equipment technician

truck accessory installer

loader

human resources generalist

mechanic

Wallenius Wilhelmsen

There are so many things I could say about this place. First off the actual job really is not that bad. Genuinely really easy for the decent pay you get, but every single thing else is horrible. 

Let me start out and explain what it is that i did. My main area was light installs. So cars would come from SIA and we would put on any upgraded accessories on the vehicles that any work order called for. So i’d spend all day putting on different upgraded interior and exterior mirrors, light bulbs, bumper covers, wireless chargers, etc. As an installer that’s all you do, and it is really easy. Well besides the fact that the way you are SUPPOSED to do these are extremely convoluted, and the instructions are made by people who don’t have to do it all day long.
Besides that, you’ll either just drive cars, inspect them in a line with a few checks to make sure nothing is broken from the factory, doing heavier installs like trailer hitches or usb ports in cars, quality control before being sent out, and then loading the cars up on train cars. So seriously very easy job, and decent for the pay. 

The management is just flat out laughably bad. Complaining about you constantly doing more, even when you are one of the only people who is consistently hitting the expectations. And when you do hit those expectations and goals, they move the goalpost and say you need to do more, so you never feel good enough, and are constantly under pressured. Not to mention the fact that you are constantly being watched, and audited daily. After a while it is just so tiring to have to constantly look over your shoulder, and having to worry about getting in trouble for making the smallest of mistakes. For the few years i had worked here, the turnover was insane. In every single department. Since i had started, we must have gone through at least 150 people easily in my area alone. Probably more to be honest. My area was only supposed to have about 20 people too max. I am not joking when i say that from the time i started, to when i quit we went through 10 different H.R. people, not even including right before i came the entire department got fired. During the shutdown for winter and summer, we do not get paid either for the weeks we are off, unlike SIA which does. They expect you to use your own personal time to use to cover it, or survive the weeks off they have you which is frankly ridiculous especially when SIA gets their full shutdown paid for, and even bonus on top. Everyone in charge does NOT know what is going on, there is zero communication. Every single shift feels like it is a different company from little rules, to different shifts getting special treatments. Management absolutely playing favorites, and choosing bootlickers and under qualified people, that have been there for literally 3 months over people that have been there for years. Being here will tear you down in just the weirdest way. I was constantly extremely upset and angry while at here, and i felt like a shell of my former self. The job really is not that bad at all, and maybe under different circumstances i would have stayed for a long time. But, the sad reality is that it will never be like that. I hope it does improve, but please for your own well-being and sanity do not work here, at least the Lafayette location. I know i am not alone in how i feel, and i hope things do improve. But, it just isn’t with the way that the management and general work environment is. 

The driver distribution  position is just as much mental work as it is physical. one has to be tough mentally and physically to work during all seasons. Rain, sleet snow, ice extreme heat, lots of walking , bending and movement and driving from 8-12 hrs a day, depending on the workload. No room to mess up here - they allow little room for error/absences etc. The problem with this company is that they keep making the same mistakes in their hiring process - they hire 18-22 yr olds who have little life experience, much less driving experience. So, alot of problems occur out of careless decision making on the young ones part. However if WWL would make the requirement minimum at least 8 yrs driving experience, they would eliminate this almost completely.
Money to be made(12.60 regular hrs)  BUTwith OT only, so that is the attraction with this company. However it comes with a price to pay. Up to 12 hrs a day at 6 days a week, and sometimes 7 (peak periods) No time for anything else, This is a good temporary job for money, but for some they choose to stay, or go to other departments. In the end its a blue collar job working in a car plant. If this is what you want to do for the rest of your life and you are happy then that is fine. People do what they need to do and they have their reasons.I would recommend the pursuit of school and higher pay/white collar work making same money at 8 hrs a day and 5 days a week.
WWL is global and has deep pockets, so Im guessing there will always have something available if you pursue it - whether locally or globally. So there may be options. You always have options in life - if you like it here, stay and move up the ladder, but don't stay at a ANY company if you're unhappy most of the time, be it with the hours, environment etc etc..

I tried to enjoy my nearly 4 years working at WWS. I was in multiple areas during my tenure there, and I formed bonds with my coworkers. Usually of course, we formed these bonds by mutually complaining about upper management. 

This job wasnt too physically demanding, but monotonous, and after a long week, you left feeling mentally drained. I tried my hardest to NOT think while I was working there, it numbed the mental agony.

Recently before I finally quit, we had a long awaited communication meeting, about raises, and other long awaited changes, that all started from mass unrest over us being constantly understaffed, and overworked. We were told that Upper management TRULY CARES, and wants to make things better. 

Well, not many of us believed it at the time, because these promises arent rare there, from HR and Upper management. I assumed they would give us maybe an extra dollar an hour and maybe a few more floating holidays, (we used to get 2 a year).

