Complaint Review: CR England

You are correct with with what you said, but C.R. England is the largest refrigerated company in the industry and they are the lowest paying as far as their OTR is concerned. They have drivers with as little as six months experience become trainers... a trainer should at least drive through a winter or two solo before becomming a trainer. Just common sense, or at least it should be.

Yes, if a company trains you, you have to work for them for a specified amount of time to repay the debt, but at C.R. England, being a trainer is the ONLY way to make a decent paycheck. they are the "Wal Mart" of the trucking industry. 25 cents per mile starting pay when all of the other major trucking companies start out in the low to mid 30 cents per mile range.

There are better paying companies out there and ALL companies have good and bad results, so my advice to to do research BEFORE choosing a company to start with.

I personally knew what I was getting into when I signed on with C.R. England and I am using them just as they are using me... UNTIL my contract is up.

Again, the only bad thing that I personally can say about the company is low pay.

Never did I say that Walmart or Anheuser Busch will hire a newbie. there was a question that came up asking about the "best trucking companies".

Honestly it is just like every other business where you have to pay your dues and wait your turn, unless you have some sort of connection to get into a good position.

they call them "super truckers".....people who think they know everything about everything...which ends with somebody being really cocky and messing up big. but it's hard to post facts when you won't take the time to read!!! haha

but i will recap for you....get in the trucking business anyway you can...do your research because we all know that england hasn't done any good for us. pay your dues, work your a*s off and wait for the big "NAME BRAND" companies to consider hiring you.

"NAME BRAND" such as Coca-Cola, any big brewing companies, Walmart, .....

thanks for  your time...

These so called "trainers" at CRE and a few other big companies are in most cases not qualified to train anyone.

Here's why.

You can be a brand new driver with CRE and after 6 months on the job, you can be a trainer!

The company will use you up and throw you away as a trainer.

They pay "trainers" like an extra 6 or 8 cpm bonus for training, some even less than that.

The point is that those trainers are marginally qualified, at best themselves, so how can they be training anyone else.

Oh yeah....I speak from first hand knowledge.

I had a "trainer" one time that could barely shift, and certainly couldn't back up for crap.

I had this rookie training me, whem I had several years of experience and about a half of a million miles OTR 48 & Canada.

I was on the next bus home.

The other scam these trainers pull...again from first hand knowlede...they use you to double their paycheck by falsifying logs to max out the day...Anyway...that's another story...but the trainer was in the bunk sleeping while I was driving...at night...in the woods...in the snow...in Canada..Wow, that was some good training!

Well, after some months of researching different companies and researching the industry as a whole I have come to the conclusion that trucking, among other professions has in general gone to the dogs and I have returned to plumbing, which is what I have been doling for many years.

The pay is still pretty good. I wanted a job where I could make some money and still see some sights, even if most of them was highway and even if you rarely got to stop and take in some of those sights.

I get the feeling that trucking was an indiustry at one time of closely knit people who had respect for each other and really cared about the industry and the way it was regulated. Now it seems to be saturated by mainly idiots who have zero clue in life and want to basically learn trucking to join the circus and run away.

This is not to say that there are tons of truckers out there still holding it down on the real and making a good living and are good people.  But especially in this economy, the comapanies are getting greedier and so the quality of jobs for those at the bottom of the ladder are not as great as they once were.

I still have an immense respect for most truckers and I may, though I doubt, revisit my yearning to be a trucker but I have wanted to retire at 55, in about 8 years and travel.  Being a trucker I guess for me was never really about making oodles of money.  Wife dead and gone, children grown and gone and I have a decent pension built up and savings, it was more for me to travel and make some pocket money. I just don't think I could have weathered the politics in the begining that seemed so prevalent in this industry.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback from most of you, there are a couple up above that seem to have a problem with people's opinions and they chose to lambast me for no other reason than to see themselves be heard, that's ok, there are those type of people in the world and I have mostly ingnored them all of my life.

Good luck to you guys out there and be careful and safe!  See ya

G

Must be a real rookie giving out that advice.

None of the companies listed will hire newbies. Period. No exceptions.

I know for a fact that both Wal-Mart and A. Busch ONLY hire those with a MINIMUM of 5 years consecutive experience. No breaks in employment. You must have 5 years driving experience in the vehicle type of the job that you are applying for, and you must have at least yearson one job, AND you cannot have more than 3 jobs in the past 10 years.

Been there, done that.

I had over a miilion miles experience over 15 years and a clean CDL and neither company would hire me, even with a good reference.

That's why CR England and the like get away with the crap they pull!

Think about it!

I could go on about this subject for days,but I think you need to hire on with these folks and in 6 months come back and rewrite your report.

