Roehl Transport makes it into the BAD company forum

True Roehl is not perfect. Show me a company that is. I've been driving for Roehl for just under a year. I attended their school and evolution training. Having read your complaint I have to think that you just like to complain a lot. For starters, regarding ETA if your late that means that you did some poor trip planning, it's your fault. Stop passing the buck and accept your responsiblility. I too drive one of the Internationals and yes it's a gutless company truck. If you want lots of power I suggest that you buy your own truck because most companys regulate their trucks. As for the quality of the truck, hey your a new inexperianced driver, why would they give you a new truck. It only makes common sense that you prove yourself on a well used truck before you get a new one. As for the pay, WOW! Give it a chance. Trucking is not like other companys where you get a certain dollor per hour. Trucking has ups and downs. Some weeks you make a lot of miles, some weeks you dont. In the end it all equals out. You just need to learn to be smart with your money and budget.

 

I love all the green horns complaining about gutless companey trucks. My first two or three trucks all had 300 horse cummins motors in them. Those trucks could smell a hill a mile away. I got my first new truck that had a 370 horse cummins and that thing felt like a sportscar compared to what I had been in. The trucks now are over 500 horse and I will never whine about it again. I also figure having a gov. on the motor saves me more money than it cost me(I have a bit of a lead foot).

 

Let me get a little off topic here.

You know, I wouldn't be surprised if some of these outfits lie about how much HP their rigs put to the ground. Do you guys ever run your rigs on dynos to SEE how much they put out, or do you simply believe what somebody at your company tells you your truck produces?

If I had a fleet of rigs, maybe I'd play this game, too. My trucks would be 379s and maybe 387s, and I'd tell my new hires all my rigs have 600 horsepower. They'd really have only about 300 to save on fuel, but hey, some guys would buy my baloney. It's all about perceptions. Perceptions work at the Federal Reserve, and perceptions would work at my trucking company, too. "Lie to them, and they will come."

When I drove, some of my trucks seemed awfully weak for trucks that were supposedly high HP. Maybe they were weak because they were really weak and I'd been lied to. Maybe some of you guys are being lied to?

 

And that is what is wrong with OTR trucking. The days of not knowing what a driver is doing is over so their is no excuse for companies not paying you for all hours worked. They continue to not be like other companies because they are allowed to. Not because they have a need to.

.

I hear ya. My first truck had a 350hp cat under the cab which had to be raised each morning to do a pretrip and a 42 inch coffin sleeper with a governed speed of 58 mph. Trucks have come a long way in the last 15 years since I started driving.

I would rather a newbie have the same equipment or better, then me. They have not developed the experience yet to operate poorly maintained equipment which covers most trucks over 3 years of age at your average OTR company. The mechanics these companies employ are mostly non certified and prone to making mistakes, and corners are cut in the interest of maintenance savings on a regular basis. The new driver needs every advantage possible to succeed so they do not become one of the many doomed to failure newbies that go thru the trucking mills every year.

 

Hey Tip, I understand your thinking about lying about the HP, but then i think, if you would lie about HP, what else would you lie about in your company. It only needs one lie to start a string of them. Thats how these big companys are and how they probably got started, with one lie.

Nero

 

I guess I could be like a lot of the outfits I worked for and promise new hires they had a job lined up before ever coming to orientation, and then turn around and send a bunch of them home on their own dimes. Maybe I could tell the survivors of orientation about my great pay, then yank some of it back from every paycheck as an offering to the great mileage god Rand McNally. Or maybe I could promise my drivers they would rarely see New York and then send them on their first five runs to Manhattan.

This would be a good start.

 

Tip, sounds like you have the party line of all the bad comapnys down, lol. If i had a company the first thing i would do is tell them the truth. I would rather know the truth before hand and let them decide if they want to drive for me. I would stress safety and no false logs. Would tell them that you will probably see New York, but would spread it out among all drivers. Would treat them as people rather than numbers. My thinking is, if you treat them as men and women and be up front with them they will be happier and want to work for you. Even if there are hard loads that need to be pushed, you tell them that, but remind them that no load is worth a ticket, OOS, or falsfiying (sp) logs. Push as hard as you can but be safe, they will push for you. This industry should be the best in the country. The trucking industry lets this country eat, fuel their cars, build their houses, build their businesses. The trucking company should tell them when the freight will be there not the shipper. Just MHO.

Nero

 

I currently work for a multi-national that I am going to leave after the first of the year to start driving. I am a floor supervisor and we feel that we are the ones in the middle between the corporate vision and the reality of dealing with the human side of business. Some supervisors deal with things differently. This makes the individuals perceptions different.

Some of these larger trucking companies are no different. They try to set up policies and then apply them across the many layers of management until it trickles down to the ones actually making $$$ for the company. Recruiters to dispatchers to terminal managers do not memorize every facet of every company rule. They will tend to, depending on the person and whom they are dealing with, to adapt (lie) or be crass and "mean" about it.

ANY company has its good and bad at ALL levels. You can see it throughout this forum, on any work floor, meeting room, or as you drive listening to the chatter on the radio.

It's all about what you want to take from any given situation and how you react when something negative presents itself. This is why after 12 yearrs in management, I am burnt out and moving on. Taking the good and the bad, and will apply it to a new venture.

Balancing it out is the key. my $.02

 

####..i finally made it to the end of this thread


*flag marked here*

 

Well my experience with Roehl sucked. I had drove for swift so i only had to go out with someone for 5 days to prove i could drive before they gave me a truck. The truck they gave me SUCKED 9400i and it was a piece of crap they wouldn't even give me a mattress for a week and i had to go to Wisconsin to get it. My first week was ok besides the mattress issue my dsr was a complete dits she didn't know anything. As for the sign on bonus omfg they didn't even told me i could have it till i asked for money for a toll becuse they ran out of toll cards. THEN after 3 weeks of working for this company i got fired becuse they routed me wrong and i got stuck under a cable i was on the phone with the accident hotline the whole time. The routed me from KC missiouri all the way to gary,In to fire me they said i didn't follow the procedure for accidnets even though i was on the phone as soon as it happened. Then they took over 1300 dollars from me for the sign on bonus they gave me finally. Now i have trouble getting another job becuse i got stuck under a cable when they routed me wrong.
But becuse they fired me for it, it's considered a accident WTF!