

Considering that sometimes first impressions are phony, set up and intended to fool others into believing what isn't true, the impressions CRE's lodging for newBees make at first, seem to be accurate.