Ok lets hear it, The good - bad - and ugly.

Just wondering what everyone thought of them ??

 

What's to be thought?
They are a big company. They have a mixed bag of equipment now.

 

Going here myself. Scheduled for orientation mon.


Gator

 

They were my first attempt at OTR out of school. I was employed with them for 3 weeks, left with rehirable preference. I left because I was not sure trucking was for me, at 51 yoa, I got homesick for my wife and horses...absolutely nothing against CFI. They stress safety as number one issue, even took me to a skid pad for a day at a local college. If I was wanting to dry van I would definately contact Stephanie and set an orientation start date. I feel I learned more in 3 weeks with CFI than I did in my CDL school. They were a great introduction to trucking...

 

I been driving a long time and thought I was up on my equipment. Guess not. They put Solos in KW T600 and Teams in the 660. Whats the Diff in these two trucks anyone know?



gator

 

I'm hearing that most of it is the same, just some changes to the headlights and grille. I may be wrong, but I think I read that somewhere !

 

The 660 isn't all that different from the 600. You've heard a half-accurate version of things, which happens in this business, as I'm sure you've seen. Teams are getting bigger sleepers, to put it as simply as possible. Teams in 660's and solos in 600's will likely be the near-term result, since there are a bunch of 600's with small sleepers and a bunch of 660's with bigger sleepers in the fleet. There are also a bunch of Freightliner Cascadias with the big sleepers, as well as a few leftover Volvos from the old Con-way Truckload.

The fleet going forward will be mixed, maybe permanently, but definitely for a while. It doesn't sound like the Cascadias have been a big hit for some reason. I don't know. Never rode in one. CFI ran Kenworths forever, so the 660's will probably have a decent chance of sticking around for a while. The shop guys like them and the company has a long relationship with Paccar. Now they're ordering International Prostars as well. The later batch of those are supposed to have International's own engine in them, so we'll see how that goes.

As for a given driver getting a given model, it depends on what is on the lot when you get assigned to a truck. Again, they're keeping the big sleepers for teams. So if there is a Cascadia and a T-600 available, you'll get the 600. (As I understand it, the Cascadias are all equipped with big sleepers.) If there are a bunch of 660's and nothing else, you'll get a 660. A guy recently started as a solo and got a T-2000 (old team truck). It would seem obvious and reasonable to me that they are trying to run up the miles on the old CFI trucks and trade them out of the fleet, so any occasional departure from a given protocol shouldn't be too surprising over the next year. Once all of the new white trucks are rotated in though, it will be the big sleeper/small sleeper deal, with both teams and solos running a mix of KW, International, and Freightliner.

 

Does Con-way have any future plans for equiping trucks with an APU ,and what kind of idle policy do they currently enforce ?

 

All newly ordered solo trucks are coming with APU's. Team trucks are not. The theory is that teams don't sit as much so the APU's wouldn't be a good investment on their trucks. As far as I know, none of the current trucks have APU's on them. Mine has a bunk heater but I hardly ever use it. The bunk heater has a thermostat, apparently for cosmetic reasons. The only settings seem to be 'coal furnace' and 'off.' I just run the engine and use the main heater if I need to stay warm, the A/C if I need to stay cool.

I've heard that they came out with an idling policy when Con-way bought the company. I've never seen it. If I need to run the engine, I run the engine. If the temperature is comfortable, I shut it off. That's my personal policy and I've never heard from anyone about it. My MPG is around 6.2 so I guess that's good enough. If I were getting 4mpg, I imagine that I would have heard something about the idling policy by now.

 

Actually just got a call from my recruiter to confirm my room and other travel needs. We spoke about this a little. He stated that Conway over the next year or so will be faiding everthing out but the KW 660 and 600. In the future they will keep there business with KW.
This is good news for me because there is nothing a I hate worse then driving a freight shaker. I have been in a Pete 379 the past 3 years and kinda got spoiled by the ride. With todays economy Im just happy to have a job!! being out 10-14 days is gonna suck, havent had to do that for ten years. But again Im happy to have a job!!!

Gator