The Good, The Bad, The Honest Truth of a New Roehl Lease Operator

By far this is shaping up to be my worst month ever here. and i have been out 19 days by the time i get home, and will be coming back out 24th... i just don't get it, I'm beginning to really think we are not competing for miles with company. I never thought that before, but its really really looking this way. and if that every becomes the case, bye bye.

 

Honestly the only time I was told freight was slow was durring the holidays. There full of #### if they say freight is slow rite now. Why was i running a average of 3100 miles a week if freight is slow? But then again I was a company driver. Maybe they just give all the L/O's short runs and give all the rest of the company drivers the big runs?

 

You can get a pretty good idea about frieght levels by the deadhead. When deadhead is greater than loaded you know there's a problem. Also if your sitting and the load they offer you is over a hundred and fifty miles away, that's not good. They run by a system of closest truck, whether it's company or o/o.

Freight isn't slow, just Roehl's share of it.

 

Look at the surcharge right now. I know roehl dosnt have a surcharge on all their fr8 so in few cases they take a small loss giving us a load. U gotta follow the money with them if u do it will always lead to your answer

 

Freight IS NOT SLOW. I stated several months ago when I quit that Roehl was loosing lots of freight and what they were managing to keep was not very good. That was part of the reason I left. So many companies have raised thier pay to IC's and company drivers the past few months because of the high freight demand. Has Roehl raised your pay? By the way that sliding pay scale per milee based on length of haul is crazy. Also the fact they pay less on empty miles and the FSC on those miles is a joke. The best part of thier IC program was Dan and he is gone. Good luck guys.

 

are they loosing customers or are they choosing ones that are better for the bottom line?

 

Right before I left I had a talk with Eric the fleet manager over the IC DSR's. I had noticed the quality of freight was going downhill. By this I mean mostly live loads and unloads and alot of very heavy loads, 40,000lb plus. Eric told me that Roehl had mainly switched over to a set price based on the cube volume of a 53 foot trailer. This meant the companies that where using roehl were filling the trailers to the max weight. Scrap and rolled paper companies loved it. This meant basically a pay cut if you figure that with mostl the loads being heavy we got worse MPG and spent more for fuel. I am not a hater just a driver that wanted to optimize my income as a O'O and Roehl was definatly sub par in thier IC program.

 

that is something I noticed in the flatbed world before I moved back home. We went away from the usual suspects and started hauling a bunch of short loads. 400 to 550 all next day appts, followed by another similar load. Add in the dwell time between loads and the average per week was coming in about 2000 miles. In my opinion it was a calculated move to find freight that was more company friendly and less driver friendly. Good for the bottom line and looks like they are reinvesting that in the equipment. So I guess it's not all bad, and when I was there they expectation was still that you were going to run legal so there is something to that as well.

 

For anybody that hasn't heard Dan Bennett passed away last Friday from his battle with cancer. The fleet was notified yesterday VIA voicemail. He helped make our program the success that it formerly was and will be missed by all.

 

oh wow, i haven't listened to them, wow! what a shame. he was a good man for sure and missed my us all