Thinking about USA

I heard that story too. I will be fine.

 

Ok, about 3 weeks ago, I was at a grocery warehouse in Northern Virginia. I had already been docked for about an hour when another USA company truck comes in. A newer Prostar decked out with goodies to the point that it looked like either a veteran driver or a serious supertrucker. Anyhow, he gets ready to back and lines up 3 times and can't get in the hole. He almost hit a Knight truck and a PTL truck. Wasn't a real difficult back but I'll give him that it was raining and foggy. Well anyhow, after the 3rd attempt he gets pissed and tears arse out of the dock area almost hitting a yard dog and the Knight driver who had been trying to flag him down. Well he makes a big loop and when he comes back I manage to stop him and I showed him a gap where he could straight back and get docked.

Fast forward. We are all lined up in receiving and waiting to get our bills. Well he started talking with me about USA. Turned out he was in his first month in a truck from upgrade. Then we talked about miles per week. I told him I was averaging between 2200-2500 per week. He started laughing and said that his slowest week yet was 3000 and he averaged 3600. Well everybody kinda looked at him and I asked him where he was finding time for that. His answer, "Oh it's easy. I'm running 3 log books so I always have hours to drive!". I just stared at him like he had antlers. The other drivers just shook their heads.

So I told the kid (he told me he was 22) that Safety was going to catch him and fire him. He said that wouldn't happen because he only scanned in the legal logs. Then he said the only problem he was having was remembering to log his fuel stops on the right log. I told him he better stop right now if he valued his job. He said his trainer had showed him how to run multiple books and get away with it.

What the eff? If this is true, where are they getting these ###### trainers and what are they teaching students? I remembered his truck number and spent 30 minutes talking myself out of calling safety and snitching. I figure he will tell on himself before too long.

 

He will get caught, He will get called in to one of the terminals with a safety person, and get reamed. Hopefully he will stop doing this afterward. If not he will lose his job with negative information on his DAK, and with less then a years experience it's going to be hard to get another good job.

 

I do have to wonder about something though. If the average weekly miles at USA Truck is somewhere around 1800? (goodchoice10 this is a question based on observations from other posters) How is this new upgrade getting twice the average miles?

 

I think it really depends on how well your FM trusts you or how much you will let them run. The fleet I'm in now I run every available hour. I get loads just about as soon as I ask for them and haven't had to sit and wait yet. My FM has even dropped hints that as long as I'm willing to go then more can be piled on. It's just not worth it to me to run illegal. I made that mistake once in my first month, it was caught immediately and I got the proverbial "prison rape" from a safety director at a terminal. 6 months ago and a different FM though. I get as much work as I can handle now and I'm happy. A short term boost in income does not compensate for the risk of a hefty fine, CSA points, or losing my job. I just can't understand why some are so shortsighted they fail to realize that.

 

I was rereading the post again about this drivers hard time docking his unit. I know from personal experience sometimes you just have bad days. I remember one day at Kroger in Houston Texas, no margin of error at all, it took me quite some time to get in that #### dock properly. A Marten Driver got out and helped me in, then came over and said something funny and we both laughed. Just yesterday after a 400 + mile driving day I had a hard time backing my loaded trailer at the repair shop here in Little Rock. I had plenty of room, just could not get the right setup and made about 10 pullups. I guess though any backup where you don't do any damage is OK. I still have nightmares about the day I made a castings delivery at Smoot Industries in Kansas City, Kansas. No dock and no room to make a 180 to get turned around. I had to back out about a 1/4 mile back to the main road then get turned around then back back into the facility where they used a forklift, pallet jack and chains to unload me.

 

The words Thinking, and USA Truck..........

used in the SAME sentence !!!!!

 

Someone had better stop this fool, seriously. If Safety doesn't get him, the relative lack of rest will. The differrence is, if Safety gets to him first, he might not end up in a ditch trapped in mangled wreckage...

 

Don't suck in to some lying arse truck driver.

Also with literally thousands of trucking companies out there, why would someone zero in on one company that so many bad mouths. This is your career, it's not feeding some abandoned puppy on your porch.

 

Exactly right! 3600 mpw in a 63 mph truck? (3) log books?

Really, someone listened to this person in the first place, thern bothered to repeat it, now folks are debating it as if it's true?

come on.............................