Roehl Transport makes it into the BAD company forum

hey dark that sucks(Hittin' the cable and all) but umm weren't you the one holding the wheel? I hate to bring up momisms but if they routed you off a cliff would you do it? I will follow the route they (Or any company) gives me right up to the moment I don't like it, at which time I will do what I think is best. Live and learn dude. You will be with a new outfit as soon as you wish they are all desperate.

 

Did you check the truckers' atlas to make sure the route they gave you was suitable and legal to run? I'm not sure what they made you go through, but I assume any truck driving school would have a section on route planning and always checking your route to make sure the weight limits and clearances are okay, and that the roads are still actually there.

 

Skip - I hate to tell you this, but as a former third party pension administrator, a 401(k) is a form of a Profit Sharing Plan as defined in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) mandated by the Department of Labor in 1974 and amended to death over the years.

This is where I wax long in the tooth , however, a "little bit" of information put into layman terms might be needed for some out there to understand how a 401(k) plan is defined and the normal operating procedure for most employers that I've seen out there over my 10 years in the field. Those of you not needing this information and are able to read through the legalistic mumbo jumbo of your company's Summary Plan Description, feel free to move along to the last few paragraphs where I ask advice of all of you or to the next post in this thread.

Otherwise, if you're having trouble sleeping, read on and this should help out your insomnia and give a bit of understanding to the basic components of most every 401(k) plan out there.

There are three main accounts to every 401(k) plan. A Profit Sharing (ERPS) account, an Employee Deferral (EEDF) account, and an Employer Matching (ERMA) account. There are occasionally other accounts for some employees who've rolled over their 401(k) vested account balances from their prior employer. These are called Employee Rollover (EERO) accounts. If the plan offers loans to employees (through some very stringent conditions), there are in some rare cases Employee Loan (EELN) accounts.

Vesting of these accounts is as follows: EEDFs and EEROs accounts and the profits from investing (in recent days more like losses from investing) in the investment choices offered by their employers plan are 100% vested at all times; ERPSs and ERMAs accounts and the profits from investing in the investment choices offered by their employer's plan are vested according to a schedule which varies by employer, however, must 100% vest in 7 years or less (unless the employer is a government entity which must 100% vest in 10 years or less) based on years of service.

The vesting on EELN accounts eludes me right now, however, I do recall that, should an employee terminate before the loan is paid back in full, the employee will have been considered as taking a distribution from the 401(k) plan which is subject to severe penalties if the employee was under the age of 59½ and also treated as taxable income for the year in which the distribution was taken.

Profit Sharing Plans are horribly named because employer contributions in the form of "Profit Sharing" are not tied to profits made by the employer at all. ERPS account contributions are discretionary by the employer. In other words, they do not have to contribute to the PS account for the employees regardless if they make a profit or not. They do, however, have to make some kind of contribution, be it a Profit Sharing or Employer Match contribution (see below), every so many years to continue to keep the plan's status as a Profit Sharing Plan as defined by ERISA, however, it can be a paltry percentage of the employees' salaries and still count as a profit sharing contribution.

EEDF contributions are based on individual employees deferring a percentage of their pay to the EEDF account. For tax purposes,the EEDF contributions are considered to be employer contributions because they are in lieu of pay that an employee would have received from the employer.

ERMA contributions are variable from one year to the next. They are also discretionary by the employer and are not tied to profits of the company in much the same way ERPS contributions are not tied to profits. If an employer makes a match contribution based on a percentage of the EEDFs (or salary if they decide to define it that way since EEDFs are based on the employees salary in the end), it is subject to very complicated testing to keep the plan from becoming too Top Heavy. Top Heavy means the plan is basically favoring the highest paid employees/owners too much with regard to those who are paid less.

That's where the companies I worked at came into play. We would assist the employers in this complicated testing (as well as take care of other menial tasks related to administering the plans) to keep them within the tax code... and the more complicated the plan, the more the administrative costs were which benefited my former bosses, but rarely me.

I've had another career in network administration that I fell into for the last 8½ years because I had just enough experience tinkering with computers so that they could mold me into what they wanted. I was simply overworked, under-certified, fired from, and basically now have no references for the field because they think I treated them wrong! But I digress and I am going to stop whining about my former employer now because that's not why you are here and it's just not constructive.


Anyway, there are newer variations to 401(k) plans (created in the last 10 years or so) that require larger or 100% vested contributions to lower paid employees which reduce the need for the complicated expensive testing and reduces a lot of the cost of administering plans. Because of my time out of the pension administration field, I only remember one of them is called a SIMPLE 401(k) plan. SIMPLE stood for Savings Incentive Match PLan for Employees... but, I hadn't had a chance to administer one of those plans before getting out of the field... heh, and frankly didn't understand them much as such.

The bottom line is that 401(k) and all Profit Sharing and Pension Plans are just more or less a way for employers to get huge tax breaks. They can also make the employers appear to be great humanatarians by providing retirement funds for their employees... and are thus many times misunderstood retirement funding vehicles for employees. They are also a great sales pitches for recruiters.

