Training with CR England...

Thanks Lovesthedrive!

Great info.. My husband is now considering Stevens out of Dallas. They say they will pay for the school but we are taking your advice to go thru private schooling with Roadmaster Traning.. only problem there is they want $1800 down and total of school is $7400.. OUCH.. They promise to place you but that is scary.. Will deffinately look closer into private traning.. Thanks again!!!

 

Bad time to be changing jobs. Ask any trucker out there how many miles they are seeing. Those that are getting the miles are lucky. Yet alot of them are parked with little or no miles.

DONT QUIT FOR WHAT A RECRUITER PROMISES!!!!!!!!!!!

Recruiters could care less if you suceed or not, their job is to keep their numbers up by telling you what you want to hear, and only that. They will promise you more pay, or ask you "what are you going to do with 35 thousand dollars?" . Ask anyone here, have they seen 35 grand in a year?

I paid 6grand for my license. Worth every penny. See if there is a technical college nearby that he can get training with. As far as your state you live in cares, if you pass the test, your a driver. So with that in mind find a school that will teach him. Ask at nearby colleges for what they recomend.

I unfortunately had the wife quit her job of $400 a week for a pipe dream of Western Express. She didnt care for the job she had, and we did have fun for a month driving up and down the eastern seaboard. I asked my manager "Will I see at least 600 a week take home". He said no problem. Reality is it cost around 200 a week just for food alone and we saw a total of 1300 for the whole month!

If you have work right now. Stick with it. If you think trucking is that great? Go to a Pilots or a Flying J in your area and ask the drivers that work for them before you commit. Ask them what they think of the job. Ask them if they get the miles. Ask them how confused they are about trying to find a place. Heck go to your grocery store, see if there is a trucker driving sloowly with a look of concern on their face. Or parked along the road and confused.

Take off the rose glasses and hear first hand. Get to those truck stops, yet make sure you are not talking to a trainer (just ask, do you yourself train drivers?). Your in for a rude awakening.

People here are going to tell you their side. Alot have been bitten by the recruiters promises. Alot have not found this board or only want to read about it and not post. Its hard not to be bias. Yet it sounds as if you want to hear the pipedream with out really asking the drivers at a rest stop. I am not trying to pick on anyone hear in any way at all. Yet being a truck driver right now is not glamourus. Its filthy, washing laundry must be watched as some out there may want your clothes more than you do, showers are available, finding the better stops is a challenge if you dont know.

Me? I wont lie, wanna be truck driver 100%. I have almost 21,000 miles logged, many a helpful trucker out there that have helped me in a bind, and I thank each and every one of you for your consideration. Made the mistake of hearing a recruiter. I am gullible, I believe people and often get burned. Trying to make a better life. Good companies are hard to find, I know of one and none here have commented on them. Yet I am no longer feeling lucky after being dismayed with 3 different companies. Fortunately no abandonements (threats there of yes, none listed that I know of). Now the wife is able to get unemployment (she has worked last 33 years, and feels terrible that she has to go on unemployment). I feel like dirt for promising her a better life. We are mostly ok, we only have 2 scary bills, credit card and a car payment. Our home is paid for, built it myself some 4 years ago. No chance it will get foreclosed, we feel for those whom are or have lost alot. Where we go from here is a hurty question. Fortunately on a bad year I will make 3 grand in a summer mowing lawns and other farm tractor work. Yet its depressing to me, the promises made so some one else could sleep better at night thinking they hooked another.

Good luck

 

making 1-5 cents after the lease payments and fuel etc. costs does not count.
Making enought to be only 2 thousand dollars in the hole does not count.
When I first started driving I was making .32cpm

 

hey did they do a hair test on everyone? or was it done only to a randomly selected few? I've heard a lot of conflicting info about this

 

If I remember correctly, you mentioned in another thread that your aunt is paying for your tuition and you didn't want her to waste her money, --- yet you're showing interest in the Big truck truckin' company with the highest failure rate and the worst treatment of their students. So, even if you do pass the drug screen, your chances of wasting your aunt's money are likely.

