Complaint Review: Werner Enterprises - Omaha Nebraska

I trained for Werner for over ten years, and for you to say that a team truck mileage is not double the solo drivers is incorrect. When I trained Werner's operations dept always told me "there are 2 drivers in the truck, you can drive that truck 24/7." Several dispatchers told me "my trucks NEVER stop". Oh, and a trainer is NOT on duty every time the trainee is driving. If a trainee was good, I slept, with my duty status on line 2. Anything else and I would catch hell from dispatch because I was out of hours. What was mentioned about the relay truckswas common practice with Werner. What happened to the one driver about losing a 1800 mile run for a 400 mile 2 day trip was common to me. Oh and then dispatch would get on me for my miles being low.

Steve, we worked at Werner. Werner has electronic logs. Even if we had wanted to cheat on our logs (which we didn't and don't), we could not have. Thanks for your suggestions on acquiring our own authority. We are currently in the process with help from OOIDA, our accountant, and our lawyer. As you seem to know, getting your authority only makes you an entity, and it certaintly does not make a successful business. We're doing it right this time. We have the experience, the drive, the knowledge, and the passion. And yes, Werner is one of the lowest paying companies out there and no one has to take our words for it: Go look at their website and any five others. You'll see the differences. Make an informed decision and you won't be here one day making complaints. Complaints are not the exclusive millieu of truck drivers. Human nature is the mitigating factor, not where you lay your hands to work. And that is that. I have nothing more to impart. My points have been made, perhaps weakly, but just so as I am not in the business of debate.

Steve, we worked at Werner. Werner has electronic logs. Even if we had wanted to cheat on our logs (which we didn't and don't), we could not have. Thanks for your suggestions on acquiring our own authority. We are currently in the process with help from OOIDA, our accountant, and our lawyer. As you seem to know, getting your authority only makes you an entity, and it certaintly does not make a successful business. We're doing it right this time. We have the experience, the drive, the knowledge, and the passion. And yes, Werner is one of the lowest paying companies out there and no one has to take our words for it: Go look at their website and any five others. You'll see the differences. Make an informed decision and you won't be here one day making complaints. Complaints are not the exclusive millieu of truck drivers. Human nature is the mitigating factor, not where you lay your hands to work. And that is that. I have nothing more to impart. My points have been made, perhaps weakly, but just so as I am not in the business of debate.

With all of those years of experience and ability to finance trucks, etc.. Get your own authority. You will put more money in your pocket and you will only have yourself to blame for failure. And, you will truly be an OWNER OPERATOR. Getting your own authority is simple, and you can start off by leasing a new truck through Penske, or the like. You can book your own loads through brokers online and make more per mile than those bogus rates from Werner. Werner is the lowest paying company in the industry. There. No more complaints.....Oh, I forgot..I am talking about truck drivers here!

James, and Yvonne, The original post was not clear that they were providing training to others. The wording seemed to me that they were getting training. In any case, the miles are still too high and CANNOT be done LEGALLY. Notice that LEGALLY is the operative word here. If you CHOSE to run illegally, that was your CHOICE and your downfall. And a TRUE owner-operator NEVER has to deal with forced dispatch. A true owner operator books and bills their own loads. You see I was a manager for a trucking company, as well as a driver. I performed all of my management duties from the truck while out on the road. I ran 48 and Canada and was out sometimes 2-3 months at a time. A solo driver cannot legally average 4000 miles a week. You simply run out of LEGAL hours. It is simple math! The number of days in the week is irrelevant. You can only be on duty 70 hours a week, and the very most legal driving hours you will ever see out of that 70 hour week is 60 hours. And that is unlikely, as fuel stops, loading and unloading, pretrips, post-trips, etc. are all on duty time. It is realistic to only get 50-54 actual LEGAL driving hours per week. And, as per the DOT anyone averaging more than 58mph is most likely in violation of HOS. So, take your 54 LEGAL driving hours in a week and multiply that by the DOT accepted average of 58 MPH. That equals only 3132 LEGAL average miles per week. And if you are doing a lot of east coast or New England states that average mph goes down to 45mph. ANY solo driver averaging more than 3500 miles per week IS running illegally. Thats a fact. The math does not lie. FYI...Team mileage is NOT double solo mileage. A team runs about 75% more miles than a solo driver, legally. A team cannot run more than 6500 mles per week ongoing average. You might pull it off if you are running the southwest in 75mph areas. A team with 7000 miles per week or more average is running illegally. Guaranteed. Did you know that you cannot legally log off duty time in your truck? There is a FMCSA determination on this. This means that when you are out of hours, you must restart while being out of "control and custody" of your truck. This means LEGALLY you need to be home or in a motel room. And a note on training. This is straight from the FMCSA determinations also. A driver trainer is ON DUTY anytime the TRAINEE is driving. A trainee situation does not give you team miles. It reduces you available on duty and driving time. Therefore, a training truck getting more than 5000-5500 miles per week is running illegally. Did you notice that all of my post was based on LEGAL operation? This is the key word here. Some drivers do not understand this concept.

