Roehl Training: Phase 3 (solo)

Try CFI, with your honesty about what happened they may take you. If they do, they will send you out for 21 days with a finisher. Then you upgrade to your own truck. I do not know much about our new Temperature Controlled division. We are growing.

Good luck.

Thank you very much, my good friends, for your support and kind words. Ultimately, it is the only thing that matters in this life! I felt strangely relieved soon after they told me to go home. I am glad that our ways parted. Maybe the company is too big, too corporate for me. Nobody even bothered to talk to me in person, I just had two or three calls from safety, and that was enough for them to make a decision. As if they were remotely diagnosing a truck part and decided to replace it :-) I want to look now at smaller local companies which should have more human interaction between drivers and managers.

I’m going to take a shot in the dark here.

Roehl doesn’t have a great deal of activity in the NE region. They have some dedicated freight heading into the northeast and some paper that comes out of Maine.

When I ran for the Kraft fleet a few time I dead head 400 miles back to Winchester VA for my next load OR I’d pick up a brokered load.

Roehl could have seen this as an opportunity to reduce the driver count in the NE and Andrey provided the means unfortunately.

There some other trucking companies that have been advertising heavy for drivers. Pottles out of Maine. Cowan has the contract for the BJs in Uxbridge Ma. And are advertising for OTR.

Andrey...just remember...you didn’t have an accident. You had an incident in a parking lot that was deemed preventable. Most good companies will discern the difference. Also, next time you are in that situation, complete the back before stopping.

Good luck!

Andrey, I have been out for a bit due to some medical issues. I want to say I was shocked when I realized what has transpired with you, but I went through the same kind of problems when I was getting my trucking career started. I actually got sent home from three trucking orientations. I was feeling pretty low and felt like "three strikes and you're out!"

Breaking into a trucking career is not a sprint to the finish. It is a marathon. I have proven that in my experience. It took me months of perseverance to get myself hired on somewhere. After that I never looked back. All the problems I had just getting to the starting gate were in the past. From that moment on I was focused on being the best trucker that ever crossed this great country.

You are obviously a very intelligent man. Neither you or I understand why things like this happen to us, but we can't let them cause us to be bitter or little in our thinking. I know a little how you are feeling by your comments...

I felt strangely relieved soon after they told me to go home. I am glad that our ways parted. Maybe the company is too big, too corporate for me. Nobody even bothered to talk to me in person, I just had two or three calls from safety, and that was enough for them to make a decision. As if they were remotely diagnosing a truck part and decided to replace it :-) I want to look now at smaller local companies which should have more human interaction between drivers and managers.

I just want to warn you about that approach as a rookie. Whether you work for a large trucking company or a small one, there will never be much interaction between you and the managers. You will garner one major relationship. That is between you and your dispatcher. I work for a very large trucking company. There are plenty of people there who know about me, and who know how much I get done for the company. I have been told by my dispatcher that I am highly respected, even by one of the gentlemen who started the company. I have never met this gentleman and probably never will. Yet I am told that he asks about my progress in a weekly conference call with middle management persons.

Small trucking companies can be disastrous. They lack the financial resources of these large corporations. I can tell you that my experience has been that there is a lot more security in working for large trucking operations. There are a lot of reasons for that. I just don't want you to feel soured by one really bad experience you had. I don't understand how this happened to you, just as I never have understood why several companies refused my services at the beginning of my career. I just don't want you to misunderstand why this happened. I honestly don't think it has anything to do with corporate indifference. There is likely a more delicate reason that you and I will never be privy to.

I urge you to keep an open mind in your job search. You may very well find that a large publicly owned trucking company is a better place to work than some small local operation. Don't let this one mishap shape your whole way of thinking. I am including a link to an article that I hope you will read. I wish you the best Andrey! I am full of empathy for your situation. I know you don't know my whole history here, but I assure you that I had a terrible time getting started. I ran into the same sort of road block you have hit, only multiplied by three!

Why Small Trucking Companies Are Often A Disaster Waiting To Happen

Small trucking companies can be disastrous.

Thank you, Old School, I really appreciate your support. Everything you say about small vs large trucking companies makes perfect sense to me. The article is good too. I would be hesitant though to compare trucking with farming so directly. The major difference is on the "receiver" side - consumers of farming products are much more conscious and picky about what they get. I had my own bakery for over ten years, and while I could not even try to compete with any big industrial bakeries, I had customers who would drive long miles to pick a particular type of bread. The pricing is also more complicated, some of my expenses were higher, but a lot o others were much lower. Bottom line, a small bakery cannot make you rich, but can provide for a living and (what is equally important) give you a sense of doing something good. And trucking "consumers" in most cases don't care what is written on a door of a truck.

The main reason for looking at a smaller company is that I don't want to go the same route the second time (definitely not doing it three times). I spent my 21 days on the upper bunk, and I am done with it. And any big company will put me there again. So I'll take my time and at least try to find something with a day cab. Training is good, I just don't want that team driving again...

Andrey;

1.) I LOVE THE NEW AVATAR ... lol.. hindsight IS 20/20, right?

2.) I really think Tim F. is 'spot on.' I read his post about six times, and .. i think he's perhaps CORRECT.

3.) In NO WAY am I going against the grain, nor O/S's wisdom (and power of the pen.. i LOVE that guy!) but, I just want to mention, Don (on here) and my husband, drive for a 'smallish' company, with Day Cabs. The docks aren't too bad, at all, yet much of the work is drop & hook. They haul 'boxes in boxes,' literally. Smuckers, Heinz, Nestle, Campbells, Pepperidge Farms, to name a few. The company is FAB Express; and they have 300 plus power units. COMPANIES LIKE THIS DO EXIST. I found them, by chance, for my husband. We helped on board Don. They don't really 'advertise,' so you 'might' have to 'beat feet.'

4.) I wish you nothing but the best; I for one, think it's a blessing in disguise, yet I'm so sorry this happened to YOU.

5.) KEEP US in the loop, for sure. Kindred and all...ya know?!?!?

~ Anne ~