Werner - First Impressions

This report is only to provide a first impression glance at Werner. I cannot speak to driving for Werner for several years as I have only been here two weeks.


Good

I have yet to speak with anyone who has an attitude problem (except my recruiter). In the two weeks I've been here, every corporate employee I've spoken to in person, every guard, every mechanic and anyone answering the phone, has been pleasant. I've yet to meet any drivers sitting around with a chip on their shoulder or crying about how horrible Werner is. I'm not saying everyone at Werner is happy, but the overall energy is positive.

Bad

I have to come right out and say that I am truly astounded every day that Werner has grown to be such a large company. Looking at the nuances of the company, although Werner was the first company to implement electronic logs, from numerous angles, Werner's systems are archaic, redundant, lack efficiency and logic. From trip envelope design, macros, yard layout or other features, Werner gives me the impression that "organization" and "efficiency" are not in their vocabulary. The following list may seem nit-picky, but sometimes it is the small day-to-day ingredients that can get under a driver's skin. Let's remember that wasted minutes translate into wasted hours. Werner's appalling lack of efficiency unfortunately ends up meaning needless minutes spent by drivers that could be used driving or enjoying every minute of off-duty/sleeper time.

Trip Envelopes - Werner's trip envelopes are small and poorly designed. They require a rather obnoxious amount of information that shouldn't be necessary. On the plus side, you often don't need to submit a trip because the majority of OTR trips are swaps or drops and Werner doesn't require the driver who didn't deliver the load to submit a trip envelope.

Scanning Trips - At Werner, you can't scan trips at truckstops. What? Yes, you have to mail them in the old fashion way, scan them at a terminal (if you get to one) or you can scan them with the TripPak mobile app (if you have a compatible phone) or purchase a scanner for your truck. Werner claims trips can't be scanned at truckstops because they lack the data transfer quality they require. This is complete nonsense.

Macros - Werner has so many macros that the joke is that you need to make sure you send a macro if you have to use the restroom. Not only is the number of macros time-consuming and inane, but you'll often find yourself entering the same information over and over throughout a variety of macros. The macros also aren't written very well. A typical conversation between a new guy and dispatch might be, "Why didn't you enter the trailer information?" "Because the macro asked for what trailer I picked up or dropped. I didn't pick up a trailer and I didn't drop one. The trailer was already in my possession."

Poor Trip Planning - Werner's planners and dispatch give me the impression that they used to work for a company that didn't have governed trucks. At Werner, the trucks are governed at 62 MPH. Then why do the scheduled pickup and delivery times run so tight?

Tandem Position - It amazes me that Werner doesn't have stickers indicating the legal tandem positions on each trailer. This is a no-brainer that helps drivers avoid tickets and would literally cost peanuts. Just visit any vehicle decal printer to get a sense of how much it would cost to help their drivers avoid getting these tickets.

Off-Duty Driving - My biggest pet peeve is that you have to get permission to off-duty drive. Once you're empty, you should automatically be able to select off-duty driving and have a reasonable amount of off-duty driving time allotted to your truck. Not at Werner. You'll have to wait a minimum of 20 minutes after you've sent your empty macro to get permission from dispatch to off-duty drive. Furthermore, Werner requires you to return to the location that you began your off-duty driving. Therefore, if you drive 10 minutes from the receiver to a truckstop, you'll have to drive back to the receiver in the morning before you can start your day. This is not a federal regulation.

The law reads that you cannot make progress toward a target in off-duty driving status that you are getting paid to drive to, and that you can make progress so long as the record shows that you had no idea that you were making progress (i.e., you can show evidence that the trip information wasn't sent to your truck, etc.). This means that Werner is demanding a minimum of 30 minutes of your personal time (20 minutes to sit around and wait for permission off-duty drive and 10 minutes driving back to the location you started from). If you encounter this scenario once a week, that's 2 hours a month that Werner is needlessly stealing from their driver's off-duty/sleeper time. But remember: Werner Cares

For the record, I just found out the hard way, that Logs will not edit your on-duty driving time to off-duty driving even if your Qualcomm was frozen. That's right: My Qualcomm was frozen for my entire shift. I couldn't enter my pretrip or do anything else, but it tracked my driving. I called logs after I was empty and drove a measly 5 minutes, thinking that it would be an easy fix (as it would be with a previous company), and Logs informed me that I should have submitted a macro to request off-duty driving. I argued both that 1) my Qualcomm was frozen and 2) that pushing myself to the limits to get their freight to the drop, I shouldn't have to wait 20 minutes or more of my personal free-time for permission to off-duty drive.


Verdict

This has only been the tip of the iceberg of my observations in the brief time with Werner. Despite these details I sense that Werner is a good company to drive for, but it doesn't meet my needs in other areas. I do not have a company driver temperament, and to my knowledge, to succeed in their purchase program I'll need to train. I've already spent most of my time at a previous company training and I have zero interest in revisiting that nightmare. Werner also doesn't allow their independent contractors to pick loads from a load board, which seems to be a key factor in success as an owner/operator. All this being said, I wish Werner drivers safety and success.