An old man's career goes flat, Snackbar moves to open deck

A lot of dispatch is done from home now too. My dispatcher and his GF(who is a dispatcher) and Carey all work out of their house now. Heck, if I get to old and decrepit to do flatbed, but still want to work here, I would be tempted to sit behind a desk in FL answering phones in my jammies

 

The hardest part...being home and not having time to attack the honey do list.

 

After 13:00 on a Friday and still no load, approaching 48 hrs. sitting here...they had freight for the drivers coming out of orientation, but nothing for existing drivers. I hope I don't have to sit here all weekend

 

Well, I had to get a little temperamental today. My fill-in dispatcher works out of his house in GA, and as of his quitting time, I still hadn't seen any hint of a load. When he sent out a message about who was on the weekend shift, I messaged him and asked that before he signed off for the week to put me in for hometime. He asked when, I said ASAP. How long? A couple days, enough time to re-evaluate how things are going. If I am gonna sit like this with every load, I am #### sure not gonna spend months at a time away from home babysitting this truck. Within 5 minutes I get a call from the corporate office(which I am at) wondering what is going on. I basically spelled it out that if this how it's gonna work here, then I don't need to live on the road so long just to sit, I can sit at home and that I was very concerned that if freight is so slow now that I sit for 36-48 hrs between every load, how bad is it gonna be in a few months when winter is in full swing and the economy tanks further. We had a good 25-30 min convo about all the down time on every load, and also I wasn't too happy that I had been here since Wednesday evening and it looked like I was gonna be here all weekend. All this down time when I informed them on Monday when I was coming in, and when I was gonna be ready for a load...and that I am about the last person left on the yard that was here when I showed up to drop the elevator load, they had all this advanced notice and they're still looking for a load? They had almost 5 days, and plenty of drivers came in and left under a load after I got here. Then suddenly a load appeared while I was still on the phone. I hate to be a dick...but if I am spending 6-8 weeks out here, doing everything I can to be productive and profitable, sitting only discourages me from trying so hard. 4+ months and I haven't seen 1 month over 10k miles, it makes me wonder if they really needed me that bad when they hired me, of if they just needed a truck babysitter.

 

That was kinda the plan. I spoke to Kim, and she and I get along fairly well. I basically told her not to worry, I wasn't planning an exit, just gonna invest less time on the road and go home more often if all this down time continued. I reassured her that I still like it here and still get along with everyone for the most part, and still like what we haul (with the exception of elevator loads, but hey, they all can't be cake runs like the one I am on now). And I also put the bug in her ear about the tarp situation and how hard it is to get a good set...heck, assign a new set to every regular OTR driver, and if they have to keep getting repairs or replacement tarps then you can identify who's tearing up the equipment so they can take corrective action. I also let her know that just being able to discuss issues like this helps ease the frustration, whether or not anything gets resolved, getting the frustration off my chest helped. I also got her to laugh a little when I told her that I just need to learn to do what my wife says when she tells me to just shut up because even with the down time, we're doing fine financially.