If C.R. England is the only company to show interest in you, and that's your reason for considering them, keep in mind that they're a training company that depends on a revolving door of newBies to keep their door unlocked. If they provided a comfortable working condition, folks would remain employed there, --- and there'd be a lower turn-over rate, meaning they wouldn't make money training replacements. Make no mistake, C.R. England depends on drivers leaving or being fired for trivial reasons. These threads about C.R. England are chock full of horror stories about their business practice.
Have you bothered to read any of them? How about your aunt? Has she read any of the stories? Perhaps you should let her read 'em --- then decide if it's a wise investment to pay for your tuition to C.R. England.

 

I wonder if these trucking companys would stop fireing drivers if the drivers worked for free?

 

I went thru this same process back in 2005, but in Colton, California. I wish him the best of luck as well, really I do. But I do look forward seeing how this story ends up. Hey, if you want, I have a thread post about CRE and my experience in 05, check it out if you want but please don't let it discourage you in anyway.

 

Why not? :smt017
What'cher 'bout to eat is poison, ........
But don't let me stop y'all from eatin' it?

Does that make sense? :smt102

 

I could give you a really biased opinion of CRE lease program, but I am not. instead I will just stick to the FACTS. Before you are anybody else thinks about attending CRE or there lease you should copy this onto your computer clean it up without changing anything (my writing stinks) and fax it to your recruiter and ask them to dispute what I have written first. I am currently a fleace operator for them, soon to be ex. little bit over a year and a half been leasing for them.

A few things you should know. They advertise .80 cpm empty and as much as I think $1.15 per mile loaded. That is false advertising. They have whats called a variable mileage payment of .14cpm. What this is for nobody knows. The instructors at school when they do reveal it, tell you it pays the dm's, my instructors tell me it pays for the office. The last phase upgrade I took the instructors there tell us it is to drop our fleace payment down. I pay $550 a week, for a bare bones Cascadia. Nicer truck, more per week.
You can only make .66cpm empty, and theoretically $1.01 loaded. You will never make more than .76cmp loaded. Anything over 400 miles pays .90cpm loaded, .80MT. The high mileage loads or short runs of a couple hundred miles are all taken by company drivers. If you get a drop and hook load which is short they will tell you those are exempt and only pay .90 cpm (.76 cmp loaded).

They tell you in class that you can reduce your variable mileage payment threw safety rewards, which is also in the hand book, they don't tell you, and its not in the handbook but they #### sure will enforce it they removed it off the rewards program as of I believe it was April of 2009, maby 2010 (long time ago) after that time it became impossible for any lease operator to get there variable mileage payment reduced. Those who had already used there safety points where however grandfathered into it so they didn't loose there reduced variable mileage.

They tell you in class that as a lease operator you can have your governor increased its also in the handbook, they reversed that a couple years ago as well. You will be driving a 60 MPH truck unless you lease one of there severely beat to hell used Freightliner Centuries.

CRE tell you that lease operators get preferred mileage over company drivers FALSE! CRE pays massive overhead for there company trucks (buying it, insurance, fuel, taxes, permits, upkeep ets..) and drivers (wages, workman's comp, benefits ets...) They pay zero that's ZERO overhead of there fleace trucks. When freight goes down, the company drivers run like hell, the fleace operators sit idol for long periods of time waiting for freight to improve. The lease operators are in separate fleets from company drivers. We get the new dispatch managers most with zero experience as a dispatch manager, a few who got fired or quit from other companies. They guys dont have a clue, one out of the many will raise above the rest, as soon as he or she does they get promoted to dispatch a fleet of company trucks. That just happened to me not to long ago with my old dm. I had him for a few months just friggen awsum, dude was just a friggen freight Nazi. Great runs high miles ets. Got some new dude who is friggen worthless. CRE says otherwise but they are lying and unlike there other acts of false advertising this one is almost impossible to prove in court.

