Considering schnieder, read first!

who might this be?

 

How could you be suffering from "chronic fatigue" when Schneider makes you shut down after like 16 hours and makes you take a 10 hour break? I doubt real seriously if you were forced to drive or even operate at all over the HOS at Schneider.

They were right to have you checked out, if you cant get by on 6 hours sleep a night, then you really dont need to be driving a big truck--you need a Doctor. I would have sent you also, since if you wrecked their truck and killed yourself, you family would have been at the door looking for a handout-so not only were they protecting themselves, but you also. Plus according to DOT rules, they could not have let you drive do to your complaints, they were obligated by law to get you checked out, and ok'd by a professional to drive. So the loss prevention guy was only doing his job, something that I would guess from your comments, that you didnt understand.

 

If it was 'chronic fatique' that is an actual medical problem, and a 10 hour break isn't going to fix the problem. Google 'chronic fatique syndrome' and read the symptoms/effects.

That being said, if this person does suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, they should not be driving truck.

 

Which was my point. I didnt see whether he was diagnosed that way though, he didnt say, but he did not say that he was no longer driving so my guess is "chronic fatigue" is a self-diagnosis. A lot of people that claim to have this dont understand it and just because they are tired all the time, does not mean that they have it-it means they are not getting the sleep they need, but blaming a company that makes you shut down is not the problem. If he/she truly had this problem, my guess is that Schneider would have let them go after clinical diagnosis. BTW, even this person says that if it was something important, they would have gone to the emergency room themselves and they didnt, they waited for the company to send them. So from that, I would deduce that they were just tired. Could have been just a sugar-imbalance, which a lot of drivers get due to the way a lot of us eat. Which Im sure that you have experienced also. That there can make you very tired even when you dont want to be.

 

another thing that comes to mind is sleep apnea. Lots of drivers have them and Schneider actually helps you get the proper equipment and testing done for it. Id suggest contacting the DBL and asking to take a sleep survey online...and / or contact the health dept (or whomever) to schedule a sleep study as if one thinks they have chronic fatigue...it simply might be them not getting enough deep sleep.

 

Kyle, the only way you can be home daily with 2 days off per week is to be a local driver. Run away from these big companies. They will only disappoint you. Read the posts on here.

Yes I am a company driver. You could not get me to waste my time on being an otr driver. I believe in being paid for all of my time. I like being home with my family everyday. How about you?

 

Someone that can form a thought and convey it in a complete sentence maybe ? I didn't see any evidence of a Schneider recruiter anywhere.

 

His chances of getting 2 days off a week or being a local driver as a newbie are highly doubtful until he gets a year under his belt or better or he get's lucky. I personally am a linehaul driver--I am home everyday and every weekend, but I make more money than our local drivers. All drivers at our company are required to help unload or load their trailers if asked to do so--but I rarely am required to so. I usually bring home between $800 and $1150 depending on how many miles I drove, how many times I pulled doubles and how many times I worked hourly. Currently my mileage rate is around $.46 and my hourly rate is $20 and my doubles rate is an extra $20 per day providing I make and break at both ends($5 make+$5 break). Made $60,000 last year before taxes. Not great but not bad, worth it to be home everyday!

 

Ok, lemme explain.

I was suffering from "chronic fatigue" as in I hadn't been getting enough rest because I had been working a lot of hours in the previous week or so. I wasn't running over HOS. I didn't say that. "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" is something totally different that I don't have. I called it "chronic" instead of "acute" because it wasn't just fatigue from working long hours in one day.

Uh, from everything I've heard from any doctor and trucking company a person needs 7-8 hours of sleep. You should be able to sleep that much if you're taking 10 hour breaks. You really work 18 hours a day for weeks straight? I understand that people who DO work over 14 hours a day put themselves at serious health risk and have no quality of life. I have no interest in that.

It's my theory that truckers who work reasonable hours will actually end up working more because they won't have heart attacks at 47 and die or have to go on social security. If driver's just did what I'm doing they could drive into their 60's or 70's.

My point is this. If you have no experience then Schneider is a good option for you, not great, but probably good. Compared to other companies in general, they're pretty bad. Compared to other corporate trucking companies, they're average. Schneider's the kind of company that if they were a person, and I left $5 on the table and turned my back, I would expect that $5 to be gone when I turned back around. I don't trust them to pay me what they say they will, to tell me the truth, to not retaliate against me. If you decide to work for them, watch yourself, be careful. They're not 100% bad. They're intermittently bad, inconsistent. I'm not surprised when they're nice, and I'm not surprised when they're evil. I just got the newsletter and the cover story is talking about how this driver got home when is dad was dying. It may be true, but I've heard stories similar where the driver was lied to and never made it home.

 

And my point is I told them I was "too tired to drive," and they asked me to do it anyway saying they had no one else. THAT is illegal. THAT is what I said to the LP guy and he said, "sometimes we lie and say we don't have other drivers when we really do. We're a big company. We can find a way." And he was very condescending about the whole thing. And then he went on about our responsibility to safety to the motoring public. I said if you felt any responsibility to the motoring public you wouldn't break the law and pressure me to drive tired! Here you are making a huge issue about me feeling dizzy when I don't feel dizzy anymore and you completely overlook me being pressured to drive tired.

Now let's see, how many people DIE because of fatigue related crashes and how many die because of because of neural problems that made them feel dizzy when they get tired but then feel fine after rest. How many can you find smart guy? It wasn't the first time I felt dizzy when I was tired before! When I'm very tired I don't think clearly, I'm a better driver when I'm drunk. And then I said something about my truck being stuck in a rest area 180 miles away from where I was because I had to go home and see the doctor.

And this prick felt it necessary to remind me that it wasn't MY truck. It was Schneider's truck. That's whose name is all over it, don't you know. What a prick. Like I didn't know that. My point was that truck was MY responsibility and if I told those guys to go #### themselves for being such condescending dick heads truck abandonment would go on MY dac report. I could give a #### about that truck. It's got 700,000 miles on it and is 4 years old and has several issues that Schneider refuses to fix. That truck belongs in Mexico. It is was MY truck it would have been in Mexico.

That prick did a really awful job at trying to convince me out of making a workmen's comp claim. He could have gotten on there and sweet talked me out of it, but he didn't. He talked down to me and negated anything I said, which only made me want to file the claim so much more. You know, if they hadn't pushed me into working so much because they treated their drivers better and were able to retain them, I probably wouldn't have hurt myself. But since they chose to break the LAW and chose to treat me like an idiot who might not be aware of a serious brain problem then none of this would have happened.

And by the way, the doctor thought it was completely ridiculous that I even came in.