home for Christmas, the next werner update

well the more I work for werner the more things are sticking in my craw

this time out I kept having to butt heads with dispatch, the first incident started at a walmart DC in pageland SC. I dropped my load and empty trailers were no where to be found. I was asked to find out when they might empty one of the 4 they had in the entire facility. they said late that night or early tomorrow. since it was still late afternoon my disp. sent me a load msg to bobtail to greensboro NC about 145 miles away.

I asked "should I wait for an empty?"
he said "NO" he's a long winded guy on the qualcom, can't get him to shut up.

so I roll about 65 miles up to charlotte NC it's about 1730 hours my qualcom light goes off instantly think "uh-oh here we go"

the night, after hours, wannabe day shifter, dispatcher pulls my pre assigned load and sends me a live load for in the morning.

here is a near verbatim exchange....

me; FYI I can't do this live load I don't have a mt

disp; pick one up

me; ok where?

disp; from the con

me; I've already rolled 100 miles away I'm not going back

disp; why didn't you get an mt?

me; why don't you go back and read msgs before you start screwing around with my truck?

disp; because you need to go get an mt

me; I was dispatched to greensboro bobtailed to pick up a ld tomorrow in the am I'm not moving this truck untill I hear from Brett (my day disp) or the owner of the truck approving me to turn around and waste the diesel that got me here

I was out of hours anyway, I just thought I'd yank his chain for a while.

I had checked on my miles/income over the thanksgiving holiday and realized my checking account was hemoraging cash badly. so I called my dispatcher late in November to let him know I needed more miles.

he blew me off and told me I turned 9300 paid miles in November and "that was right about where I should be" I said whatever and called the owner of the truck and had to leave a voice mail saying "I don't know why I'm out here, I'm not making enough to pay my bills, I'm looking for options"
he wasted no time calling me back and before I knew it I rolled much better miles 3 trips back to back. while I had him on the phone I asked him why I never get to run out past the mississippi river? he assured me in a later conversation that he and my dispatcher were "working together" to get me out west.

my next load routed me back to NJ, not exactly texas eh? when I called to ask why I was going back to an area of the country that I never want to go to again in a semi. I was told a completely different story then what the owner told me. that there are "no garuntees" that I'm "48 states but I'm not garunteed to run 48 states" we got in a rather heated discussion, there weren't any names being called but he said stuff like "the miles are
good, I don't see what the problem is" and I said "that's because you aren't a driver" well that went over like a fart in church, he went off on me started telling me I "needed to see the big picture" I said "from here all I see is my steering wheel and the windshield, no one has bothered to explain the big picture to me before why don't you give it a shot."

we don't agree because we don't have a basis of similar experience he has never tooled around in north bergen NJ behind the wheel of a 70' 40 ton behemoth, but he is going to tell me my job isn't that bad as he sits in a comfy cubical in nebraska.

so basically he lied to me (gasp!) he does this fairly regularly I just haven't caught him at it. until my load going home. I swapped a load going to GA for a load going to sealy TX right before home time. well no prob, I've got 5 days anyway. I del the load and was dispatched dead head to the dallas terminal. I was going to pick up my homeward bound load on the 21st at 1500. time comes and goes so I sent a msg asking where is my load? he sends me a msg back saying "driver ran out of hours in lubbock TX new eta late tonight"
I don't know where every town in Texas is located and being a curious being I looked at the map, punched it into my GPS and discovered it to be 300 miles or so from Dallas.

the load finally arrives 16 hours late and when I pick up the bills from the gaurd shack I see the load originated in el paso?!? hmm lubbock is no where near the I-10/ I-20 corridor. either the driver got real lost or my dispatcher is a lying sack of hog snot. using the Sherlock Holmes method of investigation I deduced that however unlikely it may be untruths were told to me.

good news though, I was ran to fairmont WV under a load that was all of 145 miles and then left there for the entire day (woohoo making big bucks now) I was irritated so I decided to call Crete. almost 6 months had past since I last talked to them. they asked me how much OTR experience I've had I told them 4 and a half months they said that since I had over 4 months they would accept me as a student/trainee. I asked a few questions about student pay, starting pay for driver of less then a year exp. so right now I'm taking a break from filling out my Crete app to type this short story.

MERRY CHRISTMAS everyone!!