lack of empty trailers

I understand. I spent a half day in the Sacto area one time looking for "phantom empty trailers" that dispatch assured me would be there. After about the fourth or fifth place where the trailer was already gone, I said "screw it" and bobtailed on down the road to get my preloaded trailer. Of course I was supposed to bring them an empty, but frankly, I was so pissed by that time, that I didn't give a ####.

Dispatcher tried to chew me out, but didn't get very far with it either. I'd just had a belly full of their BS.

 

thats a big negitive. they did have some new 14' trls, but even the new trailers still go with the "14xxxx" number....so if you hook to a trl with a number 149876, kinda reminds you, u got a 14' trailer. i saw those in manteno before, but those are all gone, and replaced with those '111' trailers. those '111' series trls are 13' 6" trls.

 

It drove us crazy when we were OTR. Frankly it's why we rarely stayed at a terminal. We'd go to a truck stop and stay hooked to our empty if we had one. Now if we didn't have a pretrip we'd drop but if we knew had one or knew we were getting one soon we'd keep it.

 

Perhaps it is the 110 series that are the 14 foot trailers. All I know is the trailer I pulled had those beginning numbers (110 or 111) were brand new and shiny, skirts, brand new tires and brakes etc and my qualcomm was beeping like crazy with messages, Illegal trailer blah blah blah No 14's allowed in Illinois, where did you get that trailer etc etc.

Here's another good one: Go to the shipper, drop empty pick up preloaded trailer, send loaded call, bee bop down the road, Beep: Illegal Trailer please send VIN and plate number. OH No they Dint-- I didn't just spend 1.25 hours sweeping the empty out, sliding the tandems back, parking it in the back lot, come back around and weigh bobtail, go back to loaded lot search and search 500 trailers for my loaded one, hook it, go weigh it drive across the street to the truck stop to slide tandems for weight (they wouldn't let us do it on the brewery's property) come back around and wait wait wait to get back on scale just to have them tell me illegal trailer now? lol.

 

dont think it says 'illegal trailer' as the exact words....invalid trailer maybe. I've had that message before, but that is why i dont roll after i send in my loaded call till i see that "loaded call received and updated" message. i think the 110 and 111 are all 13'6"....not tryin' to argue...but i did see a 14xxxx series trailer next to a 110 trailer, and you could see the height difference.........this was in Manteno..........will have to ask about that one....

 

I was on a hunt for an empty last week, did the mac 38 and everything. I got a preplan to go 117 miles to pick up an empty trailer. I figured ok, if that's the way they want to do it, I'll play their game and treated it just like any other preplan. Did the mac 9 and accepted it, got to the location and did all 4 macs at once, then got my next next dispatch. The funny thing about this was that when I got there another Swift driver was leaving with a loaded trailer. He asked me what load I was there for and I told him I was after an empty. He told me where he dropped his and that it was clean and ready to roll. It was also the ONLY Swift trailer on the whole lot....and it had a flat tire. Needless to say, I was not a happy camper!

On the plus side though, they did pay me for those 117 miles I drove to pick it up.

 

OK I dug up my logs for that trip in September. HAHA are you ready for this big guy???












You were right the trailer that I had started with 14 my bad. Probably message was invalid trailer too. But my enterprising DM may have said that it is illegal in Illinois-- that might be where I am getting that from lol.

 

I'm on the hunt for one in Kansas right now, since yesterday after a drop at a walmart store. I've driven from south central KS to Salina now and still nothing, lost a great 1800 mile load for over the weekend. Last place I went to saw me coming in bobtailed looking at about 4 trailers in their lot and told me me hell no in some other words. First place I saw trailers and they wont let me in hah, they seemed a bit annoyed at seeing another swift bobtail I guess.

First thing they usually say is "There was just another swift bobtailed looking for an empty here before you, didn't he tell swift we don't have any empty or available trailers", I know I do and they still send me same directions right after lol.

 

understand how you feel about comin' in bobtail, BUT customers may have MT trailers, but they've gotta have them. Each customer has a minimum number they have to have so that they can have preloaded trailers for drivers to come pick up. i've been annoyed seeing a preplan having listed the load as a preload, then get there, and ends up being a live load. why? because they ran out of MT trailers...why? because maybe they didnt care they gave as many bobtail trucks that came in, an MT, now that driver that was to have a preloaded trailer is now inconvienced and now has to wait 2-3 hrs to get loaded, and maybe that driver dont have 2-3 hrs on their clock to get that load delivered ontime. alot of 'maybes', i know.....but.....just sayin' =)