truck driver

management trainee

senior diesel mechanic

warehouse worker

supply chain & logistics occupations

Penske Logistics

A typical day at work—
There’s allot of delegation, and no accountability from upper management. You will be tasked with everything, and the same blame is associated to your name should you quit or get fired. They are paid to do absolutely nothing other than watch financials. It’s not rare to enter a facility and the operations manager knows absolutely nothing about their operation, and will do all the work as they’re in “meetings” all day long.  out of their employees. The pay is not equivalent to the work load! You do what’s asked or you will be written up! The duties often fall on transportation clerks, and supervisors . There is ABSOLUTELY no work life balance, so you can hang up going home and not working. I would highly suggest pretending like you don’t know to avoid being tasked with duties that are above your pay grade. Do not help, because help is equivalent to then being liable or responsible for that task. They’ll throw you out in the wild to avoid taking responsibility. Reports are never ending, and useless. Your day will consist of lying to customers, and the culture is bias. There is no confidentiality, and everything is discussed openly. If you have a phone or laptop you can bet your bottom dollar you’ll be working at minimum 6 days a week, and over 12 hours a day. Drivers and dock works rarely get raises, and are a driven to complete trucks alone due to the high turnover. The awards for your work will always be a T-shirts or a hat. There is no incentive for doing your job, and they will not shy away from demanding more without pay. Expect a lie, in person communication is a hard no, put it in writing to save face and your reputation. 

What you believe you learned? There’s allot to learn, with little to no training. You can arrange virtual training, but try to figure that out when you’re struggling to get rest working long hours. You’re literally thrown in and expected to “figure it out”. No one can train you, because they haven’t been trained. If you figure it out, you had better keep it a secret because you’ll more than likely be tasked to train without compensation or promotion opportunities. Most are stuck in the same role until they retire. 

Management—Listen to the warnings. You will know if you have a problem when you walk in. The current staff members will tell you; heed their warnings. They are deflective and UNACCOUNTABLE. They will lie, and shift the blame on anyone. They will have all the time with their families, while you barely have a few hours per night with yours. They will lie on you IN YOUR FACE, and will threaten you with corrective actions for making mistakes or calling them out on theirs. The delegation AND COMMUNICATION is EXTREMELY poor, and expect anything from “fluff professionals” daily. 

Workplace Culture-They will sit back and do nothing in confrontational situations. HR is just as calculated, as the management team. There conversations will always have a negative impact on your work relationship and reputation. It says allot when half of them don’t know their own policy. Reporting anything will come back to haunt you, and most avoid or have been discouraged from doing so. Nothing is confidential, and they will not protect you against retaliation. To say the least, the environment is extremely hostile, unorganized, and bias on many levels to name one. Apparently, your points don’t roll off after a year. They’re a permanent stain on your record, and you will not promote unless you have executive connections. 

The hardest part of the job? If you’re a master problem solver you will make it. You will not be trained, but you will be retained for nothing other than filling a seat. Every man for themselves. 

The most enjoyable part of the job?
 The people you develop relationships (associates, a very small number of managers, and drivers)  that actually care about you and are not a part of their “brotherhood foolishness”. 

***DO NOT WORK OVER YOUR SCHEDULED SHIFT! GIVE THEM WHAT THEY PAY YOU FOR AND GO HOME! ****

You will make more as a tech on the floor after the hours required are factored in. 

Typical day... One of your xx number Technicians finishes a wiper blade install, while still in the middle of other repairs, better have that checked in 30 minutes and reviewed, it is part of the metric you are measured on.  New tablet issues (it crashes, locks, stops working) are not an excuse for failure getting this done, customers, phone calls, parts to order, showing a new tech the ropes.. still not an excuse for not clicking that verify button on the wiper blade.  

