Is this a dispatcher issue?

Divide the estimated miles that you get by 48, this gives you the time you need to do the load.

if the time isn’t the same as they are giving you, tell them you can’t do the run and talk to their managers.

The standard for figuring the time needed to do a job is 48 mph, not 70, not 55 but 48.

 

Back when I was working inside a carrier, I saw more dumb dispatchers come and go; guys who never even drove a truck routing drivers down ridiculous routes and expecting the truck to be able to fly as fast as a jet. I had one guy who used to route trucks down 2-lane roads diagonally across central PA and expected them to maintain a 55 mph average! I had to break it to the guy that in those mountains, you're luck to maintain a 30 mph average..

 

I worked for a company that would tell me when dispatched that "....you will notice that you are already late on this one but...." And always followed up by "...you are the only one who can do this load...." I got good at apologizing. Actually, more often than not I would get to the consignee's warehouse and they would snidely say "We don't want your load!" This is why I never want to go back to bumping docks again!

 

Sometimes I'll get loads like that. I always take them but I always send a message that I will not be able to deliver until at least four to six hours (depending on the distance) after I think I can get there. They reschedule.

Having done this a bunch of times, I learned an interesting thing my company does. The window they put on the preplan isn't always the real window. The end time is sometimes as much as 36 hours earlier than the actual window for "productivity" reasons. It seems a bunch of drivers here will take all the time available to deliver rather than getting it there as soon as possible. Who'd a thunk it?

 

I’d strongly suggest you take a picture of every one of those loads and store them in their own album. This way, should you ever get questioned by ownership or management, you can quickly pull up the pics as proof as to what’s actually going on. If you rely on digging through their system to find stuff, you’ll struggle to remember all of it.

I’m currently going through a situation where I take pics of my weekly trip envelopes, to prove all the accessory pay I’ve never been paid. Right now, I’m over $1K of additional pay I’m owed. What’s worse is I don’t trust a single person out of my assigned domicile, so I’m going to sit down with a manager at another location. It’s a shame this industry is like this.

 

Communicate with dispatcher when you get a plan you know would be late on.

 

That's it. We get qualcomm messages all the time saying "Guys and gals, we need you to COMMUNICATE with dispatch if you're going to be late. Don't wait until you're late to tell us something."

I've picked up many loads I knew I couldn't do. I've had the load sent to me along with a message "Don't worry about delivery time, we're rescheduling". You think they know they're going to get a call from me #####ing about not being able to deliver on time? LOL They KNOW me now.

The company I work for now has some serious issues, but ever since me and the top boss man had words about me sitting without a load unpaid and I can't go home or leave the truck, they've been doing much better. I haven't sat since. I might have to wait for a pickup but at least the load is on the truck.

My old dispatcher, who has since quit, chewed me out for "turning down long miles and then complaining about miles" when I had put in to be home on April 18th for a week vacation and he sends me a load delivering to New Jersey on the 17th and he got pissed I turned it down. I live in Louisiana. I wound up talking to his boss about that. I told him nobody is going to pull that crap on me. I said he had several weeks to get me long miles, why wait until 3 days before I'm supposed to be home for a vacation to FINALLY give me a good load with long miles that I have to turn down because I'll be nowhere near home when I deliver?

 

Try 40 or less.

You need some serious power to average 48 in the mountains.