Western Express, Just the Best

Good luck to ya!

 

Just read your thrilling account detailing the many horrors and atrocities committed against you by Welfare Express. What a ride, huh?

If you can believe it, I stayed two and a half years with those crooks. Just couldn't take the abuse any longer. By the sound of it, they were far more harsh to you.

Anyhow, consider this the official invite to join us fellow Western Express survivors over on the Trucking Accidents forum. @mjd4277 , @bryan21384 , and myself are regular posters there.

1481 was my beloved tractor while working out of the Fontana yard. She was good. Until Freightliner got a hold of her.

 

While under WE’s employ I had the “pleasure” of operating 2 of their tractors. First one was 2653,which was a 2013 Freightliner Cascadia with the Detroit DD15 and a 10-speed manual. Made my inaugural solo run in it-40,000 pounds of dog food from Lebanon,Tennessee to Indianapolis,on New Year’s Eve 2014/New Year’s Day 2015! The second was 4072,a 2015 Volvo VNL with the Volvo D13 engine and the 12-speed I-Shift automated manual. Both trucks were picked up at Nashville headquarters. However,at that time I worked for them I was based at the Nazareth,Pennsylvania terminal,where we shared the same lot with Venezia. That terminal was later relocated to Bethlehem,where it is to this day.

 

Mind you,even back then Western Express was having issues. Specifically,equipment. Or lack thereof. I had finished my orientation in November that year(2014),was with a trainer in her truck from November until the week before Christmas (back then you spent 3 weeks with a trainer). At that time the company didn’t have enough trucks to go around-I was initially given a midroof Cascadia (normally used in the flatbed division),only to find out that they had already assigned the truck to someone else. So they gave me a Greyhound bus ticket home so I could be home for Christmas and came back to Nashville New Years Eve,which is when I picked up 2653.
At that time,the company was having MAJOR ISSUES with its trailer fleet-most of the trailers were well past their shelf life-pushing 10 to 12 years of age at the time. A lot of those trailers had problems with holes in the floorboards and/or sides,axle hub leaks,ABS lights on(to the point where some drivers would try to unplug the lights),license plates “replaced” with paper or cardboard(don’t EVER do this-that’s GUARANTEED to get you in serious trouble in some jurisdictions)stating “Lost Tag” and tandems that wouldn’t slide because of corrosion and no air getting to the mechanisms-this was especially chronic with trailers acquired from SMX when Western Express bought that company.
The issues were escalating to a point where the company was losing accounts because of trailers being in such poor shape!

Note Western Express’ 1-800 number on the mudflap in the first photo! lol

 

It feels like a Western reunion over here lol, I was there for the calender year of 2010, and they had just bought SMX and integrated all of their terminals into the Western network. The van drivers were always having to wait on trucks then. That's why I went flatbed side. The west coast van drivers were hella happy. They were dispatched out of Fontana. I always thought Western treats the flatbed drivers better. I was initially dispatched out of the Phoenix terminal, which was an old SMX terminal, then switched to Birmingham. In that year I was there, I was in 3 different trucks once I went solo. My trainer had the old Freightliner Columbia that broke down multiple times during the training period lol. I was in 9185, one for those old blue SMX trucks. The international W9400i, that was a really good truck. Then the rear end went out. 9074 was a Peterbilt, also an SMX truck. I got lucky and got in a brand new Cascadia, 1058. Even at that point they had aging equipment. They seem more diligent in keeping up with equipment now though

 

You're gonna last through the BS of the industry man. As much as you've gone through with Western, issues from other companies will be a cakewalk for real. I hate that you've gone through so much but kudos to you for hanging in there

 

When I was there some drivers were still running around in Freightliner Columbias but those were being phased out as the company was try to standardize on Freightliner Cascadia,Volvo and International Prostar models. Now the Prostars had their own set of problems as most of those had the infamous Maxxforce engines,which meant those trucks spent more time in and out of the shop than being on the road. A lot of them were used in the company’s fleece purchase racket. It got so bad to the point where the company had no choice but to replace those models with Cummins engines. Not surprisingly, the company was one of the plaintiffs that filed suit against International (and Navistar as a whole) because of those glorified boat anchors because they realized too late that the engines wouldn’t work properly without SCR(specifically DEF). They(Navistar)thought the DPF alone would scrub the emissions!

Now as far as the SMX trailers, most of those were Utility models,both van and flatbed. And as I described before, the tandems wouldn’t slide on the dry vans, because the sliding mechanisms were so badly corroded and plus the locking pins wouldn’t disengage, and there was no air getting to those mechanisms!

 

Yep. Paper trailer license plates were a thing.

 

It’s more like a therapy session…
Welcome to Western Express Survivors Anonymous!!!
ROTFLMMFAO
Maybe we should start selling t-shirts that say Western Express Survivor or something to that extent!