Good night from...

Palace Station in Las Vegas.... Ah I feel good after three dozen of oysters at 3AM in the morning.....

 

Ick. It was a very hungry man who first ate an oyster.

Going to Missoula.

 

Lodi, OH, enrte Syracuse. Today after getting up, received a msg, service failure for late load. I did not recognize it, so I asked. It was a pplan that I never accepted, never even acknowledged, never even opened. I received it while home. I called in because I needed to Change pta, which the ECT did, but never recorded the phone call. So now we are getting SVCFAIL for pplans. Then sent a pplan, it was late by the time that they sent it, so I said no, gave my ETA for PU and DEL, taken off me. Then sent another one with special instructions, send ETA for del so that they can call the customer. Sent MAC 9, with ETA's, and then taken off me. Sent it again with the same instructions. Sent MAC with the same ETA's. Taken off me, then a msg, call DM. Checked out the load, and they where wondering how I could even give a ETA when the load had not even been t-called yet. In the same time, sent another, appt for 0900, and it was already 0930. Refused and told why. I knew the place. When late, they will work you in, in about 4-6 hours. Now, I am just following company policy, do not accept a pplan if you know that you are going to be late. Also, the load was picking up about 120 miles away.

 

Edwardsville, KS. Getting my new Qualcomm installed in the morning! Woohoo!!

 

Syracuse, NY terminal picking up a Tcall, running it 23mi then heading over to Camillus, NY and running down into PA, then snag a load in Milton, PA and run that down into Opelika, AL..

Made my delivery out here this afternoon 1 hour ahead of schedule. I feel stupid tho, as I mac22 the load and said id be 1½hrs later than apt time.. heck I even stopped 3x's along the way to get coffee n deposit an mt cup or two.

Busy day tomorrow, but all doable, and my last load doesn't deliver till the 4th.. all is goood.

 

Getting ready to head out again.........sure are a lot of bobtails and expediter trucks here in the front lot at the Ontario ca Ta............freight still bad getting out of here?

 

Little Rock Arkansas

Got my hair cut by Jann at Flying J in Prescott AR-- we traded beauty secrets so that was a lot of fun.

Has anyone had their DOT physical done at the Phoenix or Memphis terminals? Mine is coming due soon, got a message that it helps Swift if I do it in house at one of these terminals.

Blsqueak, wow service failure on a load you did not take. OK my personal policy about Mac 9 is don't do it unless the answer is Y to the load. I won't even bother with a N or changing ETA's or PTA's, just delete it if I can't do it or don't like it. In the Swift universe, N means Y so I don't do it. They have this thing now called "Driver Dashboard" which keeps score on your habits and has little faces next to each parameter much like the O/O Profit and Loss statements from ATBS. I get happy faces next to my MPG's and Idle times but sad face next to Load Acceptance which for the final 14 weeks of the year was at 50%, which I understood a company driver would be summarily fired for having such a dismal score. Those 14 weeks my miles were 1400 on average as well which garnered sad face. So long story short, my recommendation is to ignore or delete preplans that don't work for you. Trying to set the ETA and PTA to 'work' with Swift is admirable, but seems like a one way street, they don't seem to be 'working' with the L/O very well from my view insofar as preplans that make sense and are profitable for the L/O ie 100 mt 200 loaded stuff. Last year they had me pretty desperate, stuff like sitting around all day sending Mac 30 every hour then boom they send a load pick up at 2200 deliver 0700 429 miles away stuff. I take it because I need the money so bad but cannot complete it on time due to extreme fatigue then a svc fail. One of these loads was sitting in a yard for days tcalled, what I call a blown load because somebody (planner?) forgot about it and tagged it on a driver and got out of trouble for free that way. Once I bought my truck and had some money in the bank and they tried that again a few months ago I ignored the preplan and went about my day. Some time later get a message "are you going to get that load you agreed to?" I just replied, 'if you want me to' lol then they must have noticed I hadn't responded after all they called me up begging me to go get it and no svc fail for late.

fr8monkey, I don't know about SoCal, normally out of hometime I get a load going down there then bounce East. But this time I got a load near home and went straight to Dallas Fort Worth. I have been I guess very lucky getting loads one after the next after the next no problems. We shall see, will be in Memphis area tomorrow, looking to get on the East coast this trip, having been stuck in the West for over 6 months.

 

Has anyone had their DOT physical done at the Phoenix or Memphis terminals? Mine is coming due soon, got a message that it helps Swift if I do it in house at one of these terminals.

I only had my initial one done in phoenix........its better then the clinic here in ontario......walked in detected attitude and walked right back out....
They have this thing now called "Driver Dashboard" which keeps score on your habits and has little faces next to each parameter much like the O/O Profit and Loss statements from ATBS. I get happy faces next to my MPG's and Idle times but sad face next to Load Acceptance which for the final 14 weeks of the year was at 50%, which I understood a company driver would be summarily fired for having such a dismal score. Those 14 weeks my miles were 1400 on average as well which garnered sad face. hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.............sad and happy smiley,i dont even know what to think of that,how did you find out about it,and what I need to do to get happy,little swift smiley faces,lol.

 

@fr8monkey, well my DM is primarily a company driver DM. I think she has 8 or so L/O's on her board now, drivers who moved up to the lease program. I say that to set it up, her focus is on keeping the company drivers in line to what Swift wants. She sends out these daily Swift messages, you know those worthless, waste of my time ones lol, one of which one day was about these driver dashboards. I called up she said they don't do them for the O/O because there are no consequences for the O/O on a sad face. She printed mine out and gave it to me but was very careful with her words like she always is, concerning what I can do, how I run my business etc. She saw the 1400 miles average over 14 weeks, she saw the 1800 mile deadhead at Christmas, she doesn't know I own my truck and I can tell she's dying to ask how I am still afloat. I just told her Jan 1st I am ready to run hard in the new year. My strategy was to earn less than what I paid for the truck to help out on the taxes, we shall see. I'm learning as I go here....

 

Yeah,I am on a l/op fleet only out of phoenix...we dont get any message about that at all,you know what scottied....I had to operate at a loss,this year too,because of a tax situation(oh god,sweet little tiny baby jesus........anything to keep them down) seriously...ANYTHING,lol.but i run hard when out here but took time off alot...I think it worked tho,get federal money back and depending i which state I file the return for(ca,or az) only owe 1000-1200,it helps to pay for like 60,000 in f...ing fuel too,haha