FCC--Fremont Contract Carriers

Grabbed a load of honey yesterday heading into Sioux City today and then grabbing another load of retail honey there heading to the east coast.

ya, I’ve had a couple back to back loads that were really … sweet.

{insert drum and rimshot here}

 

I would’ve preferred if they just froze pay. I make more than enough money for myself, so I have zero incentive to follow these performance criteria, hence why i’ve given little to no attention to all the stuff about that.

But to each their own

 

You are correct sir

 

I agree. To each their own and your situation might be different than other peoples reality. Very true. And different changes impact different people differently.

But not sure you can say “to each their own” and then suggest you would prefer they froze everyone pay… across the board.

you make what you need here but others might have families they are supporting or paying off a bankruptcy or trying to pay off a home before retirement.

They said in the meetings that they were already considering the switch from longevity to performance and just moved that up to avoid a pay freeze for everyone.

I say that was a good thing in these tight times.

 

I feel so old now. Thanks.

 

I’m not privy to the criteria for company drivers. If the goals are mostly achievable I can see people being motivated enough to change habits. At the same time the company also needs to work with drivers if there are issues to resolve, like a malfunctioning APU that will affect fuel mileage.

Personally I see no issue with a carrot and stick approach instead of freezing things across the board. Back in 2008 when things were terrible my old boss had a meeting with everyone and basically said if we helped control costs during the lean time he would take care of us when things got good again. And he did. It was pretty common later on to see a few hundred cash in your payroll envelope every few weeks.

 

And to be clear, I’m not saying i blatantly disregard what i’m supposed to do. Vast majority of the time i fill up where they want me to, i don’t idle the truck excessively and actually use my APU, etc. I’ve never been called for any of that stuff. I just have no incentive to go the extra mile to meet the performance criteria for raises. Like @MidWest_MacDaddy said that’s just my case though, and it may or may not change anytime in the future, but for now i’m happy with what i’m doing and the company has never given me any grief about it

 

I've been getting texts from the Rolling Strong app for the last couple weeks. I’ve never installed the app but I thought I remembered seeing signs in Fremont about Rolling Strong. I was worried the texts might be a spear phishing attack so I called in and talked to safety then HR. I guess we ended our partnership with them at the end of last year and HRs theory was they may be going through the contact information for drivers that were eligible for the program and trying to get them to pay for a subscription directly.

 

I recall last year when the lease purchase drivers and owner operators were hit with the news that they weren’t getting detention pay or mileage pay for empty moves (IIRC they have to request a dollar amount reimbursement for fuel and then the company says yes or no. The change was made due to the evolving legal situation for independent contractors (ie some states have been suing companies claiming that independent contractors and lease purchase contractors are employees). I can understand making that change. But the drivers affected and their DMs found out about it after it was implemented, so DMs were promising layover and deadhead pay that drivers wouldn’t get not because they are dishonest but because they weren’t in the loop.
Changing the policy on washes was discovered again by drivers stumbling on it and then after the fact finding out the policy was changed.
The pay change I get at least part of the argument, basically if they did a freeze for a year and rolled out the report cards and announced the raises would be back next year but would be based on the report cards that would be bad for drivers who would otherwise get a raise and it would be bad for the company (because the effect of the new system on increasing production and reducing costs would be muted if the carrots and sticks are all a year plus out). Personally I think they could have softened it by starting the report cards when they did, rapidly getting out everyone’s anniversary to date cards and then implementing the annual reviews to qualify for increases in March or April so everyone has seen a couple scorecards and knows where they stand.
The DEF fiasco once again was only communicated after the fact. It’s absolutely not their fault that EFS accidentally put CB on the restricted list at first. But when I called night dispatch he had no idea what was happening, he was dealing with multiple drivers calling in having problems getting DEF. I had a small glimpse behind the curtain and part of the deal was they weren’t sure when EFS was going to implement the new rules. But I would rather they had communicated that at some point in the near future there will be a new rule rather than what we got.

I don’t have a problem with any of the money saving decisions being made, the problem is these changes are not being effectively communicated to the relevant people in the organization ahead of time. They can and do broadcast messages to the fleet so it really seems straightforward to announce a decision when it is made to all the affected drivers. I don’t know how the internal communications work for operations but I would imagine even emailing everyone in ops would be in the realm of the possible.

 

i’ve been getting said texts as well. I’ve ignored them but it’s nice to find out why i’m getting them