Company tells me drive route that is longer more miles?

OK this might be a bit technical but it’s really irking me. There’s a certain destinations that our company frequents and there’s basically two major routes that we can take to get there. One route runs 1448 miles. And the second route runs 1368 miles. That’s an 80 mile difference. Here’s the problem I have. Listed as paid miles that comes through on the Qualcomm is 1288 miles. OK as a truck driver, when I get the paid miles I always do some extensive research and find the shortest trucking route I can to keep the miles close to what they are for paid miles.

so as I’m fairly new with this company I take off on the second route and I get about 100 miles down the road and my phones blowing up. I pull over and the dispatcher is telling me “we don’t go that way, you have to go the other way because that’s the route that our trucks run“. And I was like “well this is the closest route to run, it’s 20 minutes shorter timewise and it’s closer to the paid miles that you’re offering.“. He didn’t care. I was pissed, I sat there for a few minutes and then I called him back and asked him to adjust the paid miles by 80 miles since they were asking me to drive 80 miles further. “Sorry we can’t do that“. I sat there for a few more minutes and called him back again and said “well then I can’t drive the route that you request because you’re not paying me for it you’re asking me to drive for over two hours for free“. It’s more like three hours because coming out of their yard the first 50 miles you could only average 35 to 40 mph because you have to cut through a bunch of small towns to get to the interstate.

F- that, It’s always something with these companies isn’t it? They are directly telling me that if I want to drive for them and drive this route I have to drive for about 2 1/2 hours for free. Not happening.

and by the way, the route that I chose, both of the routes that are options are major interstates. It’s not like I was going through the back woods somewhere. They just want me to run the other route because that’s the way all the truckers run and if something happened someone would be close by.

 

No tolls either route. But my point is, I’m already eating about 80 miles on the paid miles even going the shorter route. By them telling me I have to go there chosen route, that makes it about 160 miles of free driving.

 

Are usually keep pretty cool but the last time I called him back I was kind of a smart Alec. I said do you punch in on a time clock when you come in at 6 AM to start your shift? Well tomorrow when you come in and start working, wait until about 9 AM to punch in. Lol the guy gets it he just doesn’t care. “It’s just the way it is”

 

Sorry pal, with all due respect it’s not quite that simple. Do you ever spoke to a labor lawyer? They’ll tell you otherwise. If you do business in America and you employ American workers here to pay them fairly and by the law.

Also buy under paying your workers and forcing them to have to look for new employment in an industry that doesn’t like job hoppers, is a negative mark against me, a employee who did nothing wrong and had to “job hop“ because the company was trying to rip their drivers off. It is reasons like this, exact reasons like I’m describing above white companies complain about 102% annual turnover with drivers. It’s because they do crap like this and they get away with it and most drivers don’t want to take them on.

It’s not a rule, it’s ripping off drivers. What if they made a rule about “you will report to work an hour before your shift starts each day and conduct daily duties for free” would you do it? Of course not. Nobody would. Is that a company “rule” I think not. It’s called being a thief.