Eagle Transport (Gas Haulers)

You'll do alright Clare ... everything seems a little "left handed" the first time you enter a new terminal or talk to someone you've never seen before ... and sometimes it may seem that they don't really have time for you ... but alot of that is just perception with a little anxiety thrown in for good measure. Gotta remember the turn-over rate in drivers is fairly high with any common carrier petroleum tanker outfit and they are pretty much always looking for new people to fill an open spot ... just be persistant if it is what you really want to do and someone will notice you before too long ... hang in there!!!

 

Why is the turnover so high,is it the work load?

 

That is a good question phantom, the apc co is quality transport, he said they go to NJ, IL, and AL. I'm not interested in that. Right now I'm setting up here by Charlotte waiting to get loaded not gonna make it today. I might call and next week I have to take a day off for taxes and ill go by then unless I get a chance this week.

 

Copy that..check,double check and triple check..As far as money,i would think $150-$180 a day to start is pretty good..assuming you work 6 days.And still be home everyday..Sounds like a winner to me..At the end of the day,OTR pay is not that far off from gas hauling at the end of the year..$50-55k..Depending on freight,who you drive for and if they keep you rolling..I mean getting mty at 9am and being dispatched on a load at 2pm that doesn't pick up till the next day sucks..

 

Yeah that would suck. Running these containers sucks it seems like evry week there is a problem. I don't think I have run 5 days in a row in 2 months, alswys truck problem or load problem or something.

I call the terminal and the manager was gone for the day but I got his name and the woman I spoke to said she would let him know I called and told me if I don't hear back from him tomorrow to call back, so I will.

 

Getting ready to leave for work ... just got up ... wiping the sleep from my eyes ... I'll be in my truck by 6 PM ... drive it to Charlotte ... fuel it up at ETC ... walk in the dispatch office ... open my box ... put my hand in and pull out my loads for tonight ... walk back out to my truck and drive about 2 miles to the first terminal ... load what they tell me to load where they tell me to load it and carry it to where they tell me to carry it and drop it in the tank they say to drop it into ... repeat for each successive load ... drive my truck back to Monroe ... park it for my day driver ... go home. If I have any trouble, Eagle has it's own shop on the terminal grounds ... I'll be through and back home in 12 hours barring any unforseen problems.

Turnover rate ... as simple as it sounds in the above paragraph ... you can make some huge mistakes unless you watch every step of the above mentioned process ... other than preparing the dispatch papers ... you will do everything else ... and it has to be right.

 

Roger that transmission..Love the way broke down this evening runs..LOL

 

Yeah Smokie ... we are the same way ... I log into the system in Monroe when I do my pre-trip and before I leave the yard I have a message giving me the loads for the shift. When I get to Charlotte I pull the re-cap from my box along with the profile sheets for the indivisual stores ... other than that it is all handled by the EOBR.

Don't know about you but I am developing a rather strong hatred for that EOBR ... been working with it for about 3 years and I have to say it is a great deal better than when we first got the darn things and they were trying to develop the software to make it do what it was supposed to do ... but it still isn't up to snuff yet ... IMHO.

There are still times when I can't get a green bar ... when nothing will come in and nothing will go out ... sometimes it wont let me log in until I get to the yard. Then once I am in the yard at ETC, and close to the base station, it will do exactly what it is supposed to do ... heck, don't even have to have it in the cradle to send and receive.

Sometime it will hang up and just sit there with that little wheel turning for hours and I can't tell wether they are doing a software update or what da heck is happening.

Sometimes I will need an alternate terminal to load from due to lack of product available ... they used to have us do an "exception" in those cases ... now they are telling us to just refuse the load and they will send us an update. They never have settled on a specific proceedure for handling each situation so I usually just use my cell phone and ring up the call center in Selma and ask what they want me do do.

I've noticed that if you try to load before midnight and can't get product ... and then the call center says to wait until after midnight to see if they picked up any allocation ... but it doesn't pick up any allocation ... then they send you to another terminal. If you get product from the alternate terminal ... when they try to send you the update it will never come through ... something about the date change gets hung up in the system, because when you got to the first terminal you told the EOBR that you had arrived and yet you didn't put any information into the system and it wont let you refuse the DR and ask Selma for a whole new workup on the load. Then they try to get me to do a "BIRD reset" and voila ... every load I did for the night comes back at me and I have to fill them all out again ... For the life of me ... I can't see how da heck they made something sooooooo simple ..... so darn complicated.

You just wait until they start doing logs on that blasted thing ... then the doo-doo will really hit the fan!!!

I think I destroyed one EOBR ... the one that went to 9615 (the truck that your friend had that terrible accident in) The IT people took one look at it when I showed it to them and confiscated it ... said they had never seen one act up like that and I havn't seen it since. They gave me another EOBR from another truck and have had that one for about 6 months.

Ya know when that driver got killed in Maryland ... they pulled the info from his EOBR and it gave the exact time, date, speed, location and other incidentals as it happened ... guess it has it's place somewhere in the system, but it still has a way to go before it gets two thumbs up from me.