CRE shops do give a discount of maby 5% but thats it. I am guessing with a fleet of around 4,000 trucks they would be getting things like tires, aircompressors, headlights, wipers, breaks, ets.. at between 40% to 60% discount. Do they pass that discount on to the lease operators, NO! You will pay almost same price for everything done at CRE shops as you would at a T/A. Just wrong! Company trucks they pay for everything, the monthly truck payment if they dont buy them outright, the maintenance, all the stuff mentioned above. They get a huge discount for parts, they are so friggen selfish they cant even help out the lease operators who they have to pay zero overhead on, buy at least passing the discount on to them, they want to get jack the lease operator for even more cash, just wrong!

They do pay detention, but a few months ago they just tightened the belt on it. You now have to get it approved by two different office people before its given, there are a couple exceptions. Mind you they are doubling up on office personell, so no you will have to spend another two hours on hold between two people just to get your friggen detention pay. Getting bad fast, just getting worse by the month. Every month they tighten the belt on something else.


CRengland is downsizing fast, there loosing massive accounts, and at cre drivers expense utilizing new extremely undesirable accounts they never previously used. CRE used to almost equally share the walmart account with Swift, not any more, 20 swift trucks to every one england now. General mills account once mostly CRE trucks now mostly Martin and Central, Tyson (FT.Smith) used to be almost 100%CRE trucks, not anymore massive Central, and even a few Swift trucks. Alot more but those are the major ones

CRE closed there yard in Denver. They are doubling up on staff and cutting departments. They consolidated DOT compliance and Safety. Got rid of half the staff, forced the other half to do twice the work. You got new dms who start out by dispatching a fleet of lease trucks and then if they are good enough they move up to dispatching company trucks. They are now doubling up on the new dispatch managers. So instead of a new DM getting a fleet of 75 lease trucks to dispatch, the new guys are getting fleets of upwards of 150 (in all honesty its around the 100-120 truck range) trucks to dispatch, huge difference. Huge difference in the quality of lease operator dispatch.

There DM's are notorious for playing god, my DM is doing that to me now cause I only been home twice in year and half and really started bothering him about it, and got a bit boligerenat to him. Been asking him every day every week, just keeps me on eastern seaboard. I am from N.California/ Montana. He make sure I dont get any closer than 1,500 miles from my home (farthest my truck can go MT on two full tanks of fuel, assuming I filled it up at last minut before delivering a load), I got a 500 mile week for it last week as well. A few weeks under 1k miles ets.... This is just becouse after only taking two home times in a year an a half I really really really want to go see my friends and family. Been asking every friggen day forever! I have a perfect safety record, ontime pickup and delivery record. Only refused a load twice for justified reasons. Never need swaps, run almost perfect logs (almost never get any log violations) perfect trip planning and HOS managment ets.... There is thousands of post everywhere on the net of the exact same thing. If a lease operator doesnt get down his knees for his or her dm and kiss there ace every day, or so much as looks at them wrong the CRE Dispatch will play god and strike you down, just the pettiest of things, now you are a slave. You get under 2,000 miles per week which means that you owe CRE money for the privalage of working for CRE. You end up working your ace off for free (zero pay), or paying CRE for the privilege of working for them, while they get rich and laugh there ace off at you all the way to the bank (Mormon church). Most all of the lease operators "break even point" is around 2k miles per week, thats the first thing new dms are taught or the first they learn working for CRE is where all the L/O's break even point is.

In case your wondering why I am here? Its becouse I am stupid. I just wanted to get a solid two years perfect record then move on to better company thinking the advantage of that would give me some kind of advantage or edge over all the other applicants at whatever trucking company I choose to go to, and that it would somehow be all worth the sacrifice. But a person can only take so much. Got my sheet packed, come monday I will find a place to do the body work on truck. A dude backed into me in truck stop while back, his insurence will pay for it. Then my truck will be brand new inside and out (took immaculate care of it) and I will find some way to go home unpack, cash my IRS refund (I paid a lot extra so its a doozy I know paying the IRS more than you need to and letting them collect free interest off it is stupid, but I love winning the lottery every year, so I do it anyways.

 

I have been with CRE for 3 years now and my former DM said that we are all company drivers in his eyes, he just needs to move freight to get his bonuses.

Does anyone here work for Landstar? My truck is paid off in 2 months and I want to get the heck out of CRE.