Good luck and God Bless.

hello, i've met people with success stories with england...the ones making the big bucks in trucking...usually divorced without custody of their kids. you should do fine as a company solo, i was company solo but i had my wife on the truck with me and we couldn't make it with england, but you will do ok alone. if you do decide to go with england then make sure that you stick to going company, recently they have been forcing the lease. i've known people who were kicked out of the program and forced to pay for the school because they didn't want to sign a lease. never rely on the cash advances. keep extra money on you because you have to spend money on the job to make money on the job. and yes get the experience and get out.

to tell you the truth, if it wasn't for me being so immature at the time i would have never chosen england.

you can go through local government programs and they will give you financial aid to go to trucking school, money that you don't have to pay back. england will put you through school to get a class A license with no endorsements. if you go through smaller trucking companies they will get you every endorsement you want and a class A license is worthless unless you have hazmat/doubles&triples/tankers endorsements plus a TWIC card.

now about the best trucking companies...it all differs around what you want..OTR, Regional, Local...a company could be great in one area but might not be as good in another.

but i've heard that great starter companies are Schneider and Werner. and although they might be great, they aren't the best companies out there.

-Walmart

-Conway

-Coca-Cola

-Anheuser Busch

to name a few...but of course the best companies to work for are major brands. but they won't even look at your resume' unless you have a few years of driving under your belt. So yes, you have to pay your dues....but in this business, you pay your dues with a bad company and hope you get a chance in employment with a better company.

I wish you luck, and I hope my words help you out.

CR England is a difficult company to work for, uses new recruits to train others, which is dangerous..I know of some not wanting to report due to fear of loss of work...  can't get home when your told you would ect, but this is a hard industry to work for.... a needed industry for our economy...someone asked for a good company to drive for I would say Gordon Trucking in Fontana CA

Good luck truckers

 

You are an authentic idiot!!!  Tomorrow was the first misspelled word I encountered in your lengthy opinion of the type of people who got screwed at CR England and how things work at CR England.  I also underlined and italicized a handful of  other misspelled words, Mr. Smarty Pants.

Oh and for your campaigning, CR England may cut you some slack and treat you with a little dignity.

You are not the sharpest tool in the shed!

The true measure of a moron is one who actually believes in the BBB!



The BBB is nothing more than an extortion scam, and will give any dues paying member a good rating.

The BBB is a "for profit" business, NOT any sort of genuine consumer protection organization.



Give up now.Because you are clueless.



And...run fast from CRE.

     MANAGUE..... yes you are an idiot! And i  like others be leave with out a doubt that you do have some kind of fetish for Cr England. What makes me sad is you cant find a company to hire you to spew there propaganda.better than those crooks! I have had a  commercial drivers license since may of 1971 or CDL what they changed the name to in 1996.  I have talked to many many drivers that worked for cr england and not 1 had any thing good to say about the crooks!Some of the things you have said sounds so stupid!Get this if a company wants you to pay them to come to work for them BEWARE!! or lease a truck from them BEWARE!! they will put a "TRAINER" with the new sucker in HIS OR HERS lease truck the trainer is to get around the the law on the hours on the log book.The trainer is   a drunk or drug addicted scum bag that no other company  would hire!Why would they want to lease to un experienced drivers?SO they can charge them for everything with that truck, and the driver can not do anything about it except quit then they black ball the driver on his dac report also they put there school cost on your credit report and also they will get the cdl suspended if they can! They work the new driver as long as they can and cheat them the whole time!They are even running ads on tv for suckers because word is getting around about them and its getting harder to find suckers!MANAGUE everyone that reads this knows that you are a lying scum bag also! SO SORRY bud i guess you have to keep living in your Cadillac !!

Gee, I misspelled one word, "tommorow" and suddenly the other thousand words I wrote are invalid?  You're the idiot.  And who I work for is none of your business, but I am definitel NOT a recruiter for CR England.  Everyone on here has their opinion, I am entitled to mine.  Sure, MAYBE companies like CRST and CR England are just driver mills, but for someone who has nothing to lose, then why not. My point was that there has to be some success stories there and I could only surmise that judging by the less than intelligent comments on this thread and others and also how they are written, that most people going into this industry are just knee-jerk idiots who don't do their homework before jumping into something they know nothing about.  Do your research on the trucking industry. I have.  I have read several sites, not just this one and I have read that it is a tough job.  You're just a d**k that needs to get in people's faces for the fact that you probably have no d**k at all.  You're just as unintelligent as most of the idiots on here.  As far as I am concerned, I have said what I wanted to and there is really no need for me to keep defending my thoughts.  So, have a nice life.