prepare for the management "team" to abandon ship once you arrive.  17 people now need to have their next assignment and  the tablet just crashed... again.   Expect to be "coached" on employees who do not report to you. Issues that are earth shattering  can include, a few ounces of excess grease on the fifth wheel, Failure to pressure wash fifth wheel jaws in the parking lot, why a lead tech is talking to another tech while in the middle of a repair, Why your tech did not check and record tire pressure on a vehicle that has been in the shop for 12 hours before you started, Wow you must stink at this, how you need to be more on engaged in a repair because they didn't spray/ sprayed excessive penetrating oil on a battery connection inside the cab, ect.  Expect to be written up on minor infractions.  Expect to be get flac for trying to go above and beyond. Do not expect any communication on what was done on the shift before you but be help responsible for knowing about everything on the yard... Stayed 13 hours and missed a final review tab... you are clearly unfit to work in the amazing world of penske. Customers and employees are second, the mighty report is god. 
 Expect to report to mediocre individuals who somehow made it into an upper management role. As maintenance Supervisor you are very much in charge of anything the Service manager can pawn off on you. 
 
Training for this position is from watching internal website videos, you will have little time between verifying EVERY little job step to watch any training content on site and it is not accessible from home.  Great access to OEM training which you really are only going to be able to watch from home... but you pulled another 12 hour shift and you would like to have a life.  

Most of the upper management in this company comes from sales, including the executive level. They have little to no concept of repairing trucks, treating employees like a human. Technicians and you are a dime a dozen in penske, use it as a stepping stone and move on, there are 71 management positions that are open in this company as I write this, 1/2 opened up with in the last 3 weeks.  Your technicians are either 20+ year employees or have less than 5 there is not really a middle experience level at this location, perhaps I should have seen this as the bad sign it really is, glad I found something else.

A new hire at Penske will receive THIRTEEN WEEKS of training.  You start in a classroom, learning about the company, about the hazards on the floor, about the technology you will be using.  In week 2 you partner up with another new recruit and hit the floor, developing your skills with a dedicated group of trainers who are only out on the floor to help you learn.

What I liked most about penske is that an employee's individual productivity is measure by a computer algorithm- your performance is cold hard numbers, thus ensuring that favoritism and cliques are virtually eliminated.  

Base rate of pay is somewhere around 15/hour; although there is a productivity bonus paid out each pay period that grants you between 3 and *ELEVEN* extra dollars per hour for hitting certain productivity points (between 100 and 140%).  By week thirteen, when you graduate training and become a full fledged employee, achieving just 100% productivity means about 18 dollars per hour.

But no job is perfect- it is a refrigerated/freezer warehouse, between -5 and 45 degrees F depending on where you're picking, and the thermal suits are bulky and tend to get a bit ripe.  If you don't like or can't handle constant exposure to cold, this isn't the job for you.

In addition, the schedule is regular but quite odd- you will almost never work more than 40 hours a week (four ten hour days) unless you choose to (the overtime pay there is so good there are more volunteers than there is overtime), but which four days during the week you work isn't always regular.  For example, you may work monday, tuesday, wednesday, and thursday, have friday saturday and sunday off, then have monday, tuesday and wednsday off next week and work T, F, St, and Sn.  That said, schedules are made well in advance and you will have weeks, if not months, of notice.  

Lastly, the break schedule does leave something to be desired.  breaks are the standard fifteen minutes, but timed down to the second and you only have a short amount of time to pick up where you left off again, meaning that in order to avoid losing a percentage point or two of productivity (and possibly an extra dollar per hour!) many employees choose to voluntarily cut short their break in order to get back to the floor with time to spare.  IIRC, working through breaks is allowed, but working through lunch is not.

In closing, Penske is an excellent place to work for anyone with the fortitude to handle the cold and the stamina to handle ten hours of heavy lifting (up to 90 pounds at times) a day.  They pay their workers well and ensure those workers are prepared to succeed in what is a very challenging but rewarding career.

I would like to make anyone applying to the NorthEast area (in particular, the Boston District, which includes Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont) to be aware of the many issues that I encountered working with this company. 

I had worked in at PENSKE for many years and noticed newer managers changed their support levels for employees in a very negative way. 

