What is your turnover?

Step back from the keyboard, B. Now you are the one who's jumping to conclusions. Your post is sound, sure. But hold the phone. I wasn't your typical driver back in 1999. I worked part-year during summers to pay college tuition. I wasn't interested in working for a great outfit then, only a good one. I chose those companies because I didn't want to lie to a great company and say I was interested in working for them long-term knowing I'd be gone in three months or five months. The smaller outfits fit me fine back then. Unfortunately, smallness meant risk. I took that risk because it was best for both me and the companies.

I don't buy the notion that drivers contribute even half to the turnover problem. Companies mostly contribute to that problem through their practices.

There are lots of companies around my hometown who don't have these turnover problems. They don't pay any more than a company such as CRE or Swift, yet they don't advertise either. They don't have to advertise. They know how to treat drivers.

 

That's not misinterpretation, but it is a lack of facts being supplied. And one could even go further and make the suggestion that while you felt uncomfortable telling tales to large companies, you felt okay telling the same story to smaller ones. Could the fact that you never planned to work there long term and only intended to use thses companies mean that you contributed to their demise?

And my basic point remains, that in a great many cases, the driver is just as responsible for the horrendous turnover rates as are the companies. And if you have been around long enough, you have seen a driver leave a good job for nothing more than the promise of a different truck, or a different route, yet end up making no more or the same money that he did before.

I have no problem with someone who leaves for a very specific reason, such as hometime with his family, or markedly higher pay, but jumping to a different situation without actually improving yourself is a drag on the industry.

And again, people that do that don;t get through our door. It costs too much to send them through our training, and the schooling, to have someone only stay a month or so. We still think 26% annual turnover is too much, but comparative to the rest of the trucking world, it's wonderful.

 

My companies knew what I was doing. Remember the 10-year work history requirement? Yeah, I had to tell these outfits on my apps what I'd been doing the previous nine months when I applied with them. They hired me on knowing full well I was a student and would be leaving after a few months.

What other way-off conclusions are you going to jump to, man?

 

Aaah, Tip, my lad, you have to realize how often your postsz provide such a wonderful, high altitude jumping off point for way off conclusions.

 

Let me consider these supposed way-off conclusions for a minute.

You mean the conclusions I've made about companies such as Swift paying 70% of the miles one of its truck's wheels turn? I must have been hallucinating while I was working there.

Or how about that peak where I claim companies that advertise every day of the world are no good and should be avoided like the plague? You got me. Those companies only hire loser drivers who always quit only a few weeks after they're hired, I guess.

Or how about the claim that a company sucks if it has acres of trucks left by quitters sitting in its yard? I guess a bunch of empty cleaned-outs that got that way from the droves of quitters means the company is a great outfit, as it's the drivers who are always to blame. My bad, man. I'll try to do better.

Or how about huge orientation classes that companies form week after week, month after month, year after year? I slipped. I now see the light. Companies such as C.R. England, Swift, Clark, Central, and J.B. never advertise and hire at most 10 people a month each. Thanks for setting me straight. Those tens and tens, maybe hundreds, of guys, not to mention newspaper help-wanteds, who've told me otherwise are nothing but a pack of liars, ######!

Or if a company that is plagued by high turnover year after year obviously has a stake in seeing that high turnover and thus causes it intentionally? I guess companies, with their low profit margins, are getting donations from charities to help cover the fixed costs of their empty cleaned-outs. I had no idea this was happening. Thanks for the heads-up.

And then the lumper scam peak? Come on...I have to give this one up? My theory that lumpers have to give a chunk of what a driver pays them back to the docks? I guess I can let this one go. Okay, okay. Those dregs unloading a load at a nearby dock DO make more than a brain surgeon. I guess it pays to be a Latino lumper, eh? I had it all wrong.

Are these the nut-case conclusions you're talking about? I'm but a nut-case conspiracy theorist, sounds like. But thanks to you, B, I've personally been reformed. From now on, my head will be in the right place. I will be a delusioned company guy who thinks my fellow driver is rotten--not the companies. Companies always play by the rules and are nothing but innocent victims, after all. Yes, I see that now.

Yeah, you keep dreamin'. You'd better wake up from that dream sleep.

 

I doubt that you have reformed, and I am not sure that I want to take credit for it. I am sure that the next time the sun comes peeking over the horizon, you will be standing there in a tinfoil hat, telling the world how a bunch of recruiters and company goons tried to have their way with you under the cover of darkness.

It's nice that you have such an active fantasy life.

 

:smt039 Hi Tip,

I just wanted to say, I'm with you 100%. Any driver thats been out here for longer than a year or two knows this full well. And that "B" guy sounds like a company plant for sure...I guess he can't bring his self down to our truck driver way of thinking.

....Anyways, just about every driver with a brain knows how the game is played with the "BIG" trucking companies...only thing now there's kind of been a reversal in fortune. Trucking companies are now a dime a dozen...to stay ^^^afloat^^^ they have to...and they have no to blame but themselves.

Drivers pick a good one, and earn each others trust and loyalty. Your worth more than just a warm body in a truck getting it down the road.:smt040

"B"...no response is needed.

 

Aah, but a response from B is needed. I think the people here would be facinated to know that they have a moderator who is also a company plant. Disagreeing with Tip doesn't make you a company plant, it's just proof of your sanity.

 

Tip;

I 100% agree with what you are saying. I have been on both sides of the fence, and a huge problem in the industry is the fact dispatchers really need no qualifications, not all because they are good ones, but in general, dispatchers don't understand, or want to understand there jobs. Look at the qualifications, and the monies a trucker must spend in order to hold that CDL. Look at the laws we must abide by, the additional work we do for the company we work for. If dispatchers were placed in a 3 training program, to include being out on the road with a trucker for minimum of 2 weeks, they would possibly get the picture. After everything I read, especially on turnover , is due to impossible earnings, and bad dispatchers.

 

This is all a bunch of hogwash coming from Tip and his followers. I am an example as to why there's so much turnover in this industry, and I solely put the blame on myself. I started out with PAM in August, 2003. Left there to go to BMT in July, 2005. Quit BMT because I didn't like the small trucks or the work involved in loading cars and went to CFI in Sept. '05. After just two weeks there I left because I got a traffic citation in my personal vehicle a week after I got a citation for running a red light in their truck. The citation in my personal vehicle could've ruined my trucking career, and was the reason I was asked to resign from CFI. But alas a good attorney has kept me in this industry that I love. In the meanwhile, I took a job spotting trailers at a local chemical plant. This same company that had the contract for spotting there, Industrial Transport Services, also had sleeper trucks and regional runs. Once the afore mentioned citation was banished from my record, I hopped into one of ITS' sleeper trucks and pulled a dry bulk tanker until July '06 when I was hired by Anheuser Busch to be a Clydesdale Handler. After a month or so of trying my hand at that, I quit and am now with KLLM and have been since October. Each and every one of these moves, with the exception of the citation one, was done so because I thought the grass was greener. Fact is, if you're going to drive OTR, the only differences are the type of truck you drive and what your hauling. Everything else depends on you. As for me now, I'm going to make it work here at KLLM for the next five years minimum. The grass tastes the same no matter which company's truck you're chewing on it from.