USA Truck - only as a last resort

Thanks. I just spit coffee on my keyboard.

Count me among those that are really irritated by texting gibberish that bleeds over into the real world--kids writing that way on their school papers, etc.

The first kid that handed me a paper with the word what spelled W-A-T, would be displaying the letter H written in magic marker on their forehead for at least a week. Is it really so much more of a bother to type one more letter?

 

The Qual Comm charges by the character for messages, so multiply by 2,000 or 2,500 drivers day in and out and you can understand why they abbreviate as much as possible.

I'm just sayin...

 

So you have the qualcomm system in your truck right? You get messages in short hand (abbreviated beyond recognition) right?

Dont you also have a cell phone? Whether it be personal or Company? Dont you have Dispatches number?
So if you dont understand a message, instead of messaging back and forth getting even more angry, why not just call and ask, hey i didnt understand that message, could you please explain what MT means, or whatever the case may be? Communication is key, well it only works if its a two way street. You yelling at dispatch or the FM, doesnt get you very far, and its not gonna get them very far if they do it to you either.
I say kill'em with kindness. Keep your cool and keep it professional. If you think they are being unreasonable.....get a digital voice recorder! make sure you always have the upper hand!

 

I used to think the same thing but changed my mind after a recent visit to the HQ in Van Buren. The way I see it, each one of these dispatchers have to deal with something like 50 or 60 trucks each. You've probably got something like 30 or so of these guys all calling in by phone or Qualcomm at pretty much the same time (keep in mind that, during nights and weekends, they're also running a skeleton crew so the ratio can be even worse during those times - and the average response times show it). Couple that with whatever crap they're getting from the load coordinators and you can see how one might look to save as much time as possible, in any way possible. All those abbrevations are probably just a method of saving time in communicating with one driver in order to continue keeping tabs on or communicating with the other 59 trucks under his/her watch.

Recently I've been trying to make it a point to communicate more on the QC and a little less on the phone. Sometimes I find I even get a slightly faster response that way (but I'll still go back to my old habit of using the phone when I have something to say which just can't be adequately conveyed over the QC). As much as we like to rag on the dispatcher we have to remember that, in some ways, that chair in front of the screen can also be its own little version of Hell at times.

That being said, I still think it would alleviate a lot of confusion to have a set of agreed-upon standard abbreviations. Something like "MT" = empty; "S/L" = stoplight; "RxR" = railroad crossing, etc. Making up abbreviations on the fly can backfire: it's hard to be on the same page when only one party has the book.

 

my company gave me a list of common abreviations in orientation, pretty useful actually.

 

Heh, nope... I'm posting this from the sleeper of a beat-up 9400i with 520,000+ miles.

You see, I did a 14-year stint in the military - another large organization where (sometimes) the right hand doesn't always know what the left hand is doing. And I've seen the same communication issues between departments there - along with the same less-than-desireable outcomes that result from them. Same story, different line of work.