My first few months @ Central Reefer (CRSI)
 

Day 0

I just graduated from truck school and have been hired by centralref. I get on the greyhound to attend orientation tomarrow. I am going to post on here about my experiances since I have found it helpfull where others did.

So far I have been impressed with my dealings with central. One example is that after my recruiter finalized my hiring and gave me the list of things to bring to orientation. I then got another call within minutes from salt lake to congradulate me into joining the company and also to go over the items to bring with me again to make sure none where missed and to answer any other questions the recruiter may not have answered for me.

Also while other companies would take a day or two to return my calls no matter who I called at central I always got called back within 30 minutes usually sooner. If I asked a question and they did not know the answer they would find out from someone who did.

Soon we will see if they treat thier current drivers as well as thier soon to be drivers.

--
The Roach

NEWSFLASH
 

You're not "hired" yet. You won't be until you upgrade to solo driver. You probably confused "prehire" with "hire". BOL[/b]

Well I may not be officially 'Hired' until after I go solo, but I will be collecting a paycheck from them starting next week and that is the most important thing to me right now :)

Thank you for the advice though, I do have other stuff lined up already in case central does not work for me.

Day 0.5

If you can afford it I would suggest skipping the greyhound and fly instead, the trip down was... well interesting. We where met at the greyhound station by a very nice lady who drives the Central Ref shuttle. They provide us with free trips to the store and restaurants several times a day for food and goods. The cafeteria here is closed on the weekend. There is an arcade room, movie room, free movies to watch, and vending machines. The dorm's are livable. Larger than the inside of a truck I guess they are concrete and echo's real loud whenever someone closes a door. They contain a chair and a bunk-bed.

Today is an off day, the real stuff starts tomorrow.

Good Luck, Cockroach--I know a guy that used to work for them, he stayed quite some time until until personal problems cost him his job. As far as I know, he was happy there.
You have to get through orientation, DOT physical, and background/employment history checks before they actually hire you.
Good luck, and happy trails.

that dont sound to "liveable" to me, what happened to stoves, micros and showers fridge etc.....ya know, (High class hotels)...lol[/quote]

There are also showers, a microwave, a separate smoking break-room, a store (closed sunday) a kennel, and it looks like they have some dispatchers here in this building.

Did not see a stove or a fridge but I can live without those for 3 days.

Cockroach, I am half ways through their driving school in California so I will probably be seeing ya in a terminal some day soon.

From what I have seen so far, I think we will be happy we started with them. I think we could have done alot worse than Central.

Best of luck to you!!!


Tom

Good luck to y'all... They are Swift's little reefer sister company. I've had a few friends drive for them, and not many stayed terribly long, mostly ended up as owner ops and couldn't make enough to make the truck payment. Other than that, I've not had many dealings with them, but chances are you'll see the inside of more than one Swift terminal as a drop yard/fueling point.

Thanks tndieselgrl....as long as all I do is get fuel and x-change a trailer there, I will be happy. :)

The lease-operators I talked to said that the trucks are actually owned by swift if you follow the paper trail back far enough. There is just as much swift bashing here as anywhere else. Mostly the relationship between the two companies seems to be business with central purchasing equipment/services from swift. The companies so far however seem to be ran separately.

One of the company drivers showed me the inside of his truck, it was more cramped than i would like. I think the kenworth I drove at school had more interior room. However the volvos have lots of storage space.

A few of the drivers here also where telling stories about running illegal. This ranged from haven't got caught yet to got caught and don't do it any more. It is apparent that central will not watch over your shoulder to make sure your HOS is legal. I have not however talked to anyone who was forced or pressured in to running illegal. The ones I talked to simply got greedy and wanted the extra $$$$


One word of advice, the vending machine food is VERY expensive, when the shuttle offers to take you to walmart do it.

Things to bring you should bring but don't really need they do not mention: boots, eating utensils, shower shoes, Rain clothes / cold weather clothes (I brought these but allot of ppl showed up without and ended up regretting it.)

Central?? Anywhere Else??
 

What to bring??

No joke, there are two absolute must have's:

Toilet Paper; you never know, and just when you need it, (and sooner or later it will happen!!) the term S.O.L. takes on a whole new meaning!!

Ear Plugs; Get a big jar of them!! THey aren't expensive. At some point, you are going to encounter someone who sounds like he's about to blast into orbit!! They really can make a difference between a decent night's sleep, or a night spent tossing and turning, knowing that you have a long, demanding day ahead of you!!

One other thing??

If you wear glasses, (like I do!) then get a little eyeglass screw driver kit, and a magnifying glass!!

