Complaint Review: Conway Freight

Conway LTL aquired CFI as of Jan 01 2008,in the following year after doing an informal poll i find that most drivers were loosing miles prior to the economy tanking in the last quarter.What find most disturbing was the fact the frequency of Truckload drivers now pulling LTL frieght on truckload trailers,you may ask why is this relivent? MONEY! as we are on 2 differant playing fields when it comes to MONEY!

on avg we make 10 cents less per mile hauling their frieght! and in turn by us hauling more and more of their freight we in turn cause them to llose miles to(seems almost to perfect for Conway) I find this most troubling,on one hand Conway wont even pay us the same rate per mile as a LTL driver and we take his miles! In December of 08 it was announced that conway would layoff employees of which i find numbers exceeding over 1500 by most accounts and yet Not one Conway Truckload employee was laid off?

and this is a division of the parent compny where the CEO(Herb Schmidt) has been in the media(print,internet,etc...)saying how bad it was and truckload was stiffeled by no freight.In the last quarte on everyday our power reports were listing almost every state with double digit extra trucks compared to freight and yet we kept adding new people to empty trucks while our fellow employees over on the LTL side were getting their Pink slips.I suggest you read the editorials from fired employess in the Ann Arbor press about this,no notice layoff,

2 week severence pay and yet they paid 750 million dollars for CFI 10 months prior(which i have read 450 million was debt aquired by CFI) makes you wonder,i mean really wonder where was ther 750 million in a company that is by best bet medium in size to it competitors?That they were so worried about the brand name that they spent untold millions to relabel everything in site(a trailer that is permantly attached to a maintanance shop in laredo tx was painted and relabled!

As a employee of the former CFI and now Conway Truckload I see no improovement ,matter of fact I was so hoping that all operations would be handled by Conway,I find that Truckload trys not to grasp anything a driver needs or awards what they do,,,MONEY!!! Equal Pay for Equal work!,see I remember talking to as many former Conway truckload drivers from the old company that was "merged" in CFI and that was done as a cost cutting move prior to being sold to Conway(ask those Owner Operators about loosing their dedicated lanes and the over 7 cent per mile haircut thay had to take and yet they stiil work for the same company(shell game)

In closing I just want to state the "merger" by my eyes has been a dismal failure,oh maybe not to managment,but to the drivers they try to fool every day,lets see,,,hey herb answer this question for me? A couple of months ago you stood up in front of the monthly safety meeting and said the following"Conway is a great company to work for,,,dont believe me? there is/are 47 drivers waiting on a empty truck".

My question is this,,,if u have 47 extra drivers why do you have a recruiting contest,cause correct me if im wrong,you are paying these drivers hotel rooms while waiting,and once they do get their trucks on their first load the person who recruited them gets a $1000.00.Seems like a whole lot of money to spend just to keep a seat warm and have no frieght to pull,did we ever get are turnover rate below 127%,,just wondering

Marty51
jacksonville, Florida
U.S.A.