My wife and I joined Conway Truckload after 2 years of hearing from their recruiters. We had worked for Conway Now, and was very happy. Conway sold CWNow to Panther, and that's when our troubles started. We were able to take 2 week vacations with CWNow because everything was so good.
As matter of a fact we were on vacation, when our dispatcher called and told us we were sold to Panther. No warning whatsoever! That didn't work out 2 months. We went through 3 companies after that trying to find a similarly good company as CWNow.
When we finally accepted the offer to come back to Conway Truckload, we were finally back with a Conway company. Everything went really good for 10 months. We had dedicated team runs east to west. Conway paid good, and we had layover pay of $75 per day for each of us when we didn't have a load. We spent layovers in motels, paid by Conway a few night per week, and we still averaged over 4500 miles per week. The benefits were exceptional. The dispatchers for the most part were professional. Things were just as Conway Truckload recruiters had promised. Then came the buyout of CFI!
After Conway fired all their home office staff in Memphis, Tn, we were assigned to a CFI dispatcher from *ell named Jaime. She nitpicked us at every turn. President Herb Schmidt promised Conway Truckload drivers in a company conference call that everything would remain the same. We would be able to:
A. Keep our same runs
B. Keep our same pay
C. Keep the same layover situation
Herb Schmidt of CFI is a lyar! That lasted for exactly 2 months. They dropped our pay by 3 cents per mile, the miles dropped, and the long good runs went to the CFI drivers. We figured it was because they were paid 5 cents per mile less then us as a team. Although a lot of Conway drivers were quitting, we were determined that they wouldn't run us off.
Well we were wrong. It got so bad, that we couldn't take it. This was the last straw. They assigned us to a relay of a load with their drivers to be picked up in El Paso going to California. Every load was super hot, so we were always in a big hurry. When they got to the New Mexico border, as it turned out the load was overweight.
The time it took to get that straightened out cause the load to be late. They said it was their policy for the drivers who relayed a load was to weigh it and make sure the weight was right BEFORE transferring it to another team. They wrote us up for the late load!
A few weeks later, we were in the same situation, but we were accepting a load from a CFI team. Since we were written up for giving a load that was over weight (which we weighed it and the load must have shifted) we didn't worry about weighing it since it was super hot. They kept pushing us that if we didnt get it to Mexicali on time, the plant would shut down.
Sure enough, when we got to the first scale on I-8 going into California, it was overweight on the rear, and we had a flat tire. The load was late, so to be able to charge us with something, they said we should have weighed the truck when we picked it up! The exact opposite of what we were written up for weeks earlier.
After we delivered, we told them we wouldn't accept another load, unless we got another dispatcher, since other drivers were going through 2 or 3 dispatchers trying to find someone who was professional. But, instead of giving us another dispatcher. They just suggested that we quit. Which we had no choice except to do that!
To anyone thinking about going to work for CFI/Conway, think twice or three times before you do it! My prediction: CFI will eventually cause Conway to dump them, like they did when they tried the same thing with Covenant a few years ago. Well, that's some of CFI horror our story... Hope it helps!
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