Refused a load.

Memorial Day was over layed the Saturday and they had a guy coming in hot with a hazmat load. That went 60 miles round trip. I was with Schneider and overlay pay was 65$ a day. They paid 15flat for any load under 100 miles plus mileage. I was at 50.cpm so 65 for the mileage and 35 for the unload. So the option was to work all day for 100$ and deal with hazmat or relax and enjoy my holiday I knew immediately I wasn’t accepting the preload, called em from the terminal and told em when I got the load around 12. So while I’m on the phone with them I’m eating some bbq with the 20 or so other drivers over layed for the weekend and they’re trying to tell me that they don’t have any other drivers that can take it and that it’ll keep my wheels turning.. Monday came around and they still had the preload on me along with my next load out of town. I remember hooking up and seeing the trailer sitting in the middle of the tankwash parking. I got a extra chuckle when they called me midday and asked me what happened with that load .

 

One thing about my comments that I need to stress clearly! While you might not lose your job over a refusal, you might find yourself in the load planners doghouse. I have seen situations get so bad a driver would quit. For every action, there is a reaction. This is why I have always said you as a driver MUST develop a good relationship with dispatch. I'm not saying take a lot of (redacted) off dispatch, just be careful which hill you pick to die on!

 

i have refused loads, either due to hating the customer, or the location (city or neighborhood), or just did not want to do it.

worse thing the company ever did to me..??

made me wait a bit longer for another load, which when i was called to come in..??

my answering machine took over, i was out doing something else.

 

It's not unusual for dispatch to do that..look at the frame rails on a van, and compare them to the rails on a flat or step. There have been Van's that break, they can not handle the weight

 

I usually don't refuse loads but I will ##### about em a lot. I find after awhile they stop giving you that crap to avoid the #####ing.

I have refused one load but I was fed up and ready to quit over it, probably my worst day in trucking. Cussed out dispatch, etc...which isn't my style. I know some guys live like that lol. They figured something else out, go figure.

 

I remember my very first load driving solo after finishing with my trainer. It was a dry van loaded with those huge paper rolls that weigh a few tons each. Drove it from central CA south to Long Beach, and as I was a block away from the delivery a car ran a red in front of me and I made a hard stop, and one of the paper rolls fell over in the trailer. Scared the crap out of me, and I didn't know what made that noise until I arrived at the delivery.

Over the last 5 years I've seen around 9 fatality truck accidents on the I-5 in NorCal and Oregon. At least 5 of them were trucks hauling those large paper rolls taking a corner too fast, the load shifts and takes the truck over. Guess what commodity I'll never haul again in my driving career?

 

No comment!!

 

I got a load one time to a pet store distribution center.

had to hand unload it.
And sort and inventory it .

it had about 200 different items and nothing was sorted or boxed. It was all just loose inside the trailer

looked like you had taken a pet store and just dumped it in the top of the trailer.

Drove 6 hours to get there and then spent 14 hours unloading it.
Was over 110 degrees in the trailer.

then the next week they tried to dispatch me to Hartz Mountain again.

nope , ain’t gonna happen cap’n !

 

Stopped at a little place in Philly one time to pick up some empty hazmat totes. Door is locked and pounding on it gets no response. I call the number off the ratecon, a nice lady answers, and says "OK I'll let em know."

Twenty minutes later, nothing has happened, I call again, friendly as usual. The nice lady says "oh I'm sorry about that. Im not sure what happened. I'll tell him again right now."

Twenty minutes later, still nothing. I call again. "There's STILL nobody there?" she exclaims. We make sure I'm at the right door of the right place. She says she will go down there and tell him in person.

Two minutes later dude comes out screaming at me about why am I calling every twenty minutes, and he's in the middle of something and he will get to me when he's done.

"I kept calling because nobody told me that. I can't know what's going on unless someone tells me. I didn't even know if you got the message."

"If you're going to mouth off, then you can just leave."

"If you call that mouthing off, then I'm already gone."

Had a different load booked within ten minutes.

Self dispatch does have its advantages.