Comments By Infidel

"If you come in on a high horse, you have a tendency to look down on others, most probably wrongly."

Oh sweet irony....

Infidel, have you checked into Central Oregon? They are a great flat-bed operation that hires form the Western parts of the country. I highly recommend them, and think you should check into them before making a decision.

FYI. I think Roehl runs a great operation, you can't go wrong there. You'll just have to get past your way of thinking that what they are doing is "indentured servitude" - it's far from that. It is only a way for them to try and recoup their training expenses. The average expense for training someone for this job is nearing ten thousand dollars per employee these days.

I'm like you, I have done a lot of things in life, including running my own business for thirty years. Trucking is so different from any other type of business that I have ever been associated with that you just have to throw most of your pre-conceived ideas of how things should be done out the window. Any time I see someone refer to that commitment they are asking for like you did I can usually figure that they came across that idea from some disgruntled (former) truck drivers blabbering their spiel on the internet. Be careful about what you believe or read on line concerning trucking - most of it is questionable at best. We try real hard to combat the erroneous information out there, but it is a never ending battle because there is just so much junk that keeps on reproducing itself on-line because there are a lot of folks who try to break into this industry and fail. Unfortunately those vast numbers of people are constantly blaming their own shortcomings on the trucking industry and the large trucking companies.

Your decision and choice is basically going to boil down to your own personal preference on length of training time and commitment. Swift and/or Roehl will both require something from you, but both places have plenty of opportunities available for you to go into. You stated that you already had your CDL. Do you have a current training certificate, or have you been out of the truck for a while so that you are required to go through some sort of training like a refresher course? The reason I ask is that I'm not sure if Central Oregon has that type of training available.

Thanks OldSchool. And thats why I called it indentured and left off servitude. But the definition fits. And its the best word to get my point across. And Im very cautious about what I read on the internet. I got this as I was reading it in my paperwork pack I have to sign before showing up for orientation. Then I called my recruiter immediately.

I have my CDL already. Got it past October at a local school in North Las Vegas. I went into debt over 4k already to get it. I did this to make sure I was not indebted to a trucking company. So the last thing I want to do is be 7k in the hole if for some reason this doesn't work out. Part of it is also my first experience with trucking. I wasn't sure if I was even going to try it again. But I payed for the CDL so I should at least try it one more time. In case you didn't read it, I wrote the "My nightmare" post a couple weeks back. If you read that it may give you some background to my mindset. Cause if I get a trainer like that again I will be 7k in debt. So I'm just trying my best to make sure that does not happen. Because of that I am now being super picky I guess.

Im not sure were Swift keeps coming from. I have never really considered them. Only cause of the no pet policy. But I was considering Knight. No flatbed it looks like. Or the military apprenticeship program. But also out of Phoenix.

Also thanks for the heads up about Roehl. Did you work for them? Thats the thing. I really dont like that contract (lol just in case you didnt notice). But I keep hearing good stuff about them. Maybe I should just put my fears aside.

Really what it comes down to is whether you want to sign their agreement. They are not changing it for you. You already listed several flatbedders that don't run the west. The only one I didn't see is Western Express. Good luck in your decision making.

Nope I agree I dont think they will. But I will (and have) asked anyway. Thanks for the info on Western Express I will look into them.

Infidel counters:

Wow! Thanks for assuming the worst about my character right off the bat. I find your reply very condescending. You may have been doing this longer, but I assure you I am not some 20 year old kid that doesn't know how the world works.

Infidel, I wrote this for a person who lists less than 20 posts here (meaning rather new to TT, but beyond that I do not know), who uses the classification Company Driver In Training (another "new" indicator). I see you are from Boulder City, where I've been a couple of times to see the BOULDER DAM movie. Beyond that, I do not know if you are 19 or 79 years old or what your past experience is. I am writing for a poster that seems to be a bit worried about committing their (short term) future to paying off their education in a lifetime trade.

For someone who writes "Im still stuck on the longevity contract. I just cant get past it. Been trying to sell myself on it since Thursday.". Seems you can't talk yourself into the commitment for one reason or another.

Did you take a minute to read why? And yeah Im new too trucking. You are selling new people short. Just cause we might be new to this, doesn't mean you are the only one knows about hard work. It seems like you are more inclined to put new drivers down right away (the ones who have doubts about any facet of a company anyway) than actually look at the argument. If you were to read my first reply and my post on this. I feel like I explained my position quite clearly. Yet you continue to mis-characterize my position. So I guess I just cant find a way too communicate with you.

Thanks for your help.

Dude you are so out of line here. Errol has almost 2000 posts, has achieved moderator status, and you state all he does is put new drivers down? You have no idea how many newbies he has helped, none.

