Profile For Christopher P.

Hello guys.

I am a driver for Roehl Transport. I went through their GYCDL program back in December of 2019. I've done about everything with them from reefer, dry van, flatbed, stepdeck, and curtainside. I've been a lease operator with them since October 2020 and I would say overall it's a decent company.

Congrats on completing your training phase. The over the road training phase can be quite tough for a lot of students. I was lucky to have the same trainer throughout my entire phase with somebody that has been with Roehl for over 9 years and we came just shy of him reaching his 1 million miles before I went solo. But, I've heard the stories from other drivers that didn't have quite the same experience. Lots of trainers now a days here have very minimal experience, most even less than I have. And a lot just want the money and put the student in the driver seat for 11 hours a day but don't really go over much of anything else with them. Once they go solo, they realize how ill-prepared they are and end up quitting sadly.

My best piece of advice is to get to know other drivers and make friends with people here and communicate regularly with them. There's quite a few Roehl Facebook groups you can join that are full of active members as well. And just don't give up. Take your time and worry about improving your skill sets. Driving and backing has almost nothing to do with your success. Proper trip planning and time management matters more than how many times you have to pull up to back into a spot.

Do your due diligence before you start turning those wheels. Your trainer may go over this briefly but they don' really train you properly because it's time consuming and they only care about the money.

Determine what your ETA is and send it in ASAP. Don't accept a load and drive your day out then realize at 6PM you aren't going to make the 8AM appointment in the morning you confirmed before. 9/10 times they are still going to send you anyways knowing that you are late, but if you confirmed beforehand that you would make it, they can't get you detention pay. And if you're late in dry van or reefer, be prepared to sit for hours in a dock if you're late. Please advice that most FMs don't communicate with you very well on these things either. But just so you know, the ETAs sent through the workflow are computer generated. They only factor in driving time and may seem impossible to make. But if it states anything such as "Can arrive as early as:" it's typically a window. Picking up a pre-loaded at a shipper with a "Can arrive as early as 10:00" for example means the shipper agreed to have the load ready by 10:00. Sometimes it's ready way before that and there's no problem arriving earlier than that, other times you'll arrive and it's not ready and you're stuck waiting. Other times they may have no empty trailers to start with and it turns into a live load. Either way, try to get there as soon as you can. For cons, basically the same thing. "Can arrive as early as" typically means it's a window to drop, or first come first serve for live unloads. Most of our drop and hooks at big distribution centers such as Walmart, Lowes, Target, etc. are 24/7 on that date. Determine your ETA and send in a message for your shipper and cons ETA before you start that workflow. Or in the confirmation at least, select "No, I cannot make this load as scheduled." and enter your own ETA. They'll get an alert and correct the ETA. But if you don't do this, skim through it to get rolling, then realize later you aren't making it on time, you're likely not going to get any detention pay and they may take points off your scorecard for being late as well.

The ETT (estimated travel time) on the co-pilot is usually a lot longer than it actually takes to get there if you run at 65mph on interstates most of the route, but I typically add an hour or two just to be safe and calculate my ETA that way. Or taking the miles and dividing by 50 then adding in your 10 hour break generally works as well. I usually assume 10 hours of driving instead of 11 though to give me adequate time to find parking. I typically break my day into 150-200 mile segments. Find a place to stop for my safety checks, bathroom break, and get back on the road. Don't burn yourself out trying to drive 8 hours straight to make a computer generated ETA.

Also read the workflow information. In some instances, they have no location for the cons, especially in flatbed, and will send you routing to the city center of the destination. Don't be like most drivers and not read this and just follow the GPS to the city center of somewhere then realize you're lost and SOL.

Just some advice I thought I'd share with you as it's something that's very important but not gone over with in training. I struggled my first couple months solo and wanted to quit so bad. But then I got the hand of how dispatching works and it's not so bad now. Once you get issued a truck, you will able to join "The Original Roehl Driver's Club" on Facebook if you'd like and introduce yourself. Lots of good people there including quite a few million milers here at Roehl.