Not good

Talked to conway going to see them once I have license. $18+hr to do dock & shuttle then go into line haul or p & d.

 

I just informed my dm today that I will not pull any trlr that doesn't go direct to indy. It took me 1 call to find a better deal. And just for the record - I didn't see anything here that those idiots haven't pulled on me. No pre plan. Take a long break at the terminal. No freight where we sent ya. The thing that really gets me all burned up is when I have 1900 or so miles going into the wknd, bust my hump to get there a day ahead, and sit in Laredo from friday til monday for a 1000 mile load that can't del til wednsday, Thus blowing any chance of a real payday again. I just can't sit and rot away from home without pay due to lack of planning at Celadon ever again.

 

You would think that the upper management would know that a sitting truck makes no money...for the driver or the company. Maybe they need a lesson in the 5 P's: Prior Preparation Prevents Poor Performance!

 

I agree. I could give a long list of bellyaches about one of my former companies, but it wouldn't be the whole truth. I admit that I don't know much about Celadon, but I have never heard them lumped in with the J.B. Hunt's, Werner's, and Swift's of the industry. I suspect that they aren't as horrible as the long list of complaints would lead us to believe. Not saying that the driver didn't have a bad experience, but I doubt that it is the norm. I suspect he just got unlucky enough to be assigned a piece-of-crap truck. When that happens, a driver can either ride the storm out or quit... it depends on the mindset of the individual.

Celedon does have an awesome vacation plan (if they honor it). If they'd keep the vacation plan and bump up their pay scale to a more competitive level for experienced drivers, I'd almost be tempted to give them a try myself. But I'm not working for 33 cents a mile.

And this raises a red flag. The way that a company treats a new employee in orientation is often a reflection of how they will be treated in the fleet. A company that forces a new employee to suffer a long ride on a Greyhound bus and then to share a room with a stranger makes me wonder.

 

WOW!!!!! That is all I can say about the stuff I have read so far here...I currently drive for Celadon and I have no problems with them. They have been upfront and honest with me even before I started driving for them. The recruiter I had was honest with me and didn't jerk me around...Orientation was fun..And I didn't ride a greyhound bus, they flew me to Indy for orientation..As of day one I have been kept busy. Miles are great and I haven't had a problem yet with getting a pre-plan. I have also discovered that the Canadian drivers do not dominate Laredo and the Mexicans do not dominate the Wax yard either..I have not once had a problem getting into or out of either place. And yes I am a solo driver..I have yet to fall below the 3,ooo mile mark a week....I think maybe those only talking bad stuff about the company and claiming that they were'nt getting any miles are probably those that turned down lds....

 

