How much blame should go to dispatchers?

It is all the drivers fault, you are the one driving the truck. The dispatchers is not in the passengers seat holding a gun on you.

Mark

 

Although rarely enforced there is a law prohibiting forcing or allowing drivers to violate HOS . Dispatchers , safety managers , and carrier owners could face criminal prosecution .

 

if you want to know how it works, here ya go. company office sends out memos, no speeding no unsafe driving tolerated. then you get scheduled a day that you either can't get done, or that is cut so close as to be not doable on most days. thus driver runs on the edge all day with no breaks, or looked down on for refusal.

 

Having been in dispatch and married to a trucker, I say both share the blame. There are those dispatchers that don't care about logs, HOS or anything else, just want you there no matter what. A lot of that mindset comes from the broker/customer, who also don't care a fig about all the details, they just want the delivery and they want it yesterday.

As for the "gun", maybe not in the literal sense but there are a multitude of ways that they can retaliate. When dispatch ignores driver fatigue, regulations, etc, then they have to take their part of the blame.

 

Keep in mind that there are two departments at odds in every company...Safety and Revenue....guess who holds the bigger Ace?

 

Okay, I just ran with a guy and becasue of certain factors we were alwys on the late side of delivery. In flatbedding you have a little more wiggle room than with reefer or van where you may have appointment times.

Now, we lost a whole day, why, because this guy did not ever do any pre-trips what-so-ever. So, we got our arse handed to us at a SD weigh station. When we pulled over the scales we weighed over on our steers, the reason was because our rear suspension was deflated. However, do to that and his temper it wasted a whole day, he busted an air hose when he was slamming around trying to move the fith whee, then he busted a valve on the trailer when he was pounding on it with a hammer. He normally never sets his trailer brakes ever, but, in his temper tantrum he did set them, then, thought the brakes were froze and figured pounding on them with a hammer while he was pissed off would help, well, it didn't. So we had to spend the day getting repairs.
Well, even with losing a whole day we could of made it on time, and we almost did until he missed a turn while talking on the phone and didn't notice until an hour and half later. it was already around 4:30 and when we called the reciever to let them know and that we were now about an hour and half away, they said that we would have to unload the next morning. So all of that was due to driver error not dispatch or anything else.
Now, we got another load, bees, and had time to get there and get loaded that day. Well, we would have, except, we ran into some bad weather, the roads were not bad, but Cali decided chains had to be put on, he doesn't put chains on, so we pulled over to wait until the chain control was lifted. Well, it was lifted about two hours later, however, he had gotten a hold of a friend he knew who lived near by who was coming out to have coffee and a visit. The friend arrived 3 hours later, and they ate and visited for about 4 hours, which, by then guess what, yep, chain control back on, so we waited until the next morning. So, guess what, we were now late picking up our load. In his mind, we were late because of weather.

As for his driving safely. I would not consider him a safe driver at all. He talks on the phone all the time, and while he is scrolling down thru his contacts he goes in and out f his lane, or doesn't the brake lights right away, we had a few close calls and near misses. Also, sometimes he would get into heated discussions or arguments on the phone and his driving would be more aggressive, he would follow to close, change lanes often, and so forth.

Now, here is something I learned. He was the second trainer I have rode with from this company. The first guy I rode with was just the opposite, and we were always on time if not early for all of our pick ups and drops. The thing I learned that is very important. was, with the first driver, dispatch always had another load for us before we even dropped our current load, but with the last guy, who ran late, dispatch never had another load for us and often only started looking for one after we were unloaded. What I learned, wa that dispatch knows it's drivers, they knew the first guy would be there on time, if not early, and they knew that the second guy was not dependable, they had to wait, because, he was always running late.
So, I decided, I want to be more like the first guy, he was meticulous, he always did a pre-trip, duing trip and post trip. He drove safely, and always had a plan and stuck to it. The other guy just flew by the seat of his pants, never had a plan for the day, and so the day would get away from him and because of that he had to push it to make up or the time he wasted or the mistakes he made along the way.

The first guy taught me how to figure out if I could take a load and run it safely before I accepted it from dispatch. The other guy just accepts the loads and runs with it and if he is late he is late.

If you are a professional driver you are going to take responibility, and not blame things on dispatch. If a load can't be run safely and legally, then you need to be able to identify that and have dispatch push back the time or not take the load. If you can communicate with dispatch in an inteligent and professional manner then you can work as a team, but if all you can do is whine and complain and they don't want to work with you. There is a difference in being able to communicate with dispatch and just acting like a victim.

 

Lavender Trucker, You hit the nail on the head. The first driver you were with probably made 25% more in a years time than the second guy. Plus he did it more on the legal side than the second guy.

 

Of course this is only true in some companies. There actually ARE some dispatcher's that EARN the title of driver manager.

And again, this depends on the company. The last one that I worked for, if a dispatcher got a driver into trouble, then the dispatcher was in as much trouble as the driver was.

First off, let me tell you that I am very happy that you survived with your second trainer. It takes a special kind of person to be able to work with a "numbnuts idiot!"

The key of your last statement, the one I quoted, is being able to work with your dispatcher. If both of you are reasonable, it should work out. But if either the dispatcher, or the driver are jerks, there will be a problem.

A good dispatcher will help out a rookie driver, and a good driver will help out a dispatcher who is having problems.