What to do when a dispatcher tries to force a load on you?

I have found that in some offices, some personnel seem to think there is an "hour fairy" that will appear at some point between Point A and Point B over the next several days and add 3 new hours to the eLogs ... or somehow the road between the 2 points will get straightened out somehow to remove 200 miles ... or somehow the truck computer will allow an additional 10 MPH and the driver takes every bit of it for the duration.

We deal almost exclusively with appointments on both ends, most with dire time or money consequences if you miss them. I've found that [on eLogs] if I make a claim [4 days/2,400 miles away away at pickup] that I will come up 200 miles short on day of drop, using recap hours coming, they seem to ignore this little tidbit of info, and subsequent reminders, also. Then they have kittens on the day of or day before trying to put together a repower at the 2 minute warning. They don't put a lot of stock in 20+ years OTR experience, and will only believe (listen to) a driver once inside of 500 miles.

 

Patty,

I don't have all the facts so I might be confused. It is my understanding that he has 8 hours today and 9 hours tomorrow. That is 17 on duty hours with a 10 in between. He only needs 14 So as long as he got the assignment by 730 AM he should be okay. The posting was at 7 AM so I think he could have made it if, he had a fresh clock at 730 or at least had 4 hours of drive time left.

But I am a strong believer that the Logs are your logs and no one has the right to question or edit them.

 

What I see as a fleet owner is a bit different and may not make any sense.

It is this ... This is a huge company with many trucks and if one truck refuses to do the job, they can do one of two things, one is get another one of their trucks to pick it up. Or do another ... Outsource the work to another company which is very common to do.

Most of the time the customer doesn't give a crap, unless they are dealing with something that has to go yesterday, so the chances of loosing a customer is very low.

 

One of things I used to do was tell the DM (if I knew I couldn't make the delivery ontime) I'd be more than happy to grab the load and run it as far as I can with the hours I had available.

That way you're putting the ball in their court to deal with what happens on the back end. A lot of times they're under the gun to get the load off the shipper's dock and on the way and will deal with rescheduling the delivery or arranging a swap after the fact.

That technique seemed to alleviate any pressure or potential angst on either my or their parts.

 

At the end of the day that is your cdl to lose not the company.

 

Like I said read post42 and 43.I'll sum it up for you.He had 20 miles to shipper with onl 25 minutes left on his daily hrs.So no way he could have made it there.But he gains 9 hrs at midnight which is not a good enough reason to take a reset and you can bet he will probably hear about it when he gets back to the terminal.He should have worked it out with dispatch picking up load tomorrow.

 

Oh oh
Yeah, I guess it COULD be a brand new truck.

 

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