Current employees need to reserve the truck for the customer first and ask questions later. Then, they are required to find the truck by calling other employees throughout the district. Often you are talking to other employees who are on the same level as you.

Then, of course, you find that these locations are hoarding trucks, so you call a manager who says to call someone else and then get back to them. It turns into a cycle of unproductive calls, and at the end of the day, nothing gets achieved. 

The northern locations have distances that are so vast that delivering trucks is a nightmare. You only have one driver that works, but you need to get multiple trucks to where they need to be by a particular day or time, so you are told by managers to delay customers by several hours at a minimum.

There is also a national call center that books trucks, so expect to be calling customers to delay their move by a couple of hours or even a day depending on what happens.

Expect calls from customers whose trucks break down. It is a frequent occurrence and only gets worse when you are face to face with them, and they are expecting a full refund.

Expect to be dealing with agents who need trucks for their customers as well. Agents are dealers of PENSKE who rent PENSKE trucks as well. There are a lot of headaches, so you will need to be ready. 

When you ask for assistance from a manager, they expect you to deal with everything, and if you do not have the answer that they are looking for when you speak to them, expect a mean and nasty response back. Unfortunately, they do not help you in any way.

Once you have been at the location for a while, they will write you up at the drop of a hat. Expect frequent write-ups over email communication and trivial matters. 

They have been known to write up employees at holiday parties or faxing them over. If you do not cozy up to them the way they want you too, then you can forget about your career. 

I am not sure if they still do this but they expect employees to be on roadside assistance where you are essentially on-call 24 hours a day for one week. You will receive $100.00, but it is not worth it. You essentially have to put your life on hold at this point. 

Lastly, I do not recommend that anyone apply to this position. It is clearly not worth it for your own sanity. Work/ life balance is non-existant.

From the outside looking in, Penske strives to have a good culture and to emphasize growth and development, but from within it is sick with a poor culture that results in at profound cost of personal health, personal time, and constant stress inside and outside of work. The company makes gestures of appreciation to their employees but it often feels like a partner who gives elaborate gifts so you don’t leave but doesn’t put in the work daily to make things work. Penske doesn’t put in the work daily and it was no more blatantly honest when COVID hit and locations were left horribly understaffed while salaried workers worked crazy overtime without extra pay and their remaining hourly workers were held to 40 religiously. The message was strong: if we have to pay you it’s 40, but if you’re salary and you don’t get overtime then we will take advantage of you. Of course, if you weren’t hitting your metrics, all without proper training for your position in the midst of record reservations that took the majority of our time to plan, then you were made to feel as though you were less than. Management rarely showed appreciation and when concerns were raised about our welfare they were ignored at the local and area levels sending another strong message that the company will not listen to their employees. This job has been nothing but constant stress as you are pulled in between management who demand expectations that place you in compromising situations and customers who you most provide solutions for when the company has provided you handicapped resources. When I’ve tried to do what I can to demonstrate a different way of work that isn’t filled with stress and the common negative traits associated with the transportation industry I’ve been criticized and alienated. Management does not allow you to question their thinking and won’t change their ways regardless of the number of people leaking from the company because they cannot stand the pressure that this environment brings. Penske has the opportunity to be different, to cultivate different values, and to take care of its employees at a personal level, but it has squandered this opportunity in favor of a business model that in its design has the fatal flaw of applying maximum stress and pressure on its associates in the pursuit of maximum profits. This is not isolated to just one place or just during COVID; this is a company design that favors profits over people day in and day out. 

Your experience here will be 80% dependent on your branch service manager and maintenance supervisors. 

I have worked with amazing people here and have also worked with incompetent morons. If you do decide to work here figure out what type you'll be working with and run if they are the latter. Don't ignore the signs of a poor management. My review is for the bad people here because the good ones have mostly left. This is a ok job. Don't waist your time if you have skills or are looking for a career. Good for a tech just starting out or someone who doesn't care to work hard. If you like taking naps, this is the place for you.