 

Initially, I thought.... this idiot can't even spell tomorrow, but he's talking about the grammar of other editors.  As I read through your BS posting, I concluded you are a CR England employee or just over joyed with the fantasy of being treated fair by an unethical company.  Here are some of your idiotic statements:

"When talking with the CRE recruiter on the phone today, she was upfront in telling me the costs and that I wont see my first check for close to a month and to have enough money to get by until then.  So why do I keep reading all these complaints about not getting paid for a month?  Pay attention to what they are telling you.  Read the final print.  Read their website."
*Why would she tell you about how you will run their freight up and down the interstates for months and be paid $100 every Saturday with your Comdata card?


"I figure trucking is the same.  Keep your mouth shut, do the runs they tell you to do and then after a year if it still sucks for you, leave and go someplace else
I figure this job is probably better suited for single people, that are not married, no kids, maybe even gay, really and those who have no car payments or house paments and don't want the typical 9 to 5 in an office and don't care about going home."
*You're an idiot!  Gay/straight, it doesnt matter.  Why would anyone, knowingly, accept employment that won't provide enough income to pay for their necessities? 
 
"I believe some people come into this industry thinking, see the world, visit new places, see America.  In reality, it should be, I am a loner, I don't want a family and want to live on the road."
*Wow!
 
"So I figure you have to go into trucking with your tail between your legs for the first year and say "Yes Sir"  and "No Sir" and brown-nose and kiss the a*s of your DM until you can prove your mettle and after that year, if your company does not recgonize you are an asset, then go somewhere else."
*Sounds like slavery........ You sure do know a lot about this company.

"Again, I believe it can be done.  Just shut your mouth, take every run, even if it's only 3 miles long.  As a dispatcher for many years for a local delivery service, this is how I would test new employees.  If they bitched about the small runs, then when the big ones came, I gave it to the guy that complained the least and let the complainer sit on his a*s until he either "got it" or quit."
* If you truly were a plumber, this attitude is probably why you were not kept and/or considered an asset. 

"I am not dismissing every complaint here, nor am I calling everyone a dummy.  But clearly, if you cannot spell correctly or form an intelligent thought etc, then maybe you should go back to school first before you take on a job that obviously requires more than just sitting behind a wheel and punching in some info on a mapquest and putting your rig on auto pilot.  It's hard work."
*You sure do know a lot about the industry.  How do you know it's hard work,  Mr. Newbie/plumber?
 
"The last thing I want to say, is most trucking companies, if not all, have drive cams in the cabs.  These cameras are on the windshield and not only do they point out, in case there is an accident it can go back in time and see how the accident happened to show liability, but they also point inside so they can to see how you reacted to an accident and what you were doing I think up to 10 seconds before the accident.  So in other words, if you had an accident, this would trip the drive cam to go back in time 10 seconds and see if the fault lay with the rig driver or the automobile etc.  This Drive Cam is also a voice recorder so it can also hear what was happening in the cab before the incident."
*This is how they stay one step ahead of their drivers.  Their drivers don't have a chance to plan an exit once they find out they are being screwed by CR England.
 
"Now here is the kicker about Drive Cam, you don't have to have a major incident for the camera to go off.  At corporate, they can "tweek" the sensitivity of the cam to go off if you even go over a speed bump.  After the driver has proved to be safe for awhile, they re-tweek it to not be so sensitive, they can trust you.  But the biggest thing about these cams is that corporate can dial in to you and see and hear everything that you are doing in the cab of their trucks, and you won't even know it.  Sure this is Big Brother watching, but for liabilty pruposes, they have the right if you are a Company Driver and even a  leasee that hasn't finished paying for their trucks.  So, if I was corporate and wanted to really see how my new employee was doing, I would simply check him out on cam, and if he is sipping beer while driving or riding a w***e in his truck or doing anything wrong or saying anything wrong, I am going to try and get rid of that employee, however I can, either by squeezing him and letting him sit or however.  Most every state is employment at will which means any employer can get rid of you for no reason at all."
*This is how they stay one step ahead of their drivers.  Their drivers don't have a chance to plan an exit once they find out they are being screwed by CR England.

"So, if you are new, shut up, don't say or do stupid things because not only the cam, but that trainer who seems really cool, his job is to rat you out if you do anything unsafe.  And he will try to get your confidence and for you to be at ease because this company REALLY wants to know if, when you are alone with their equipment, with the lives of many around you, if you are going to be able to handle it or if you are going to bring a huge lawsuit to their company.  So think about all this stuff before you jump into something of this magnitude."
*CR England is an unethical company, they are not BBB accredited and consumers watch out for those who claim to not know about Rip-off companies and then they give you lots of information about the company.  They are part of the company they are defending. 

Your writing was barely readable also.  I am not knocking you, personally, but if you want to communicate, do it with intelligence and not by babbling.

You also do not know anything about the plumbing industry in Southern California.  I was making easily, 80 grand  a year until three years ago when the bottom dropped out on the economy, I wasn't laid-off, I was asked by my employer since business sank so bad if I wanted to go on lay off because frankly, I would have gotten more money, so I took it. 

