TMC publicly shaming its drivers.

Leave. Find another company.

All you are going to see from here on out is bad feelings and difficulty with drivers vs management.

For a long time companies have tried to shame workers into collective socialist improvement in work, in other words beatings will continue until morale improves and accidents drop. Thats flat BS. All you are going to do is create a fear feeling among those who DO NOT want to be broadcast all over the freaking fleet.

Why?

Any time a driver in some outfit screws up bad enough they get laughed out of work anyway. If they were not fired first.

So Thats my thought. This company you speak of is acting in very bad taste and it will bite them very badly when they find out that the drivers don't care to turn in quality work anymore.

 

Bingo.

 

You have to be able to prove it or they come after you for what is called Libel or even Slander. They can actually assess through lawsuit economic damages against you for that.

 

Don’t screw up and your info won’t be on the morning message. Seems simple enough to me.

 

Picking up a preloaded trailer that is overweight. Do you really want to open this can of worms.

 

Tell that to the two teens in a black Madza that forced their way past my trailer on the left in a flying S overpass from 35 E to 30 W back in friday night late in oct of 2000. Im still angry with them because I had to position the truck towards the outer wall looking into second story houses just beyond wondering if I will be killed trying to save them from being crushed or decapitated under my trailer.

Sometimes in my darker moods I might just not bother doing anything until the smash. Let the police clean up the mess. THAT would be all over the papers next day. Its not me the company driver I worry about when I do my work well enough, it's everyone else around me that has the potential to ruin my day if not my future.

 

Don’t take the trailer until it’s legal? Communicate everything in writing if they try and force you to take it.

 

EVERYONE has a screwup or 2 in their closets, whether it be your fault or not. To have a company publicly try and shame someone for it is wrong. Company has a problem with an incident? Discuss it privately with the offender.

 

Here a hypothetical for you. Preloaded trailer is overweight with no scale at shipper and no cat scale on the immediate route so dont know your overweight. Then you get pulled into a weigh station and get popped. Who pays the fine?

 

AND buy a journal, one of those big fat inch thick legal sized hard bound books sold in Christian bible stores with nice lines on every paper.

TRANSFER as it happens asap into writing ALL associated trip number on down through all information about a load. Including pay miles etc.

THEN if something like a overweight trailer comes up, start adding in writing who you qualcommed to back and forth trying to solve this problem. THAT way its documented to the Nth degree. When you are pulled in someday (And you will be...) they will ask you hard questions designed to reduce you to uh, but, eh, ah, you see, etc etc etc. However with that hand written journal record and a copy of the bills etc (A little more work but is VERY easy to prove against company management with their OWN written data telling you to do something you know is not legal or whatever.)

When they see you can clearly state your case and call out so and so in the dispatch or shop or whomever and PULL HIM into the office and make them ask HIM hard questions about why they forced YOU to take a overweight trailer.

Finally but not last. You are bottom line as all drivers are the agent of the company they represent or work for. As the agent you CANNOT be forced into taking the overweight trailer. DOT would be overjoyed to write you citation in state after state and more states all day the long. You don't want that.

 

You do.

The minute you hook onto a trailer thats heavy, your drives airbags suspension gauge if any will reveal that you need more than the usual PSI (Marked by a pernament marker on the chrome dial itself at the PSI, say 47 pounds or whatever it is for a perfect 34000 pounds on your drives.

Your ### end heavy trailer will transmit it's onery behavior to your steering wheel hands soon enough. It will try to WAG you. You would hate it.

CAT all loads, keep the bills to prove overweight. Back to the shipper it goes. DO not let them bully you into taking anything across any scale.

A side note.

Virginia likes to write grossly overweight loads against company back in my time. Saved me a 3000 dollar ticket for a 134500 pound load that failed their stephens city scales one day. That was a very bad day. Actual paper weight figure best guess would closer to 145000 but in those days 134500 is the last number before it broke so that was what it wrote for.

I eventually quit that company because of reasons associated with excessive awake time and way too heavy boxes. It was rather dangerous back in those days without a sleeper truck.