Good Luck at Central, always remember: :idea: GET OUT AND LOOK!!!

Peace,
Useless

Jerry Moyes niece is CEO of Central Ref.

Yup, I learned this at lunch today.

BTW, Orientation is paid , but you don't get paid until 2 weeks later, but you can take an advance of $100 from your first paycheck which is how much they say you make that week for the days you are in orientation.... weird

ALSO something the recruiter won't tell you! $40 (if i remember right) per paycheck is deducted from your pay until they have $280, you will get this back when you quit. If you quit or are fired before 6 months the cost of your physical (if you have one done) and your drug test are deducted from this. Also the cost of the load bars will be deducted if not returned.

Also do not lie on your resume. 9 people got sent home today because they did not report something on their resume and it showed up on the background check. They ask you about this stuff 4 times (two interviews and 2 resumes) and give you plenty of opportunity to fess-up. Oh yeah you have to fill out the entire resume again after you get to orientation. The first day is all paper work, drug screens, physical, and the 'workwell' test. They do not pay for meals monday, only on tuesday and wednesday.

Everyone worries about the physical workwell test but it is easy. Everyone passed.

Heh, after lunch I found out this is wrong (Thats what I get for believing another drivers tales) unless Jerrys, niece is named Jon and the guy I met in the CEO's office was an imposter. I think the niece may just be majority stock holder or head of the board of directors. The CEO is Jon. I met him today. We got to see the operations room at the end of orientation it was pretty cool. As a driver at central you can walk into anyones office and talk to them including the dispatchers, load planners, regional sales people and the CEO.

For Experienced solo drivers and 'trainees' the official hire date is wednesday if you start on monday.

Thanks for the info Cockroach. Since I am in California I doubt if I will get to meet the CEO anytime soon...LOL

OTOH, if we dont get some DMV testing dates soon, we might be heading to Salt Lake City to take our tests there.

so what do u put on the resume if they want ten years of verified work an uve only been working for 3 years cuz u were in school, do they count school?

I know Central Ref.Is the old "DICK SIMON Trucking" Do they run much east coast? Or mostly west coast? 8) I'm from the northeast.

School does not count as work. There is a separate place on the application for the school info. If you call the recruiting dept. they can answer any questions you have. 800-727-5865

In the war room they have maps that show where all the loads are. They are in every single one of the 48 states pretty much. There was allot of stuff going into florida but it changes everyday. You could probably expect to run more freight on the east coast because that is where the majority of the US population is hence more freight.

That sounds resonable to me.I wonder if they have a regional board?

Day 3:

Orientation is over!

I am officially hired and (more importantly) pay-rolled

I have a stack of papers 2 inches thick and will meet my trainer in 2 hours. I will be driving a kenworth :( for my training on a dedicated coors run. I also met my fleet manager who is pretty cool. It was really cool to see a driver call in with something and watch as my dispatcher went to the right people and found out what was going on and got the issue resolved right away.

One of the other drivers husband got injured on the job and they will not let him ride along as a passenger, the wife got into an argument over this with the person she was dealing with and that person yelled at and talked down to the driver. The driver went and talked to someone else and the first person got disciplined for inappropriate behavior.

All the people we talked to really emphasized safety and gave us direct extensions to talk to them if we had issues with something. This is really different from the last place I worked that claimed to be open door but didn't want to deal with you. There is a huge feeling here that if I need to talk to someone about something I really can go right to them. Many of the different departments have a macro on the qualcom where you can send a message right to them and it does not have to be relayed through the dispatcher. All of the people I have worked with have been awesome so far.

--
Cockroach

Congratulations!! I have been following your posts about Central Ref. They are on my list as a company I am looking into. So far sounds like a good situation. I hope you are able to continue some post as you go out with your trainer.

BOL to you

Best of luck to ya Cockroach.Stay safe.

I am out on the road now. My trainer is an owner op. We are running pretty hard, there is a load of coors down to florida the dispatcher could not get any one to take so we are doing it for him as a favor. We are running hard to try to make it on time and to beat the hurricane. His dispatcher will do almost anything for him but he has to do stuff like this for him every once in a while. If all you do is bitch about crappy loads to your dispatcher thats all your gunna get basically, they are going to give the good stuff to the drivers who take care of them. Since we are doing 10/10 team right now to get this load down to florida we don't have time for much one on one training. My trainer says after this load is done we will have more time for that.

I am trying to get used to the 8 speed since I am training in the kenworth w9 w/ 8spd and we had straight 10 freightliners in school.