Now for the " beef" 
If management shared Penske's core values I would love this place. The core values sound so great and I truly believe I share them. Always check the facts, many people working here think because they "have been doing it this way for 30 years" makes it the right way. Also if something is repeatedly said it somehow becomes a fact?? A lot of people here inflate there skills(fake it till ya make it type) If you're modest here it's tough. If your a hard worker with good morals it's tough here, you'll work Soo hard and find out the guy that sleeps at work got a better raise than you. You'll find yourself fixing other Tech's work more than actually fixing truck problems. If you do have compassion for the poor driver with the broken truck that is just trying to get back on the road to feed his family(I do) you will be taken advantage of here. Manager once told a driver I would have his Detroit DPFs changed in 2 hours, truck was hot off the road/ yep 1200°. Normal repair time is close to 5 hours. They do not promote based on skill or hard work, they do not value good morals, they will fudge whatever needed(including your hours) to get THEIR BONUS . That's right...they will short your check 20$ so they will get .02¢ on their bonus.The rules will be bent for the ones they drink with after work. The money seems to be on a scale for most( a weak 3% scale) unless you have someone looking out for you.



If you think I'm just a complainer, feel free to make your own opinion of the interesting things my branch service manager has said to me
 " if it was easy, women would do it"
 "If it drove in that way, it can drive out that way"
 "why would I give you a raise when I can pay someone else cheaper to do the same thing"

Started as tech 3 changing oil and inspections, with no formal training or experience. Great opportunity for someone starting out. Learned a lot from the guys that are at the end of their careers. 
    The bad....Management is out of touch with employees, impossible goals for management in no win situations. You will be told that you are doing it wrong every half hour and on the hour.REMEMBER, you are just a number here. Shops here in this district are ran by kids with no experience other than YouTube videos and some buddy of theirs that have done it. Throw a Chevy 350 to rebuild in front of them and they wouldn't know where to start. 

    Pay was great for starting out, as you gain experience the pay scale is too close and their all star employees that outshine others will make $1-2 dollars more than they guy who has no tools, ask questions then argue with you, don't show up on time, and is the best that ever was at 20. 

   Get ready for tool sharing program, 3/4 of shop does not have adequate tools to perform jobs. As they do provide heavy shop tools, hard to get tools repaired or replaced due to shop budgets.

    Management is reactive, not proactive. Culture changed significantly to something more militaristic and hardline. Their motivation is threatening possible job lay offs in a safety meeting to get people to change bad work habits that are not being properly addressed on an individual basis. If you want to move up quick this is the place for you due to high turnover and next warm body up. If you are good at something they will exploit and use you, disregarding fairness. 

   Shift schedules leave a lot to be desired, days will work weekends and splits days off, nights will work a weekend and two days off in a row. Not a family orientated work place.

     Now the good, training classes were fantastic, constant OEM training. You will find great experienced guys that will take certain kids under their wing to train, but this type is getting rare. Nice recently built shop. Pay was good for entry level. great friendships. Job experiences to take with you in future career changes. You will find that making as many connections to vendors and customers will assist you on your path.

What is the best part of working at the company?
The hours were reasonable... The pay, at that time was reasonable.... The company policy of sending their mechanics to a specific course to obtain a 'B' license to be able to continue with the employment, was a politically motivated boondoggle that could specifically be used to eliminate employees who could have otherwise done well with that company...  

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
   Using the voice activated system they had that often reacted to various noises in the workshop environment.... That was a real bad situation... Also a lot of company required/supplied equipment/tools that were used to work there, were often worn out and/or not working properly...

