I got hit with my first service failure and I don't agree

A service failure is when you fail to meet the needs of the load without good reason.
You show up late for pick up or delivery with no good reason is the most common.
With some loads you can even get a service failure for trying to deliver too early.
Running out of hours is not a good reason because you should always be aware of how many hours you have to work with, and refuse any load that can't be done in that time.

It is not a write up, but it is a point against you.
Get too many and you get fired because you are not reliable.


It is a standard, at least at my company, that a 2 hour time limit is set for a live load or unload. After that it means detention pay. I get, I think, $16 per hour for detention. I don't know what the company charges the customer.
But it is paid to me, regardless of who pays for it or not.
Sometimes I am required to write in and out times on the BOL to get it, but that will be stated in the load assignment.


Lumpers are a way for a company to avoid hiring people that cost them money.
They hire an outside company so they don't have to pay taxes on, or insurance costs or any number of expenses like wages.
I think it is usually the shipper that pays the cost for lumpers. It would not make sense for the receiver or carrier to pay, unless the cost to the receiver was less than employing the people directly.

 

It's a big scary two word set thrown by angry dispatcher into your QC when you are seriously late somewhere. Ive had a number of those in my time. I just don't stress about it. The truck will get there when it gets there. Some companies will fire you on your first or second SF. I aint found one that will tolerate a third and that was a long time ago. Ironic too, some of those companies no longer exist for one reason or another after having imploded under the weight of broken promises.

I say this. Bottom line. If you plan a trip right, you will know if you are going to be late or not the moment you are given a run. After first checking the hours you have left to do it. Do not ever take a load that is running late. Unless you can extract a definite interchange with another tractor or a team at a specific spot down the road to do a relay. Once it's off your tractor its no longer your concern. But you have helped out by getting it down the road. Pronto.

 

My last load was late, but I wasn't told. I was simply given a delivery window that I could do.
It got t-called today when I got to Denver. It probably went to a team that could get there much earlier.

But if a load is running late, up front with the dispatch, it won't matter.
You run it in your time, period. They can reschedule to your delivery time.

For me that means normal breaks during driving, and at least a 12 hour break for sleep.

 

They prevented him from running illegally is what they did. Whether I personally agree with the law is another issue entirely.

That said... OP that conversation with Swift can happen over the phone but that answer to take the load and work it out later needs to be in writing on the Qualcomm. There isn't a single issue that you will ever have with Swift that isn't 100% solved by "Let me run that by safety xxxxxx" where xxxxxxx is the name of whoever is telling you to do some hotboy ####.

As a side note... Swift tried to play me like they didn't have any freight in the Southwest. They said this while I was standing at the ####ing window in Jarupa Valley, staring directly at the GIANT green bubble over California, Arizona, Nevada and Oregon. There was no freight anywhere BUT there. And I was trying to go home and put in some physical applications with local companies. They knew that. My next load when I have a pending hometime request to Texas? Puyallup, Washington delivering at 23:30 at night. I suppose they think I'll be able to just stroll right in to the Tacoma Loves after ####ing midnight when I'm out of hours.

They do people dirty like that. When I've been threatened with a service failure for delivering early, I simply let them know that I don't actually care about service failures because I'm no longer dedicated and most dedicated accounts don't take owners anyway. I care more about the miles I can run if I dump that load early than I do about some thing that doesn't mean #### in the long run. Never received a service failure and I've delivered so many JIT loads with appointments that weren't for a few days that I can't even count them. Walmart, Amazon, you name it.

Don't let them give you any ####. Tell them you'll be happy to take it up with safety and take any documentation along with names and DM codes to safety. If that doesn't work, get a load home and park that truck at your local terminal and go to a different company.

 

Right now there are thousands of loads in the SW on their board, and everywhere else is red. They deadheaded me from Gallup, NM to Jarupa Valley to move an empty trailer. Once I got there they acted like they didn't have a load or an empty trailer but the lot was full. They send me to 3 places to find one and then told me to just bobtail. Something seriously wrong with these idiots. There is a ton of freight in the SW though.

 

in the end, if you have to give up a load, then do so. you said that you may not have had another load(??) horse pucky. let someone with the hours to run it, or the company may be able to hold it for you once your break is over and you are fresh, and they reschedule.

in essence, once you accepted that load, you told them you can get it there for the appointment time, so since you didn't, you failed.

 

From now on stand your ground,if you don't think you're going to make the delivery then send a free form message to dispatch first and don't accept the load until you hear back from dispatch.

 

this is true, dispatch will nearly always say, "you have the time", they just want that load to show up on thier boards as being taken care of. let them know your time is short, suck up the waiting time for another load, maybe get in that full 10 hour break, THEN no excuses not to make it to the delivery. for the record, i always liked to be about 30 to 60 minutes early myself, and if i could, one day ahead of schedule as well, giving dispatch more time to get me another load ready.

 

Of course its easy for dispatch and their boss to say you have time they're sitting behind a cushy desk typing all day,they don't have a clue what its like on the other side of the fence.

 

thing is, and if i read it correctly, the o/p only was able to drive about 1 hour. he simply did not take into consideration his waiting times. he made that mistake. had it been me, i'd have logged sleeper berth, but that is me.

(he could have logged off duty, while he waited, heck driving around on the property one does not have to show driving times...)

he thought he would be able to drive...well here is what he said

if he had better management of his time at the shipper, he may have squeezed in those miles

so he clearly (in a way) told the dispatcher he had the time, to avoid waiting longer for another load. he still may get this service failure erased. but there very well never be a "next time" for him.