Well, imagine our faces, when we learn that the fruits of their labour, months of planning, and so called "response to our feedback" they decided to help us out in this time of inflation, by giving us a 50 cent raise.

Oh, and they slashed our vacation/PTO time. and took away our floating holidays. instead they decided to put it all in one "pot" as they referred to it. The trouble is, this "pot" only contained 80 hours. Thats 2 weeks, thats not too bad right? Well, we used to accrue that much vacation time in a year, AND have separate PTO time, and 2 floating holidays. So we lost about 1 week of various paid time in reality. 

And this explains WWS, Pay barely enough to keep a skeleton crew, promise better things to the ones who stay, and then punish them, and call it a reward.

I cannot recommend this job to anyone because the upper management is completely out of touch with reality and will micromanage and ruin your department if things arent going exactly the way they want. Stay especially far away from rail where they will make you work nearly 11 hour days in the hot sun or rain and then tell you to please be better the next morning. Days are inconsistent around 10 hours but they still tell the new hires that we work 8s at the interview. We called OSHA on them for valid concerns and upper management has been very retaliatory ever since including firing our well loved supervisor and replacing him with a corporate plant that micromanages us all day. The entire rail department is demoralized and unhappy and we get told often to just be quiet and work or find another job. On the other hand the benefits are okay and you wont run out of work to do here, its just miserable work and not for lazy people.

day to day operations of the site, managing labor and ensuring customer demands were met, quality audits and SOP observations.
Management is very much customer based and does not consider their own employees when satisfying the customer. the hourly workers were great, very dedicated to their jobs but did not like the fact that management would often make them work longer hours just to satisfy customer even though customer demands did not match up with company goals/objectives  make the customer happy at all costs.  very hard to get employees as the hours for the workers changed so much and management would constantly mislead employees by promising things would change but never did. lots of temp employees and constant turnover.
hardest part of job was trying to get help as no one wanted to work their due to the constant hour changes and inconsistent days off and management 
hated every day their

I pride myself on being a reliable hard worker. I am on time and at work every day, I do my job as I should. If you're a hard worker they will take advantage of you and give you the tougher lines to run or make you run more than one line, meanwhile the lazy workers who don't want to do the job will get the easiest lines. They reward laziness more than they door hard workmanship. There's always somebody watching you to make sure you don't get a good raise. (Performance based raises) 

A typical work day was 12 hours very rarely 8 or 9 hours. I loved staying busy it pasted the time by fast. Believe me when I say there was lots of work to do. 7 days a week 12 hours a day is what I had became accustom to. Management liked to Micro manage lots of changes is very well needed there from Ops manager to HR. A supervisor always had to defend themselves as a Supervisor. It was hard to hold someone accountable when HR is at there defense and makes the Supervisor feels as if their the victim. Co-workers were fine no problems. hardest part of the job is when you had to play many different roles some I've never done in my life but it was good experience. Benefits were wonderful, I traveled, enjoyed the bonuses once a year, the Christmas parties were nice and the people that worked for me where the best.

What is the best part of working at the company?
The benifits they have for Medical and dental are really good 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
You have to deal with a lot of favoritism and if you tell on a person for an accident or safety concern they will try and say you don’t know why you are talking about. They reward people that don’t do their work when they finally do . If you work hard all you will get is a thank you and never appreciated for what you do. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
The work environment is hostile and people are treated differently based on the managements feelings as well as hr.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Worried and stressed at the end even got a write up even though I called out on a day I had off work

Upper management is a joke. My super and leads were great, but everyone above them was ridiculously incompetent. Human Resources treats everyone unfairly and finds trivial and stupid reasons to fire people at random. Other shifts weren’t held accountable for their actions. My shift had to do everything for everyone every time. A handful of coworkers got their jollies by making snide and unnecessarily rude comments about anyone they didn’t like or agree with. Overtime was mandatory, no options whatsoever. Never knew what time I was getting off—could be an 8 hour day, could just as easily be a ten or twelve hour day. We had to work in all weather conditions (rain/thunderstorms, extreme heat/cold, ice, etc). There’s no way I would ever go back.

A typical day at work includes preparing vehicles to distribute to certain areas for transportation. After the vehicles are labeled and prepared, we transport them to their designated areas for future distribution by train or truck. From doing this, I have learned a lot about distribution of products from certain companies and the means of transportation. I have also learned different ways of communication with different personalities from a variety of coworkers. The most challenging part of my job is creating and organizing ways to improve efficiency of the teams. Although it can also be the most enjoyable part. It is a mental challenge at times which is rewarding.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Equipment technician 14 salaries reported	$20.14 per hour
Truck accessory installer 5 salaries reported	$20.80 per hour
Loader 4 salaries reported	$31.00 per hour
Human resources generalist 17 salaries reported	$72,353 per year
Mechanic 7 salaries reported	$35.75 per hour

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