Quiting CR England

I'm not going to bore you with all the bad with England as most of you already know. I completed phase 1 and upgraded to phase 2 (company driver) I have yet to go out on phase 2 because of my experience in phase 1 and doing my upgrade. I have been off the road for about 4 weeks now thinking of quiting England as they abuse there new students and get as many miles out of you with no regards to safety or training. I am 63 years old and have had experience back in 2000 and held a class A for 12 years while working for a water utility. I know I will owe England for the schooling unless I complete my 6 month commitment (veteran), I just look at these other companies like Marten and Pride and see the things they offer and it is a temptation to go with them. Any Ideas?

Ed, why do you say they're not concerned with safety? Do you really a feel one of the largest, most successful carriers in the nation got to where they are by being reckless and stupid? They train thousands of drivers every year, and have for decades. Though you're going to find some individuals that are not very good trainers, the idea that England doesn't care about safety is simply absurd.

If you've had a CDL for that long and you've driven professionally for years, what exactly is the problem you're having?

What is this experience you had in 2000?

And what is it that Marten and Pride offer that's so incredible?

Explain to us what has happened so far and how it's different from your expectations. Because the number one cause of people feeling the way you do is that the training isn't done the way you expect it to be done, so you automatically assume you're with a bad company. We hear this kind of stuff 7 days a week, and giving people the right expectations before they start their training is one of the most important things we focus on.

The second most important thing we focus on is instilling an approach of commitment and perseverance. These first few months are super stressful and overwhelming at times for everyone. You have to push through that. You should be focusing on getting to that one year mark with your first company, not looking around at other companies within a few short weeks of signing a contract with someone else! Come on, man! You're 63 years old. You've been around. Is that how you've found success in other areas of your life in the past? You make agreements and then immediately start looking for greener pastures? Were you checking out the other ladies at the reception on your wedding night?

Geesh.

Finally, let me say this. You're listening to what we refer to as the Terminal Rats. You've already heard you're at a "bad company" and that there are better companies out there and you're falling for it, like most people do. Listen to this podcast and see if it resonates with you:

Episode 10: Terminal Rats Are Derailing Trucking Careers

Ed, I'm curious...

Eight months ago you were complaining to us about how you were unhappy with the "sloppy shifter" in the truck you were training in at Swift.

What happened at Swift?

Yep, what Brett and OS said. England has opportunities, miles and a culture of safety. Sure, it's a training company for those entering the industry and that's a good thing. Heck, it's a great way to learn, earn money, experience OTR , drive nice equipment and get your truckin' legs. It's puzzling to me why 2 people going through the same process experience entirely opposite outcomes.

What most of us know already? Are you trying to establish consensus? You'll be very surprised at "what" we know and how strikingly opposed it is to your opinion.

Ed,...funny thing about trucking; there is a high degree of commonality between all of the largest carriers. They all do basically the same thing using the same tools. They all have similar process, similar training approaches, similar management, similar customers, similar rules, similar (new) equipment, a highly focused safety culture and a whole lot of freight in their systems. And they are all really good at what they do, regardless of your claims. You have experience? ...incredible how similar your grievance compares to a green-horn rookie, fresh off the school's practice yard with unrealistic, lofty expectations.

All that I see from your post is full accountability toward CRE and asking the forum for empathy with very little information. What really happened? What about Ed? How do you factor into all of this? We constantly reinforce the notion; good drivers can be top performers no matter what name is on the side of their truck. The carriers are just an enabler for our success, the rest is absolutely up to each individual driver to perform to the best of their ability.

And what is it that Marten and Pride offer that's so incredible?

Well I can say as a "current" employee of Pride that it is a decent company, I can't compare to Marten, nor cr england as I have not worked for them. I will admit Pride has it's share of negatives but far less than my previous company. Here's one good thing in particular: Pride takes pride in their trucks, we have a working truck wash at our terminal plus an account with blue beacon. they also expect us to get our trucks into shop at least 2x a month for PM service and our shop is open 24/7 so unless it needs one of our truck specific (aka freightliner guy) guys to work on it it's usually taken care of in a couple hours. When I was with Knight a simple PM could be an all day thing if you were lucky and assumed they actually did the pm. I know brett prefers the major carriers based on one of his blog posts but I prefer smaller ones and Pride only has around 500 drivers.

those are just a couple things that make Pride awesome, but to be fair here's a couple negatives as well. #1 we mostly run i80 / western 11. sounds nice and all to some but for me it has gotten boring. we can run all the lower 48 but it's not likely. mostly you'll find yourself on the 80, up in washington, or down in so cal. #2 pay is meh for reefer div. also pay raises are kind of a joke, looking at 10 months min at a time per half cent raise. based on career points, every 10k you get half cent raise but you can only get a max of 1k per month. that's hard to do as it is, I avg around 650-700 a month as it's based on mpg, productivity and being on time. mpg is the hard part because reefer does a lot of heavy loads and our lanes have a lot of hills and mountains, plus summer temps are not taken into acct for mpg requirement. productivity should be easy but quite often things i cant control lower it, such as not being able to deliver a load till a day later than needed, or pick up till the next evening (having delivered in same time the prior day morning)... stuff like that makes it difficult. so yeah pride has it's negatives too but it's still a good company.

Pride only has around 500 drivers.

Only??? That's a big carrier. It definitely puts them way up into the upper 1% of largest carriers in the nation. 93% of all trucking companies in the nation have fewer than 20 trucks.

I do indeed prefer the major carriers but I'm not just talking about the top 5 or 10. I would say anything above about 250 trucks is pretty major. That's a lot of trucks. You have to do a whole lot of things right for a long time to get to that size.

Pride only has around 500 drivers.

Only??? That's a big carrier. It definitely puts them way up into the upper 1% of largest carriers in the nation. 93% of all trucking companies in the nation have fewer than 20 trucks.

I do indeed prefer the major carriers but I'm not just talking about the top 5 or 10. I would say anything above about 250 trucks is pretty major. That's a lot of trucks. You have to do a whole lot of things right for a long time to get to that size.

Well when I compare to companies like Knight, swift, CR, etc that have thousands, 500 is fairly small. I was with Knight for my first year, something like 5000 trucks for them and yeah dispatch to driver ratio was much much higher, shop stuff took longer, getting loads from planners took longer... just everything took longer or was not as good. I haven't counted myself but if I was to walk into our terminal where the dispatchers work (on monday because weekend staff is limited) I would probably count at least 20-25 dispatchers... so that's like 1dispatch to every 20 drivers, with knight it was closer to 1 dispatch per 100 drivers, roughly estimated. I never saw more than 5-10 dispatchers per terminal some had less than 5 and I calculated at about 20 terminals to the 5000+ drivers. just some fun morning math to get your day started haha. I personally would call Pride a medium carrier. not small but not large... but I would agree Pride is doing something right.... now if I could just get other drivers to stop comparing us to CR england JUST because our owner is related to the englands. he left them a long long time ago and started pride because he didn't like the way cr was doing things. like i said before i don't know much factual about cr because I never worked there but from what I hear.... yeah I can see why he left haha. oh and he still drives.... got himself a real nice Kenworth long nose. ok i'm going off topic so i'm gonna stop here haha.