Maybe someone has a good answer for this..

Problem is,if you drive for a large fleet chances are your consignee has already "met" a representative of your Company.
Best thing to do is make your drop and leave the property,running your mouth about your miserable job or life or whatever other negative
content should be avoided.

Whining truck drivers are the new standard,dont be one and you'll stand out in a good way.

 

The problem I have with that concept is in most cases, the dock worker who you actually talk with and the dock worker who unloads your truck are minimum wage, often temps, who have absolutely no sway on anyone or anything other than getting your truck unloaded today.

My wife and I have occasionally delivered to a mom and pop outfit where the person on the forklift was probably also the owner who had ordered the freight and arranged delivery. But not often.

I will say taking the time to be pleasant and friendly has gotten my wife on and off docks quickly when everyone warned us it was a "bad" shipper/receiver.

 

I know from my factory days that a lot of those dockworkers don't have adequate heating or cooling either. Complaining about the fact you couldn't run your A/C so you actually had to sweat is probably not going to win you any friends from a crew who sweat all day.

 

I have never felt like I was the entire company or even an example of it ... but I have always tried to be friendly and as professional as possible ... no matter what my personal situation was at the time. Today I'm in a little different situation haulin' gas and most of the people I come into contact with are just convenience store clerks who simply sign the papers and I do everything else. But when I was over the road ... some 20 something years ago, I felt like they would have some gaul saying anything about me considering the kind of garbage that went on at some of those packing houses in California ... I distinctly remember having a Mexican fork lift Rambo repeatedly smashing into pallets of strawberries. When I confronted him about the God Awful mess he had made ... he pulled a blade on me. Yeah ... Right ... and they want me to put my best foot forward ... No Likely!!!

 

I worked local P & D for about three years, for a regional LTL. When you deal with LTL on a delivery level, that freight has been (mis)handled so many times on so many different docks, that it really is a wonder when things are NOT damaged.

And the driver is always the one who catches hell for it. It gets real old in a hurry. The best way I found to handle this was to just agree with everything the consignee says and get out as fast as you can. Absolutely no point in getting defensive. Particularly when it is so obvious that SOMEBODY at your company screwed the pooch...

Fact is, Y O U ARE the face of your company. It is just the way it is. Yeah, shippers and consignees dock personnel are quite often jerks. But getting into a pissing contest with them, just makes life that much more miserable for everyone.

 

You may just have the clerk or store owner sign for the load but there's plenty of people that see you when you drop. And you never know who they are. Now you are the company and what the public sees. I always had the best time when unloading at a station. I would have many people come up to me and ask questions about the truck or the product. After it was safe I would take the extra time and explain all their questions. I even had a VP of the company come up to me and ask questions. When I came off the truck and ran the terminal I would get calls from people about a driver that looked like sh** and was nasty to the people. It was always the common carriers we would hire that didn't care but the company drivers always looked sharp because they did represent the company.

With the major oil companies competition between each company is large. They spend the money to have their trucks look the best and provide a nice looking uniform. There was a time that my company did not want any of our trucks stuck in traffic in Los Angeles because they figured that people would see the large truck and think they were held up because of them. May be silly but it was fine by us drivers. So you never know who's watching!

 

You should here one of my shippers talk about PTL . They said all they need is popcorn to make watching their drivers a circus .
Then the receiver that likes to tell the story of a Schneider tanker driver that was a day late because when he got to the bottom of Monteagle he was so shook up he parked it for the day .
But if you expect to be miserable why choose to be a trucker in the first place ?