I thought I was step up to a better company... hah hah on me, I was told to bring 7 days worth of clothes "we'll get you right back home on your 1st load to get your stuff" so I drove myself down to Indy on a Sunday and checked into my "room" on site started orientation the next morning and was finished 2 days later, but there were no trucks at this time , so we need you all to come back in the morning... at 7am we were asked for 10 people to transport new truck to Richmond VA -5 trucks , and Greensboro NC- 5 trucks, no trucks were available for assignment in a class of 63 people the other 53 would have to wait there to be "assigned" so I raised my hand and was picked to deliver a new truck to Richmond,, be back at noon to get the trucks and codes,,, no codes at noon...be back here at 4pm and we'll get you rolling...
the 10 of us that rasied our hands got the trucks at 4pm with the codes to start them while doing my pre-trip I noticed that the License plate of the truck didn't match the registration , so off I go to permits who are gone for the day now, so the lead Mech. get it for me , I walk back to the truck and noticed it was the wrong truck Registration , go back , and i am told to wait until morning...
So now it is Friday morning we get the paperwork all squared away, and I login the quallcomm and wait for a load to Richmond VA, after 3 hours of waiting I login stating I am going into the terminal building for lunch... 30 minutes later when I return to the truck there is messages waiting on the qualcomm they assigned me a load to MN and took it off me while I was eating, when I called my DM he told me just wait he'd get something for me... all afternoon I waited ,called twice was told "I'm working on it" by the DM... I finally login and leave a message I am going back inside will head out in the morning. OK.... I login Saturday morning at 06:00am ready to go, and wait , have lunch, and wait and wait... i go back inside have diner go back upstairs I find out there is me and one of the other 10 guys still here, plus most of the 53 others, Sunday I am told , wait until monday... Monday I finally get to move I bobtail up to Lafayette IN pick up a brand new trailer # wabash trailers go back down to Brownsburg IN and drop it there and pick up a load there headed to Dallas TX, I headed out and made it there 4 hrs early on Wednesday morning. Drop and hook and I was sent a load down in Waco TX headed up to MA which I was to drop in Richmond VA and pickup my permanent truck there.. Woohoo..
Off I go to Waco I show up 6 hours early and the good poeple there take me early and I get to Drop and hook again.. Off I go back up, then East bound and down... into LA almost to Monroe.. then off to GA , then to VA and finally Richmond... then next morning , I am 5 and 1/2 hours early on Saturday.. drop the trailer and drive around the yard looking for MY truck, 3 trips around the yard , I don't see it no one in the shop, no one in the office, so I call Indy, "sorry we can't help you, you'll have to wait until Monday" so I wait all weekend , with no laundry facilities in the terminal I am start to get low on clean clothes, to find out on Monday that they had changed trucks on me, no message sent to me, no phone calls, and no word left at the gaurdshack there in Richmond... my new truck had been there all weekend,, So I transfered my almost all dirty clothes to the new truck and logged in to the qualcomm for a load assignment to get me home to pickup the rest of my stuff, got a load # about 10am to pickup an hour south at 11pm so I called to see if I could pick up early, and was told call back after 4:30PM that load is on 2nd shifts roster.. I called back and was told oh yeah come on down it is one of the 1st orders we are going to pull, I checked in at 5:45pm on site dropped my trailer and waited next to my "being Loaded" trailer , at 10:45pm I get the BOL and the seal , I drove back to Richmond and called it a night, left at 06:00 the next morning headed to Grand Rapids MI, I made it 670 mile to the other side of Akron OH and the truck started dying I was doing 25mph with the flashers going I limped it to the TA up the road to change the fuel filter per breakdown,, didn't help TA said something is wrong with the electrical.. I called it in breakdown needs the load transfered off to tow you to a dealership in Cleaveland OH so I sit in this TA with a truck which now doesn't idle in the snow for 22 hrs until the swap shows up Wednesday afternoon about 6 pm and the tow truck about an hour later I get to the frieghtliner shop and gather most of my stuff and headed to the only Comcheck friendly hotel the RedRoof inn and am told get an room and call us when the dealership knows something...
this is Easter weekend... I sat there and had to order out for 8 days while I was told oh yeah get the room another day , your truck should be finished soon:tomorrow:in a day or so ,, ect... finally I got a phone call from my new DM , seems my old DM was fired and she was wondering if I still worked for Celadon because he had wrote down I quit back when the truck was towed... I called a cab went and got my other stuff from the truck which was not even being worked on and went to the Cleaveland airport , rented a car and drove home to Michigan, still haven't received the last check from Richmond to the breakdown... Celadon is a joke... I drove a total of 6 days (3041 miles) out of 25 with the company

 

The people are talking about what happened to them on a personal note.
It is good that who you drive for has been good to you but at the same token people should tell what happened to them...As I have said before, "It is better to be forewarned then not warned at all".
I did the same thing that you said about your company when someone said something about the company I worked for at the time...then it happened to me. I could not in my dreams would have known of the out come.
THANK GOD WE LIVE IN A COUNTRY OF FREE SPEECH

 

I am glad it is working out for you here better then it did at Swift, compared to them Celadon must look like a government job... So stay safe and best wishes go out to you, take their money and run...

 

That would be a week off paid every 3 months. I just get the impression of, that is all the time off your gonna get there. You judge a big company by the professionalism of it's drivers and Celedon drivers range from true pro's to dirtbags. Overall they look like a decent company. Sounds to me like the Celedon Canada drivers have the best deal of them all, not to mention the guys on the Canadian end with daycabs. Most of their freight ends up in Laredo, the arm pit of Texas. I would never go to Laredo, or anywhere else, without an exit plan. I don't know if they do it but Schneider road drivers drop and hook at the yard and do a quick turn around as opposed to sit you on some dock and Laredo docks are tight with lot's of blindside backing.

As with any company, if you cannot run a minimum of 2500 miles per week, your really wasting your time. All companies have drivers that do that every week. As long as they know that two bad weeks in a row will send you walking they will keep you around if you work hard. There is only so many miles to go around.

 

You will always here the good and bad about the same company i think some of these Celadon stories are so old that things have changed