Dude he did in fact put me down. Maybe not "put down" per se. But yeah he did sell me short. Dont care if he has 2 million posts. I can only go by what the man has written to me.

My relationship with the DMs, planners and my performance record enable an incredible degree of flexibility and preferred status in my job. That does not occur unless you establish yourself as a "committed" driver with your employer.

Is your commitment to you doing what is best for you and your family. Or is it to the company as a whole? What you are doing is smart by having a good relationship with people you work with you are able to get whats in your best interest. What would the companies commitment to you be if that didn't go so smoothly? From what I hear one accident, even if not your fault can ruin you personally as a driver.

I guess it boils down to this for me. A company is an entity under the law. You are required to do whats in that companies best interest. Particularly if that comapny is publicly traded. Make no mistake! That companies commitment is too its shareholders. Or its owners. It has no commitment to you. If firing you on the spot will save them 5 cents in liability that's what they will do. You as a worker are a means to an end. They have more work then they can handle so they hire people who trade their labor for a benefit (pay, resume enhancer etc..).

If I make a commitment to work for a company for 9 months or a year. Its a conditional commitment. You do for me and I will do for you. I guess this can be seen as a purely somantic argument. But I was trying to steer us away from feeling like these are arbitrary commitments that we as drivers must make. When some one comes here for help and advice and its kinda like 'who cares how ridiculous their rules are and requirements might be, why would you try and get the best deal for your labor? Make a commitment to do it anyway!'. Well that just seems kinda..... dumb.

My commitments are too my family and too myself. Having a good job is a tool to achieving my commitment to them.

Sorry for highjacking the thread.

Infidel counters:

Wow! Thanks for assuming the worst about my character right off the bat. I find your reply very condescending. You may have been doing this longer, but I assure you I am not some 20 year old kid that doesn't know how the world works.

Infidel, I wrote this for a person who lists less than 20 posts here (meaning rather new to TT, but beyond that I do not know), who uses the classification Company Driver In Training (another "new" indicator). I see you are from Boulder City, where I've been a couple of times to see the BOULDER DAM movie. Beyond that, I do not know if you are 19 or 79 years old or what your past experience is. I am writing for a poster that seems to be a bit worried about committing their (short term) future to paying off their education in a lifetime trade.

For someone who writes "Im still stuck on the longevity contract. I just cant get past it. Been trying to sell myself on it since Thursday.". Seems you can't talk yourself into the commitment for one reason or another.

Did you take a minute to read why? And yeah Im new too trucking. You are selling new people short. Just cause we might be new to this, doesn't mean you are the only one knows about hard work. It seems like you are more inclined to put new drivers down right away (the ones who have doubts about any facet of a company anyway) than actually look at the argument. If you were to read my first reply and my post on this. I feel like I explained my position quite clearly. Yet you continue to mis-characterize my position. So I guess I just cant find a way too communicate with you.

Thanks for your help.

I went through Roehls CDL school and have driven for them since November of 2014. My mile commitment is probably complete by now. I really have been too busy to count my miles. I simply don't understand why people have an issue making a commitment to work for 1 year. I know for me, working for Roehl has been real good. People say they micro-manage...I get my load assignment...I drive...I unload at the shipper. Sometimes I take shortcuts on their routing...I fuel where they tell me too. I'm on a dedicated route, so I get home every week, except when I want to stay out to earn an extra day on the weekend. They didn't deduct for their school, they exceeded my cpm expectations and I've done quite well this year. Quite frankly I'm thankful to be employed and with a company that cares about its drivers

Thats encouraging to hear Tim. Thanks! But yeah, if you read above its not about the year.

I already have my CDL. And for orientation and 2 weeks with an OTR trainer they want 75k miles. Im still stuck on the longevity contract. I just cant get past it. Been trying to sell myself on it since Thursday. Cause I still want to work for them.

So what's the problem? "I still want to work for them." In that case don't you want to work for them way past one year? By the time you're "in the groove" most if that 75k will be gone.

And don't try to give me "but I might find a better deal!" (Translation: "There's greener grass out there somewhere.") Yes, there may be. But will you want to change your life for an additional $10 per week? Commitment is what gets things done in the world. Otherwise, you'll just be changing checkout lanes at Kroger because you think that other one is better - you're still at the back of the line.

Wow! Thanks for assuming the worst about my character right off the bat. I find your reply very condescending. You may have been doing this longer, but I assure you I am not some 20 year old kid that doesn't know how the world works.