I'd still recommend investing in them as much as you possibly can... until it hurts if need be. I'm here to tell you, Social Security will not be around in another 25 years because the baby boomers are going to break the system. There is no funding for Social Security by the government, it is only another spending item for the federal government. But, if Obama is elected, I suppose anything is possible when he takes everyones' hard earned money as taxes out of our paychecks.

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On a side note, I've been intrigued by truck driving since I was a kid (and now as an adult) when we took/take long car trips between New Jersey and Michigan to visit family, listening to the truckers on the CB, as we grinded out the miles. I'm going to take the leap into a truck driving career now. I'm waiting for my funds to come together in the next couple weeks to get me through CDL school on to start training with one of the national companies mentioned in these forums shortly thereafter. After 5 months of unemployment trying find work in IT, nothing out there will pay me as much as I was making at my last employer and I've got a family to feed. I know what it is like to start from the bottom and work my way up. I will just have to do it again... I know how to pay my dues... and will. That's the beauty of the great U.S.A.!

Sorry, I went a bit political rant there and hopped up on my soapbox... the ramblings of an aging guy who knows too much and has entirely too much time on his hands doing granddaddy daycare for my granddaughter whom my wife and I raising as our own because my stepson is incapable of raising her and he married a former child abuser... Yeee friggin' hawwww! I'll be a hit on the old CB, huh?

Roehl is looking good to me so far at least a good "starter" company for at least a year or two. They are fairly "local" to me here in Michigan. If I find I'm not getting the home time/miles I think I should get after that couple years of paying my dues, I'm going to go with a local freight company so I can get it.

Any advice from anyone out there (Roehl or not) who's either a newbie in the field or a long time veteran, I'd greatly appreciate.

Thank you for having the patience to get here to the end of my novella!

—WorkinMan

P.S. Skip, I apologize in advance for throwing all this at your post... it was where I found the first mention of 401(k) in this thread and I wanted lend my background to the subject. I'm not sure how other companies worked with you by splitting up profits.

 

You are aware you just responded to a post that was over a year old. You breathed new life into a thread that was eight months old. The person you responed to more than likely has since left the industry.


carry on.

 

Opps!

 

Hang in there until you find another job.I hate to rain on your parade but it can only get worse for you.Trucken companies don't believe in making things better.Even though your checks are'nt good,it sounds like theyre not stealing money from you like so many companies do.But as long as they give u 2000 miles or less a week,youre not going to make any money.The dispatchers could care less either because they have 75 drivers so if 1 dont get the miles they have 74 to make up for that 1 driver.Take Care and if youre not happy,find a good company.Look on this website under good companies.

 

I went to Roehl and finished orientation. I was put into the Blume division, drove one night for them and saw how disorganized the dispatch was. Sent to pick up a trailer in Minneapolis to find out the three trailers had either flat tires or non-working trailer lights. Then I had to do a wash out and make it to the shipper, by the next morning I get a call on the phone by dispatch, asking why I drove further than my log hours, at that moment I realized I couldn't make any money with a dispatch like this and demanded that I get routed back to the yard, which they did. I payed for a shuttle to the airport and payed for the rental car and fuel back to Atlanta. I just knew they weren't for me!

 

Thanks for your input reconredneck. Are you pursuing another freight carrier, or have you given up completely on the trucking industry?

I wonder if my experience would be any better being based out of Gary, IN? I've read a lot of bad things about their Gary, IN terminal from other drivers though. I've also heard that the way to get better miles is to join their 7/3-7/4 program. I've heard a lot of national drivers say that they just weren't getting the miles needed to make a living out of the job. I've also heard if you go 7/3-7/4, you'll end up sharing trucks, whereas in the national program, you can bring their truck home with you so that you don't run up mileage on your own vehicle.

I live in West Michigan and I think Gary, IN is the closest Roehl terminal to my home. With gas prices dropping, it should be cheaper, but I don't have faith that they will stay low. I'm also looking at companies in the Grand Rapids area, but a lot of them want a year or two experience before they will hire me.

I'm thinking if Roehl (or any company) isn't treating me right after a year or two, I'll just move to a local company. Heh, even if they are treating me "average", I'll probably move on to a more local company. It just seems to me, compared to the other larger carriers like Werner or Swift, Roehl drivers have less complaints. I know wherever I go, I'm going to not like the first year or two from the sounds of things... but that's true of a lot of jobs/careers.

 

My experience with Roehl has been both good and bad. I am new to the otr trucking but have been driving trucks for 3 years prior but wanted to try otr. Now that I have tried it I am going back to a local gig. I am sick of being away from the farm and having to sit and wait for work. I know there are ups and downs, but I have not only personal expenses but also farming expenses to keep up with and I cannot not have inconsistencies in what I bring in each month. I do not think Roehl is overall a bad company, but I have had my days with them