NO touch freight.

warning...any info i have on usa truck is several years old. 1st...i was never warned about nor reprimanded for idling (ok, a cop here or there yes, but not by the company). i believe they offered some sort of fuel bonus for overall idling being below x, but i have no more specific memory of that. i didnt have an apu, so if they have them on most or all trucks now, most of this question is kind of a moot point. they did not allow inverters period...but all the drivers i knew had a plug-in inverter that got hidden when you went to a terminal. apu allows for electricity use without idling. at least, the ones i have experience with have had electric outlets in addition to being able to heat/cool without idling. the other idling saving thing out there are heating units, but they dont in my experience have outlets as well. when i worked forn usa truck, i bought a "contraband inverter" that plugged into a cig lighter, and with that i ran a tv/dvd combo, a computer, and charged my cell phone. never had an issue with idling. low battery warning went off, id turn the truck on and idle for awhile, then turn it off (1 hour maybe?). it got cold/hot, id idle. had some sort of idle saving feature on the truck which allowed me to set a temperature and the truck would go on when it got significantly above/below that and then back off when set temp was again reached. it was livable, but got cold or hot depending on season while truck was off. i carry good blankets with me (which i suggest for anyone else) so winter is easier to deal with (good blankets actually for me do a good enough job that when i leave truck off ill wake up hours later and find its RIDICULOUSLY cold outside the warm cocoon of blankets). as i said, what i did (and every other driver i talked to) was against company policy. no inverters-period- was the rule. a ridiculous rule which was only enforced should they specifically go into your truck at a terminal and find one. only company people who ever got into my truck were mechanics..and nothing was ever said about the corded tv not attached to anything. youd have to be a complete moron to not have any idea that i was using an inverter, but no one seemed to care, at least no one ever confronted me. again,tho, i have no earthly idea why every big company doesnt install an apu on every truck...by my calculations they pay for themselves in less than 2 years. theyd save a ton of money in my estimation.

 

APU generators and 1500-1800 watt inverters on all trucks (a few older trucks with the iron idle system still around) no bonus for staying under idle % . But stay under it. No reason your dike should be over 5% average per quarter with an APU on the truck. APU has an a/c and heater on the system. Mine works great. My last truck they worked great in too. They break sometimes but it'll get fixed. Just let breakdown know. I have a tv, Xbox, laptop, microwave, and toaster oven in my truck. Also a plug in cooler. No issues. If you run a microwave ir toasteroven turn off tv and unplug laptop and game console. It'll trip the breaker as the microwave pulls some amps and watts.

Sent from somewhere out there

 

Wow, paragraph dude, that was too hard to even fish through!

 

Are you currently w/ USA Truck? If so how long have you been with them? (I'm thinking about going with them for a "first company")

 

I have never waited for a load, the longest I have ever waited for a load assignment was an hour and that was because my fleet manager was on lunch and the ###### covering his fleet was not dispatching loads, 75% of the time I'm preplanned before I even drop.

 

I am in my truck now. Been here a year. I have a good fleet manager. We get along. She makes up for the few crap weeks that cone along. I dont give her to much grief. I'm happy so far. There are days but that's anywhere in any type of job.

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I get a lot of driver unload things. Almost NEVER at major warehouses. USually the "touch" loads that I get go to very small businesses or the alley dock of a grocery store and there just isn't any lumper service to hire. I suspect that I get alot of these loads simply because I don't gripe about them. I just annotate on the messages that it was driver unload or driver unload assist and how long I was line 4 for the unload and I annotate it on my logbook also. I've been paid every single time. I would say MOST of our drivers rarely if ever touch the freight. The one exception would be tire loads. Those are hit and miss. They will tell you in orientation and your trainer should as well that most tire loads will be driver load/unload. All the tire loads I've ever done, only 2 I didn't have to load or unload myself. One was farm tractor tires at a warehouse and they used forklifts for those, the other was a Goodyear load to a distro center that had a lumper service on site which was already factored into the freight charges. All I had to do was sign their ticket.

Idling is a NO GO. You shouldn't have to idle at all unless sitting in traffic or building air pressure to release brakes. Very few trucks without APUs left. If you get one, I think they insist on less than 20% of engine run time be idle and APU equipped trucks is 3-5% or less. APU should provide for anything you need. When tuned properly it provides sufficient air conditioning, heating, and I've never had an accessory that it couldn't power.

I've been with the company almost 2 years and I've never seriously thought about quitting. Not trying to recruit for them and I don't have any experience with other carriers but there is nothing compelling me to jump fence at this time.

 

I have been here almost a year. Ive only unloaded one trailer (used tires) this whole time and even then I probably could have gotten out if it. They pay like $25/hour for assist unloading now so its not that bad.