An interesting note about central is they pay their lease operators less money per mile when they have a student while the company drivers get paid extra to take a student. hmmm. My trainer says he takes students because it gets lonely driving alone, and that he doesn't get that many more miles out of it to make up for the pay decrease.

:shock: I hope you guys can beat the storm.And working with your dispatcher as a team will most times work out in your favor.

(vent)Today I started out in kingdom MO at noon, and hit St. Louse around 2 (log time, MDT) while there the traffic got thick. I had cars on both sides of me and a car decided to pull about 30 feet in front of me from the right to cut over to the left, but there is a car to his left and he can't make a second lane change so he slams on his brakes. mean while to the right its branching off into an exit and a minivan pulls up into that painted off area between the lanes. As I am doing every thing I can to bring my 78633 pound truck to a stop the minivan starts to pull in to the RAPIDLY closing spot between me and this idiot car. now this stupid car has NO cars infront of him, he is just trying to get over into the left lane because its faster. My truck is slowing down but not fast enough so I pull on my horn and the minivan darts back over into the painted offf area and comes to a complete stop. Good riddance to him now I have a little more room. anyways this guy going 25 on the freeway never did get the idea that if a truck just a few feet behind him is going 50 he should move out of the way, but I got my truck down to about 20 two feet from his bumper before he moved over to the left lane and took off. Now I am doing 20 mph going up hill in packed freeway traffic thats going 70 around me! Grrrr (/vent) and yeah I had lots of room in front of me before this guy pulled out in front of me. Also later on between cities another car came and got infront of me then slowed way down before taking off and this time I was going up an even steeper hill, He got me down to 40 (in a 70) but I couldn't find the gear right away so I dropped down to 15 fast, got a few comments over the cb, but its hard to get a fully loaded truck moving again. It took me a good 2 1/2 miles to get back up to speed.

hehe other than that my day went great. got to deal with lots of traffic in town in rush hour in 3 major cities, talk about trial by fire. I think I am getting the hang of the 8 spd transmission. I still don't know where the points are like I did for the 10 but I figured out how to find a gear/rpm by listening to the sound the transmission and the engine are making. That is working for me pretty well.

Also my trainer was sleeping and I went to wake him up because it was his turn to drive so I pulled off into a truck stop.. only it wasn't a truck stop it was a small car/garbage truck type diesel station and fast-food joints with signs that looked like a truck stop that was on a dead end street and had no room at all in the parking lot for a 53 foot trailer. So I had to do a U turn pushing my trailer way up into an empty lot because the street wasn't big enough to turn around. This was in georgia and I couldn't see the station from the road because of all the trees.

Yeah!
Fall for that line of thinking right away!!
I'm sure they are "needing" that Coors in FLA!
Training is training!
Running to get the miles is dollar signs!
Believe what you want from your owner/op trainer!
He's there for the $$$$!!!! :wink:

In time we will see... I will keep yall updated.

Coors. The official beer of the NFL and hurricane parties :D

keep us updated, im goin down to the TA in ontario on monday to pick up a cb for my pops, then stopping by there terminal in fontana. do u think theyll give me a walk around an a look at there equipment if i ask?

I disagree with the running full speed during training. If my trainer is sleeping while I am driving then how is he training me?

I am hoping for a trainer who will actually talk to me while I am driving.

That is what he is getting the team pay for, not to run up the miles so he can make more money while I am in training pay status.

well, if your planning on being a trainee with most of the big outfits, CSI, swift etc, you got another thing coming, cause while your training on that truck, your revenue to them and yes, your trainer will be a sleeping while your navigating. i dont agree with it, but i have seen it.

He dropped the beer off while i was asleep then took me to a pilot and bought me a hot breakfast to thank me for doing that hard run (And it was GOOD) now we are heading to memphis to pick up more beer but don't need to be there until monday. He rode shotgun to me almost all day (besides a short nap) after I drove for 8 hours we did some backing and downshifting practice and now we are taking a 17 hour break.

Today was very uneventful. No 4 wheelers tried to kill me!! :D :D :D

Cockroach; Are you driving for Millis Transfer? There Beer Haulers.

No, I am driving for Central Refrigerated Services Inc., and am currently on a dedicated coors account.

I guess I had a brain Cramp Cockroach. :roll: You said that, Duh! :shock:

I don't know, but I would ask a driver first. if you asked me I would let you look. When I was a new newb the drivers who just got upgraded new trucks were eager to show them off to anyone who would look. since they hire like 100 or so new drivers a month It shouldn't be to hard to find one.

Cockroach; How many trucks are Central running now?

Its around 1400 and they want to be near 2000 by next Summer.