One of the things I have done in my life is run my own business. So I know that one the most expensive things you have to pay for is training new employees. This is the same in trucking as it is in the entire business world. Trucking is not special in that it has to pay training costs. So what you have to do to keep new employees is to provide incentive's for them. Like pay them more than the competition, or better benefits. You get the idea. You see this now with all the competition for drivers between companies 'We'll do this for you! We'll pay for that for you!' What Roehl has done. Is turned that on its head. Instead of providing incentives, they provide coercion. By signing their contract your indentured to them for 75k miles. I understand why they do it. I'm just uncomfortable with it. But I'm torn because they seem like a good outfit to work for and so it might be worth it.

I started a thread about this in fact https://www.truckingtruth.com/truckers-forum/Topic-11919/Page-1/roehl-longevity-bonus. If you want some of the finer points.

"Commitment is what gets things done in the world." No it isn't. Its work. Work is the basis of all currency in the world. You would work for a company that treated you poorly? Didn't give you miles? Or even had terrible benefits all because you wanted to be "committed". Thats how people get taken advantage of. Im not saying you should find another job every 3 months (Im told this 75k miles would take about 9 months) but I think a year is enough time to find out how committed the company is to me. Its not about the time for me.

I think someone else said on here. Some one who was going/or went through Roehls school. It was 120K miles.

I already have my CDL. And for orientation and 2 weeks with an OTR trainer they want 75k miles. Im still stuck on the longevity contract. I just cant get past it. Been trying to sell myself on it since Thursday. Cause I still want to work for them.

Anyone know of another large flatbed comapny that runs and hires in the west. Seems TMC, Maverick, Melton etc.. do not.

Infidel wrote:

1. Store the data locally. Turn the record option on you cellphone camera or laptop and just set it down. Just too see how long it takes to fill up with data storage. Now hook up an external hard drive. And see how long that takes to fill up with day in day out constant operating. It will not take long at all. It could be done but would have to downloaded regularly. Like everyday

With a Flash Drive it's possible, but not practical. You would need to employ thousands of people to review all of the data. The math alone is staggering.

2. Stream the data off site. How much data do you use on your cellphone plan a month? Try setting you tube up on your smart phone up to continuous play. You will run out of data lightning fast. Unless you have unlimited data. Which (unless you kept one of the oldschool plans) is usually expensive. Now think about all those trucks running all those miles everyday. All continuously streaming data. All this assumes a good signal too. Which as we all know doesnt happen

Although the technology exists to accomplish this, there isn't enough of it available and the money it would cost to upgrade networks, bandwidth, data storage and administrative/presentation software would be totally cost prohibitive, through the roof with no real way of getting the return on investment. And the ROI is the key factor with all of these extreme scenarios.

Remember, our employers need to get a return on the camera investment which significantly limits the amount of their initial spend and on-going cost. This is about accident reduction and monitoring safety. That's it.

Big question is in that case. If it has limited storage (which it does). How long till more critical events overwrite previous recordings? Sorry that last part is just me trying to get out of footage of me maybe going over a (non-painted) speed bump to fast...

My favorite question...almost immediately. The local (in your truck) storage refreshes itself every 20-30 seconds depending on how it is programmed. When the camera system is powered on, and you are moving it continuously records and over-writes data constantly in what's called "real-time", only storing a total of 30 seconds at any given time. It uploads to a monitoring facility whenever an event triggers a sensor, 10 seconds before and 10-20 seconds after. They look at it, if it's nothing they discard the video. If it's something it's sent to your driver manager and in many cases they will likely discard it or if it's something requiring a discussion, they will call you in. That's the extent of it.

Since 2014 I have been talked two twice, once for following too close on I-76, and once for a guy cutting me off. They thought I should have slowed down quicker...which brings me to one other point. Never, never flip-somebody-off if they cut you off, if you broke hard or took evasive action, your gesture will be recorded. So that's a gotcha...being from Philly, flipping someone off is how we greet one another.

We good?

Yeah you did a more formal explanation than what I was trying to get across. I was trying to put it in a way everyone could understand. By taking it too a more personal level. But I wouldn't go so far as to agree with flash drives. I mean I dont know how much data is maximum for a flash drive before we have stop calling it a flash drive. For the amount data you would need to store you would be better to go with external hard drives. I mean if you are talking about saving every second of every day, even of just on duty time. Lets say you make it to a terminal every 2 weeks (just for arguments sake)? Thats a metric butt ton of data. And that costs money.

And I wasnt talking about length of time it holds on to non-critical events. Just the recorded events. With ours it was 20 seconds. 10 seconds before the event and 10 seconds after. Now with my bus. This was years ago. My bus never uploaded too a remote location on its own. Ever. You had to manually take the cord and plug it into a jack and it would download the days events. You almost never got the same bus twice. And they didnt monitor whether you did or didnt download it. Soooo......... just sayin.