I must show this thread to my better half. We departed Crete last June and have never looked back.

She has started training to re-instate her nursing licence, and I have a nice dedicated run that gets me home every night, running from Austin, TX to Carrollton and back 5 days a week.

No more living in truck stops.

We ran into the same problem as many others living in Texas, not being able to get home when needed. Had to fight to get to Florida in November 2006 for the cruise we had booked.

And after the very poor miles we got as a team, we knew it was time to go.

With the changes I was warned were coming, the time was right.

And not having to put up with the Wilmer terminal manager is a big plus..[/quote]

I know the feeling of living in truck stops.

It is strange that so manhy have probs getting home to Texas but Crete does run mostly more northern as most OTR companies do. I talked with a couple of drivers that live in a very frequent travel lane for us and said to them that they must get by the house sometimes and they told me that they never do but see Texas a lot. Weird. I am sure it is like this at any company.

Have heard from almost every teams that the miles sucked. Only met one that was happy.

Yes I was out of wilmer and it took turning in two weeks notice to get a transfer. It is such a shame that so many quit Crete because of that terminal manager. Have heard it has gotten better there as the Asst. manager is now supposed to be the go to person there so that is a plus.

Take care and good luck.

Quick note here. Crete ran out of new trucks and put a number of Crete drivers in Shaffer trucks. Many of these are Crete drivers stuck in ugly blue trucks.

I've also been asked to pull some Shaffer loads in the last two months. Four so far. I pulled refers for over 2 years prior to Crete and it was no big deal to me. One run was 3000+ miles and another was 1500+miles, so I didn't complain.

This is just a repost of my other thread, but it seems to fit here also:

[quote="evertruckerr"]OK, My first full calender year with Crete (Jan-Dec) 2007 has passed and I thought I would show the actual numbers.

Anyone that has spent any time on this forum knows that there are endless opinions , good and bad, about every trucking company. What is often lacking is actual facts.

The intention of the following information is to give just that. Facts without opinions. I would love to see other drivers for all companies do the same, to some extent anyway. Let the other drivers on this board know what kind of money can be made. If people would stop driving for the bottom feeders, the day would come when these companies might have to stop paying slave wages.



The chart below shows the miles for each run of the past year. Please note miles are posted on the day the load was delivered and monthly totals are not adjusted to show partial miles for trips that begin in one month and end in another.




The following will show various breakdowns of the mileage chart above.



Days lost due to Breakdown: 0

Total days of Layover: 0


I was going to post my final paystub also, but it seems the payroll website is acting up today and I can't pull it up. But for now, here an approximate but very close to actual pay information for the year. Please note that my pay increased from 41cpm to 42cpm in September.

My final pay check on 12/27/07 for miles run through 12/21/07 was aprox $61,500.

Final Pay 2007 $61,500.00
Less: First paycheck 2007 for last week of 2006 - 575.23
Add: First paycheck 2008 for last week of 2007
including 1week pd/vac @ $1154 + 1612.59
-------------

Gross pay for 2007 $62,537.36

Some of you will note that if you add 139,453miles by 41cpm that it doesn't come up to 61K+. The additional pay is due to Detention pay, Stop Pay, one referral bonus of $1000 and other various accessorial pay that is more detailed than I care to get into.

There are good companies and bad ones, why work for a bad one?[/quote

evertruckerr, thanks for that. Finally some real information. Granted, it's only one driver for one year, but that's a helluva lot more than I've seen on other drivers/companies.

Only thing I didn't understand was where you had an entry for "current hub" and "beginning hub". What's that?

Actual mileage on the truck at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year. Actual miles the truck moves for the year.

Excellent post showing your numbers there.

I heard that Crete ran out of new trucks because they dont like the new Freightliners and may be looking at something else???

I have a real hard time believing that Crete kept you sitting for 4 straight days. I have never heard of a driver sitting for longer than 24hrs in my 2.5yrs with the company! I suspect that IF this really happened you did something to piss someone off real bad. Even then its hard to believe.

I've sat for up to 6 days in Laredo TX , and then got stuck for 10 days doing shags from portland oregon to Vancouver WA to the tune of 1-2 shags a day at 10miles per trip ,and sitting on the weekend ...This was at Werner not Crete ,But despite Cretes pay scale being 10+ cpm higher than werner I still would beleive Crete is subject to slow freight in certain lanes just like werner or any other company especially if you're a Solo driver ...You drive for a mega carrier (or claim to) and you don't beleive it possible to be sat for a few days ...That puzzles me :wink:

All I can say is that it has never happened to me here at Crete. I had 1 experience having to sit for 24hrs in Birmingham due to lack of freight but never 4 days. Crete has deadheaded me over 500 miles (paid) to get to an area with better freight. Hell, I never had to wait for more than 24hrs when I was with Swift years ago.

Laredo seems to be an exception to the rule. I have talked to many drivers with numerous companies who have experienced long layovers in that sh*t hole. Never been there myself.