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
The shop was clean and well organized, the safety procedures seemed to be reasonable, but like so many other places, they often discounted / compromised the suggestions and advice of several ideas and notices of those who had experience in the field.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
The typical day started with a group meeting if what to look for , and any  upcoming programs, notices and events.. This was a good thing... As the day progressed, assignments were given to service/repair certain vehicles.... The lot of vehicles there was very large, (often over 150 vehicles)... The method of identifying where they were parked, and how they were kept track of which spot that they were located was often extremely ambiguous... And this often took time to find where they were actually located... Also the vehicles were at times, not clearly marked as to which unit it was 
    As the day went on, the shop bays were often available on a first come/first serve basis, and other vehicles sometimes had to be finished from previous shifts/tasks in order to access the work areas... Then when access was obtained, the worn/unservicable shop equipment often slowed the work, along with the ridiculous voice activated equipment, that often was triggered by typical noises in the workshop... It was a nice/clean place to work that had equipment and tools that did not work properly, that we were forced to use..

Cons: Its honestly not a bad place to work in a vacuum, you can learn a good amount about the field and get to use a lot of tools that other shops don't have. The greatest detraction from the job is management. They pretend to be friendly, but honestly you're simply a pawn on their chess board and unless you're willing to say "yes" to any and everything that they want than you won't get very far. You also won't get very much appreciation for anything you do, no matter how much extra effort you give. It comes down to simply if management likes you AND if you're willing to be a "yes man." They're also always planning something, but don't share it with the people that are effected by it until the last minute. Example: They have a few customer shops that they have employees work at, but waited to the last minute to inform them that they'd be working there(like day before). You're expected to be "flexible" and willing to change your schedule and everything at the drop of a dime with no notice, but when the same is needed from them, it depends on their mood or if you're willing to do another "favor" in exchange for them. You're also likely to end up at one of those other shops that are not to the standard of the shop that you're probably doing your interview because instead of being up front about things, they'd rather blindside you after you've accepted the job. This has lead to several people leaving over the past year.

Pros: Most of the techs are great to work with and everyone helps each other, its truly a team environment. If you're willing to ask questions, listen, and learn the more experienced guys, and some supervisors will teach you a lot. Starting out its a decent place to get started in the field, but as a career its only beneficial if you want to become a supervisor and to pursue that route you will have to play their game and join their "clique". Some of the benefits are decent to good, and they give you a decent amount of PTO/Sick days for the field. The job can be enjoyable however all of the issues listed above always seem to ruin the good days.

Ultimately the place is organize chaos.

At first glance, Penske offers competitive pay and steady hours but what's not in the job description is the high level of micromanagement and surveillance that defines the driver experience. All trucks are equipped with driver-facing and road-facing cameras. These are triggered by road events like sudden braking, following distance, potholes, or even lane changes  and drivers are often disciplined as a result, even when not at fault. The system creates a work environment that feels more punitive than supportive.

Slip-seating is standard, and truck cleanliness is a recurring issue. Many times, I had to clean out a cab from the previous shift just to get on the road. Trailers are aged and damaged. Trailers often had worn tires, instead of replacing them with new tires, they’re retreaded creating ongoing safety risks. Trailers have air leaks. Maintenance tends to focus on quick fixes rather than long-term safety, which can put drivers in tough positions.

Breakdowns were another regular issue and when they happen, expect long waits and to be treated like you’re the problem. Dispatch communication during these times can be frustrating and unhelpful.

Another issue I experienced was being written up for circumstances out of my control, including equipment-related delays or minor safety triggers. This left me constantly feeling like I was walking on eggshells.

Paid time off and sick leave were not always honored or easy to access. Communication with management around these issues was difficult, and it often felt like drivers had to fight just to get what they’d earned.

Penske does not foster a culture that values drivers. The stress and pressure far outweigh the paycheck. This company may look appealing on the surface, but once you're in, it's a different story.

If you value your CDL, your peace of mind, and being treated like a professional, consider exploring other opportunities. The industry has many companies that treat drivers with greater respect and support. Make an informed decision your license and livelihood are too important.


Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Truck driver 54 salaries reported	$86,793 per year
Management trainee 3 salaries reported	$25.67 per hour
Senior diesel mechanic 3 salaries reported	$24.00 per hour
Warehouse worker 5 salaries reported	$21.41 per hour
Supply chain & logistics occupations 3 salaries reported	$25.00 per hour

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