Roehl Warning

It’s june 2018, it’s now $7000 and/or 120,000 miles
I’ve heard the pay, because of the miles, is only around $500 a week net. Can any one verify average pay for new drivers here?

 

I used my VA benefits to get my CDL and went to Roehl for my first job. I showed up at the Grand Prairie terminal since I was living near Fort Hood, TX at the time. Did the orientation there, and during that the trainer we had basically punked out the only female and sent her home for being a female (he said females don't belong in trucking and tried to weed them out). Then, I went out on the road with a decent guy who lived in Georgia, so I of course was flown out there to start out at his terminal near Atlanta. During that time he gave me the heads up about having to pay out of pocket for tolls, to be reimbursed of course. Paying for parking, I think, was on the driver wherever that exists like in Maryland. If you have to unload a trailer by hand, they don't pay you for the first hour, then something like $15 an hour after that, but paid in 15 minute increments. When that was all done, I went back to the terminal in Grand Prairie (near Dallas) and was presented with a new truck. Whoever drove it down there from Wisconsin had ripped the driver-facing camera off the windshield. The #### thing had no charge on the batteries so I had to sweat it out in the sleeper all night. The next few weeks were me chasing phantom trailers all over Texas, unpaid, just so I could get paid miles if I ever found one to take to get loaded. Then, a lot of trailers were rejected by shippers for tandems that don't slide, being foul-smelling, etc. One had 3 flat tires when I found it, so of course a hailstorm of stupid questions and comments by a dispatcher in Wisconsin (my own dispatcher only showed up to work for 5 days in 3 weeks, intermittently). The moron even tried to tell me that in my 60 mph truck, I could drive all the way to Beaumont from Dallas in X hours (nevermind the towns every 10 miles with stoplights and such, and the hills and long 35 mph stretches. He must have never seen those before!). Finally, the dam burst when I was given a dispatch to run a load to a Walmart in Houston and the address took m to a farm, Walmart wasn't answering phones, and dispatch ran me through the phone tree. Eventually I raised someone on the phone (from watching porn, I assume) and got the correct address. I ended up racking up a ton of tolls getting there on time. So, finally, I had to sleep at the Walmart and brought back a load of paper rolls to relay. All in all, I put the trailer on the relay line, parked the tractor in the exact spot from where I got it, and went home since it was a Friday. On Monday I was pulling a belly dump and home every night. You will be nothing more than easy money for them because they are a company that ships by running high volume, and they are paid by the department of labor for every new butt in a seat as a new driver in trucking, including those who paid for their own schooling, just because the call it OJT (on the job training). This was even laid out to us in the orientation!

 

Thread necropost. Roehl charges $7,000 for CDL training now. I got the bill three weeks after being terminated for failing phase 2 training. I was supposed to be going to their flatbed fleet.The instructors at marshfield told me that the company had a 70% fail rate; and I can see why. The company is making a fortunate off of terminating students with a contract like that.
The training pay is $500 a week gross, $90 a day in phase two, as of two months ago.

 

Eased hell.... I want my miles and I want it now. (Call JG Wentworth, maybe you can apply some form of future driving to them and they can work it with the company dispatchers.)

 

There is always more to the story.. Roehl is a good company to work for.. But as with most trucking jobs, it is what u make of it.. Expecting to have the same paycheck every week as an otr driver is not happening unless ur salary paid...itstrucking, some weeks are great some are ####ty,..

 

I looked into them. Micromanagement is bad enough, but when I have to channel my inner-calculus to figure out my correct pay... no thanx!

 

Hindsy! This is an old post, so I don't know if you are still around driving or perusing this site. I remember reading your thread about your time with Roehl and it was very informative. It was one of the big reasons I ended up with Roehl myself. I ended up staying with them for 3 1/2 years, which was probably too long, but they treated me well and it wasn't too bad.

Anyway, you seemed like a nice guy and I just thought I'd say "hi." I hope everything is going well for you. Take care.

 

I am going to Roehl on 11/28.