Unfortunately I cannot post on this site my email address because I would love to prove the miles we drove and how much money we didn't make. Technically, no, we were not owner operators (more along the lines of a contract operator), not in the purest sense of the phrase, because we didn't run under our own authority. However, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck- then it is a duck. Who was paying the fuel bill, the taxes, the insurance, the workers comp, the truck payments (which by the way were not financed through Werner but one through American Express Financial and the second through Wells Fargo), the repair bills, the escrow, the QualComm, and the other incidental expenses? Was it Werner? Ahh, NO. We are not some new people in the industry unaware of how to do business, and while you may enjoy mincing phrases and nitpicking words for the edification of your ego, we do not fall within that mien. Do your math again and figure it our correctly this time. Perhaps you have a job where you go home everyday and are home on weekends. We do not. We are running a business and this is our career. This is not a JOB, and it is not just WORK. One truck under a good dispatcher, with a team, can easily run 5800 miles a week. That's only 828 miles a day. We don't take off for the weekend. A work week is seven days not five. Get it straight before you try to cloud a legitimate complaint, because right now the only thing you are clouding is my breathing air.

Steve, If you competely read "Y" posting, you will see that they were running a training truck. When I was training with Werner, 4000 miles was a slow week.

Steve, If you competely read "Y" posting, you will see that they were running a training truck. When I was training with Werner, 4000 miles was a slow week.

"Y", First of all, you were not an owner operator. You were a lease driver. An owner operator is just that. A person who operates a truck they own, as they see fit and do not take orders from anyone. A true owner operator has their own authority. Even if you own your own truck, and run it under someone elses authority, you ARE NOT legally an owner operator. You are a lease driver. The fact that Werner reported you to DAC, created an employee-employer relationship. You need to get IRS form SS-8 [Determination of Worker Status] and fill it out and send it in. This will build a foundation for other complaints, and get them under the microscope of the IRS. Furthermore, unless a truck is being run as a team operation, it is totally imposible and illegal to run a truck 4500-5000 miles per week. You can only run 70 hours a week, which means actual driving time can only be 60 hours a week to allow for fuel stops, pre-trips, post trips, loading and unloading, etc. So lets break it down even at 4500 miles a week divided by 60 hours a week actual driving time. That means your truck travelled 75mph without ever stopping or slowing down. This average alone will get you busted. You cannot physically do it. Even under the old rule you can only drive 10 hours a day and be on duty for 15. At this rate you run out of legal hours in less than 5 days, so the most you can really drive is only 50 hours out of your legal 70 before you restart. So at 4500 miles a week divided by 50 hours driving a week means you would have to AVERAGE 900 miles a day! This is physically impossible and very illegal. Your story does not add up. It is physically impossible. Even on team operation, it would be difficult.

I was an O/O with Werner also. I never got paid for legal route miles, only shortest route miles. In one year, I calculated that I lost over $10,000.00 because of their practice of paying the drivers the miles that we could not legally drive. I brought this up on many occasions and was told "That is how we pay!" One a few occasions, I picked up frieght in Fort Meyers, Fl that was going to Laredo, Tx. I was given the paid miles over the qualcomm and when I recieved the BOL from the customer, the miles the customer was quoted were more than what I was to get paid for. Also on the same BOL, the customer put down the rate in which they were being charged for the fuel surcharge. When I looked at what they were getting charge and then what I was getting paid, I almost fell out of the truck. I was taking a 30% hit on the fuel surcharge, even though I was the one paying for the fuel. Again, I brought this up to the O/O department and was told "That is what we charge the customer, but not all of them pay it!". Excuse me!, how does that become my problem? If the customer doesn't pay, don't take the load. It is bad enough that I wasn't being paid the correct miles, but to also not recieve 100% of the fuel surcharge is criminal! Another instance were Werner really rips off O/O's is when they decide to swap the load with another driver. I cannot count the number of times that I was given a really nice load that I could legally make ontime, only to swap with one of their relay drivers,who only gets paid $0.22/mi, to be given a short (>300mi) load that didn't deliver until 2 days from p/u time, and go into a high fuel cost area to boot. Or, there is always the classic swap that would make me back track 200 miles, and then, won't get paid for the extra miles. I called the "Fleet Manager" several times on that one without any success. However, the coup de gras has to be that Werner has now black balled me and has placed on my DAC report that I refused to take a drug screen. No one informed me that I needed to take a random drug screen, but one of the terminal mangers came to my truck and screamed at me that I refused to take a drug screen. When I told him that nobody told me, he said yes "they" did inform me and terminated me on the spot. I have talked to the head of DOT in Washington, D.C. and he investigated my claim by sending one of his staff to Werner, however, Werner has gotten their key people to lie to the government about what transpired. In order for me to go back to driving I have had to pay a SAP referral service $500.00 and go through 12 hours of SAP education at $40 an hour and 12 AA/NA meetings. I have worked for the government most of my adult life and have had to have access to classified information, and now I am being treated like a drug addict.