Heading To Western Express

Hi all, I have spent the past couple days reading everything that I can about Western Express. I have read the bad on the review sites, and I have read the good here and a couple of reviews on those said sites. The bad seems to carry the theme of "I wasn't getting the miles promised, my pay wasn't what I was promised, the equipment is garbage, the DM's suck.." you know, all the normal stuff. I read the same thing about Prime Inc and C.R. England before going to either of them, and never had problems with either. Although, I do like to run, and I like to maximize my productivity while on duty time, and was willing to take any load given to me, even if it had me running over the weekend, ending with minutes to spare for the day and week. I get the ups and downs, and I get the bad hype from people that didn't make the cut, or found out it wasn't for them.

So, onto what I came here for, info. I have to give a big thank you to everyone on here for the info provided in other posts.

I talked to a recruiter yesterday, and after having some questions answered, I put my application in for a midwest regional positon. Got the call back this morning as I told the recruiter that I was putting my app in, he saw it in there first thing this morning and ran everything and called me to set up orientation. I'm going through the refresher course, and as I understand from the site and the recruiter is that it is 2 days of orientation, 2 days of refresher training, 3 days of securement training, and then teaming with either another refresher student or an instructor based on your skill level. I'm not sure if it is secret or not how many miles you run teaming as it wasn't on the site, so I won't post it here. The recruiter said that it will take 2 to 3 weeks to complete the teaming portion, but knowing bumps in the road, and waiting on customers, I'm thinking more like 3 to 4 weeks. After that I'm in my own truck and doing midwest regional.

I am scheduled to start orientation the 16th, which will get here quickly as I button things up at home. I would love to run OTR again, but the wife wants to see me at home more often, and understands that I won't make as much money that way. I really don't have any questions to ask as of now, but I'm sure some might come up.

Anyways, my plan is to update once I'm down there and keep my progress updated.

I am sure that Old School will chime in here at one point, he used to run Western Express as a flatbed driver so I am sure he can answer any questions you may have.

I do know that he had a great experience with them and only left because of better pay.

Ernie

I have been thinking of going to the refresher course with them as well . I'm looking into running Flatbed in the NE Region. Can send me a PM on the miles your recruiter told you? I would like to compare it with what mine told me.

Driver 58, your miles will have absolutely no correlation with what any body's recruiter said. I ran flatbed at Western and was the top producer one month. Most of the time I was in the top ten percent. The one thing that detetmines your mileage is your willingness and ability to manage your time efficiently and proficiently.

I recently got a letter from an attorney trying to get me to join a class action lawsuit where he had four former Western drivers claiming the company never even paid them minimum wage while working there. I laughed so hard! Those lazy fools are still trying to get something for nothing.

They are a trucking company that makes money by keeping their drivers rolling. They have no agenda to leave you sitting at a truck stop unless you have given them that agenda by your poor performance. Your work ethic is what brings you the good loads with plenty of miles.

Somehow all the drivers now days seem to think it is the company's responsibility to keep them busy. It is a completely skewed view of the realities of this career.

@ Old School, I was referring to what his recruiter told him as far as the miles being out with a trainer or another refresher student. Also I would like to thank you for all your posts regarding your experiences with Western Express. It really helps to hear positive feedback instead of hearing negative all the time. I used to hear all the bad talk from other drivers when I worked for Swift. To be honest I never had an issue with them, I was home on the day I requested to be home no later than 6pm. I made decent money for a new driver but yet I heard so much negative talk. I guess that's just the way it is.

Driver 58, the way I remember them doing that refresher was a couple days orientation, then maybe three days load securement training. Then they pair you with another refresher driver for about four weeks of team driving.

After that you get your solo truck.

So, I'm at the 2 week mark with Western. Day 1 of orientation was a lot of standing around and waiting as paperwork was getting done and processed, physicals, and people were doing road tests. Since I was in the refresher course, I didn't have to road test day one. Day 2 of orientation was a ton of information, some I already knew, some was about the company and policies and such, and the rest was very informative. Then came the refresher training. Day one was all the info for all the questions everyone had, like pay, how the program works, stuff like that. Then there was an electronic logs class, which was short but packed with information, and very useful to someone who never used them. Finally, the contracts came out to get signed saying that you agree with the terms of the course, the 9 month commitment, and what happens money wise if you leave before the 9 months. I'm not sure what else I can say about the contract in the open, so I will not be posting that. Day 2 of the refresher was getting out on the road to get some time to knock the rust off before road testing, and finally the road test. After passing my road test I got paired with a dry van guy from the refresher course, I'm flatbed, because the van guys pull with full height trucks with double bunks whereas most of the flatbed trucks are midroof with single bunks. Needless to say, if you are in the refresher course, you will do your tem miles pulling dry van. So, anyways, aftergettong paired up, we were assigned a truck and got dispatched out right away. Since I've been out on the road, we have had one day sitting and waiting, one day with dispatch trying to find us an empty trailer, and now we are sitting waiting for the trailer that was supposed to be empty to get unloaded, the place didn't get to it Friday and they don't work weekends. That being said, we are just over 25% done with our team milage already, so it isn't too bad. I didn't know the guy that I got paired with cause he was the class before me and was waiting for a teammate. We do clash a bit, but we get along pretty well. We haven't gotten mad at each other or anything, and there isn't much tension in the truck, but we joke around and share stories when we are both awake, so that helps. We are actually a good pairing because he has a bunch of experience driving, but it was all local, so he didn't know anything about trip planning, and no experience with a Qualcomm. I on the other hand was only on the road for about a year, but was taught trip plannig well enough to teach him, and I know the Qualcomm , so I was able to teach him that too. He gas taught me a few things with backing and driving in the tightest areas I've ever been in. After the team portion, I head back to the yard to do load securement training, then I'm off on my own. I'll be back with another update when I have enough to post on here.

Im looking into going with this company, so was enjoying reading your posts! However, you never posted an update to let us know what happened after the team training! Hoping it went well for you and very hopeful that this is the company for me! :-)

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