Good Night From II

Finally getting out of here. Got a pplan from Hayward to Tooele for a drop on Sat. Asked if they could stack me up out of SLC and the planners where no help at all. Was told to accept this one or can just wait and get a short load going North for Monday. So made a phone call to my terminal and got stacked up with 2 more. Both d&h. Pick up SLC on Monday to Las Lunas for Tuesday drop and then pu in ALBQ for a Wednesday drop in Roanoke. Not the best of miles but at least something. All of 2000 miles for 7 days. Can not believe the freight all of a sudden in certain areas. Neither can my DM. Guess that now will get to see what SLC terminal looks like unless I just get to a truck stop and wait until Monday morning before I pick up MOM. I was told that starting Wednesday that he is going to pay special attention to me to make sure that I start to get the loads to get the miles that I need. Even my terminal manager got involved today. Could not believe the way that I was treated yesterday and the pplans that I was sent.

 

Bisqueak...Company drivers get treated like that day in and day out. Coast to coast and border to border.

One of the reasons I do what I feel and don't bother telling them. Somehow I'm still able to run pretty good miles, often over 3K a week. Go figure.

 

Just out of curiosity ... if your DM and TM are taking care of you; why couldn't you have taken that 2400 mile load and t called it Sunday night or Monday morning, after burning 1800 or 2000 miles off of it?

 

It's a very nice, and large terminal. Nice shower rooms as well. (Yes, actual rooms.)
But you have to go through inspection as you come in, and that can take a long time if you get there at a busy time.

And that terminal has no coffee.
At ALL, unless you are lucky enough to be there when the little café is open.
But not even one coffee machine!

 

I'm at the Columbus terminal after delivering the Walmart load down the street.
No mt's either at the Walmart or here, but I don't need it until morning.
Then I'm being repositioned back down to GA because there is more freight there.
Nearly 700 miles mt. That'll help with my fuel mileage for sure.

 

Lancaster waiting for my load to Jacksonville to come in on the shuttle. When I got it from mac30 last night it was supposed to be here already. Planners screwed me around for two days so I'm just happy to get out of here.

 

Sitting at the Target DC in Pueblo, CO, where we delivered at 0600 this morning. We pick up a load in Denver at 0900 tomorrow, which T-calls at Edwardsville, KS tomorrow night.

We had a rough week last week; only 2400 miles, compared to 4400 the week before. Crappy miles for a team, so it's not just you solo drivers.

 

Hanging out behind the Cash Magic Casino on I-10E just inside the Louisiana border. Just finished off some outstanding chicken and sausage gumbo at Comeauxs.

Got to my 4am live unload this morning in downtown Houston at the base of a new skyscraper being built. As expected it was a small challenge getting in there. Had to do a double blindside in a horseshoe into an alley then through a tight chain link fence to get the back of the trailer up to their elevator. All went well and I was outta there in an hour.

Memphis kept sending me the paper load to AL with two days too much on it and I kept telling them no. Then they sent sent me one to St Louis but it also had 2 days too much time to delivery. Maybe they thought I was too stupid to notice it was the same turd but in a different wrapper.

Before I could tell them to stick it my DM called and said to hold up, she was going to have them tcall it in Memphis Saturday and free me up. I said No Problem to that. So I went and did the live load in Pasadena and rolled.

Found another back to Lake Charles on mac30 to turn right around with. I have hometime next week so I don't want to get too far away this late and surely don't mind staying busy with shorter hauls.

My DM sent out a mssg this afternoon to all the Houston OTR drivers to NOT accept any loads going west of I-35 or north of I-64 and to put "as per DM" in the refusal. Appears that freight is totally sucking in 3/4 of the United States. I wonder why it's gotten so bad everywhere over the last couple weeks?

 

It's been bad in many areas for much longer than a couple weeks.
My thinking is that Swift is simply hiring too many new drivers for the loads they have, and it is shorting all of us.
This is the time of year when we usually have an abundance of loads and the miles are very good.
The economy is up right now, so freight should be moving much better.

I'm also thinking that they may be hiring more to cover the possible loss of drivers once the new camera program is in full swing.
Driver facing cams are not popular with any of us, but it might be more OK with new drivers just getting in to the industry.
Personally I think it will bite them in the end, if that is what they are really doing.

Swift seems to be treading a very fine line these days, between several factors that they really have no control over.
2 pay raises in only 2 years, which lowers profits.
Bringing in the driver facing camera's, which will drive many out of Swift.
Lower miles, possibly because of over-hiring.

The funny thing is, they have had control over every one.
I didn't hear about any other companies raising pay last year, before Swift did. Then everyone was doing it to catch up.
Then Swift just did it again this year.

From what I read the share holders were none too happy about it the first time around either, and Swift stock prices took a hit as a direct result.

But two pay raises in two years, each of which equaled 10% of current pay.
So a 20% pay increase over 2 years. Who else can claim that?


The next thing was to start using dash cams, which is a good thing.
But they also included the driver facing cam, that is also active 24/7, and audio included. Not so good.
They knew that many drivers would feel Big Brother even more than we already do with this move.
All because they want more ammunition against both the outside world as well as drivers where accidents are concerned - or maybe just whenever they want to 'look in' to see what has happened over the past couple hours in a drivers life.

And yes, I've heard all the hype about what the camera's do and what they can't do.
I also know what they are capable of doing, and what we are not being told from all the craftily worded statements. Every phrase is very carefully manipulated to say exactly the right thing.
Any camera with 4GB of storage can/will hold that much footage.
Any camera with WiFi ability can be used both ways, both to upload and download files at will.
They may not be able to stream in 'real time' (check the wording used), but they can be used to download a file from 2 minutes ago simply by accessing the correct folder.

Anyone with half a brain could figure it out, so they may be over-hiring now to compensate the later loss in drivers as this program comes into fruition.



And, I could be wrong about all of this, and it is simply a crazy guys ramblings of theories.