Werner Enterprises Werner cares? Great slogan with nothing behind it Dallas Texas

My experience with Werner started with 4 MONTHS of "training" to get my 275 hours behind the wheel in. Seems that my trainer and his dispatcher were in some sort of pissing contest... so we'd make a run to Laredo then sit there for two days "waiting for a load". Finally get something... head to Houston then sit there for two more days "waiting for a load" we were told. This game was played so my trainer couldn't go home due to lack of trips and miles.... BUT he didn't give a rats a*s about trips and miles so come Friday night or Saturday he'd put me in a motel and head for the house not to be seen again until the following Monday or Tuesday!

That delightful experience finally over (all the while netting less than $40 a week pay) I start driving NetOps. Normal run was Dallas to Prescott Arkansas or sometimes Oklahoma city or Buda Texas... no big deal. Usually a straight run but now and then a pickup or delivery... but hey... that's what we get paid to do.

The folks coming to Prescott from Memphis run out of a shithole little lot with no facilities at all. 80% of the time the trailers they pulled down had electrical problems. No big deal for them since they ran in daylight... but my end of the trip ended in the dark. So while they were rolling back home I was stuck at the local T/A waiting the them and road breakdown to get the lighting issues resolved.. all the while my 14 is ticking down and I'm in a daycab. Average screwing for miles on the Dallas to Prescott run was 40 miles short round trip. Add it up over a year and you donated enough miles to drive coast to coast and back once.

Got tired of that after the loss of a great partner who slip seated the same truck with me.... so I went SW Regional. Supposed to drive Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas... Supposed to. My first dispatcher did a pretty darn good job of keeping me where I'd signed up to drive. If his butt was in a crack and he needed someone to drift out a state or two I really didn't mind. Angelo got me home for both Saturday and Sunday well over 90% of the time so no real bitches. Then he moved up the food chain and a bottom feeder took his place.

His first message to me was b****hing that I was spending far too much time at home! Nice way to start a relationship, huh? Next I discover that the SW regional territory now includes Ohio, Illinois (with LOTS of Chicago), Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska.

Being a Regional driver with Werner means that decreasing sliding pay scale so the farther you drive the less you get paid. Almost all of my runs were at the lowest possible pay rate now. At a terminal I picked up the info sheet on the Per Diem pay program... even watched the video.... looked and sounded like a good deal! So I sign up to give it a shot and discover that they left out two minor little points which, had they mentioned them, would have made me never sign up.

Point one.... if you take Per Diem they cut your mileage pay to .12 CPM line haul and .02 CPM deadhead! Point two.... if you sign up you CANNOT cancel for a full year! SO! I'm never home and my pay takes a nose dive because of inaccurate information about their Per Diem Program! Wonderful! Combine that with the fact that I can't get mechaincal issues with the truck fixed and I'm not a happy camper.

While spending yet another 34 hour reset in some crappy truck stop rather than at home I fire up the laptop and start the ol' job search. (Gotta love mobile computing!) Did all the stuff on line... got another job... and the next time wheels hit the Dallas Terminal I droped the keys off and said Bye-Bye to the Big Blue Screw.

Speaking of other jobs.... Don't waste your time with Cardinal Logistics either. They routinely run you well past your 14 like it's no big deal. My last trip for them had me driving from Arlington, Texas to McAllen. Make 2 deliveries there then 2 in Weslaco, drive on down to Brownsville for a delivery there, back up to Harlingen for another delivery before heading back to Weslaco for a backhaul pickup! Mind you they expected this to all be done in less than 14 hours! OH! The trip schedule... shows your start and end city as San Antonio....NOT Arlington! To "correct" this all they do is white out S.A. and write in Arlington.

They make NO other adjustments for either time or miles. I had been driving for just shy of 18 hours when I got to the last store. Couldn't make the delivery because it was too late for them... So I delivered first thing the next morning after having bumped their dock the night prior. Emptied out the trailer.... spent 6 hours waiting at a produce company for a load of onions... then drove all the way back to Arlington... for another 16 hour day. Got fired for missing that last delivery!!! I wouldn't send Bill Clinton to work for those guys.

Pete387joe
Dallas, Texas
U.S.A.

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