Yes, drains are still getting clogged, but drains are not the only facet of plumbing, but simpletons like you think of only "s**t" and "drains" when they think of plumbing.  There were days where I didn't even see a drain job.  But people are now turning to Craigs List to find unlicensed plumbers to clear their drains for forty dollars and other plumbing work under the table and not calling reputable companies, so the industry loses because of customers who are also feeling the economic pinch are hiring mostly Mexicans off of Craigs List.  I have nothing against Mexicans, that's just the way it is in SOCal right now.

I made very good money as a plumber, but, I refuse to snake someone's drain for 40 bucks because sometimes you are there for three hours trying to snake on a drain, that is common especially in older homes.

My point was with all the bad talk about CRE, there has to be some sucess stories out there, right?  I mean not everyone was "f**ked over" at CRE and what I was saying that judging by the lack of grammar in some of these posts, I can only surmise that perhaps these "newbies" really did not understand what all entailed going into a trucking career.

If a company gets a lot of BBB complaints, the BBB will not accredit them.  I would never work for a plumbing company that was not BBB accredited, so if CRE is still accredited, then I can only think a lot of the complaints were dismissed for having no basis.

My other point was that if you went into a leasing program right off the bat, then that just stupidity on your part.  You know nothing about how this industry works and how to maximize your income but you are willing to throw your family into debt by plunging into something you know nothing about. 

There are tricks to every trade and in plumbing, I know most of them. I got the calls because I didn't turn down an emergency at the end of my shift while others did.  I got choice calls because I didn't b**ch and moan to dispatch that I was too tired to work and just wanted to go home, I sucked it up, made great money and rested and played on my days off.

And you still don't get what I am saying about others having to give us the names of good companies to work for.  I would hope no one is using their real name, but if they had such a bad experience at CRE or elsewhere and left and found a good company, why not tell us who that good company is?  I am not asking for anyone's name or social security number by God and I understand this is mainly a b**ching board, but d**n, help someone out and tell us where we could get a good shake in this industry.  You make no sense dude.  Do you think there was only two people who went to CRE, got f**ked over then went to a good company so you think they will be found out?  Come on man, get real.

I am not going into this business thinking I am going to be rich and happy.  I fully expect to be poor, tired and grumpy for the first couple of years.  I have no wife, dead,  kids grown, everything is paid off even my Cadillac and BMW motorcycle and I have a place to store them because I fully expect to be gone for awhile, If I don't get home for a year, it will not bother me.  I have no attachments of any kind and I thrive on being alone, have been all my life.  So I am going into an industry "blind" and I have no expectations of eating steak and baked potato every day on the road and I don't expect to stop at Mount Rushmore and take pictures or cruise for chicks in Florida during Spring Break. I am in my mid 40's and I can honestly say I've been there, done that and gotten the t-shirt.  What do I have to lose?  CRE may f**k me over, that's ok, I can always come back and do plumbing again and at least make 40k, but as any plumber will ever tell you, plumbing get's tiring after awhile, and many leave and come back to get that break.  This is my break, and if trucking works out, cool, if it doesn't cool again.

Like I told my son, don't get married until your thirty, because hopefully by then, you will be on the right career path and you will "know" who you are and what you want to be.  You're 20's are for "testing" the waters.  Meaning try different jobs and see what you like, partying,  trying different women and see which one you would like to settle and have a family with.  Don't let your d**k make decisions for you.  Same thing with trucking.  Good to start when you are young, but not if you already have a family.  You need to be with your kids to help raise them.  So start trucking early on, so by the time you are 30, you got the experience to work local runs and be home and raise a family.

I read a lot of stuff from people saying "I couldn't even send money home so my family could eat."  Of course, even CRE will tell you your first check isn't coming for a long time and then there will be deductions.  Ask lots of questions, do research, hell, go to a truck stop and talk to truckers, just make sure you are making the right decision for your personal current situation.

WELL DON'T WE JUST KNOW IT ALL! you have it all figured out! Go to work for the crooks and see yea they would hire someone like you quick !You talk about maybe the people are just stupid to begin with don't think so they were smart enough to find and go to work for these thieves they trusted the lairs that's the only mistake they made! You smart off about there reports I could understand them. Also have you driven a 40 ton truck in a big city during rush hour? No i didn't think so. You don't even have a cdl have you smelled to much s**t? whats wrong with you?. You got laid off from unstopping s**t pipes its a" bad economy" don't pipes still get stopped up?  Your boss cut useless unnecessary personnel he answers the phone his self tells the real plumbers what pipes to fix! DON'T need worthless people.AND why don't they tell us the good company's  to work for? because you cant bad mouth one and advertise for another ! think butt head think! if you want to talk s**t do it to these thieves at Cr England and there are others the only thing these reports are for is to try and warn the next person