Question about being fired 3000 miles from home

The three hour difference also helps some

 

You need to check with an attorney on this (or try a credible free legal advise site) but here is what I recall from my HR days (non-trucking HR) back in the 90's:

• An employer has to pay an employee (or ex-employee) with 48 hours of completing work if the person demands it. I don't recall if this law varies by state or if it's federal. Few people know about this law because most companies pay immediately or at the next payroll date so there isn't an issue but it was put in place for instances like this - so an employer can't (theoretically) indefinitely postpone paying an employee for work done and you never get your $.
• The other thing is that an employer can't withhold your pay so if he wants to recoup $ for company property he says you have (like a laptop) or for a late charge from a customer he has to go through the legal process - he can't arbitrarily deduct it from your check. this was also put in place so unscrupulous employers can't come up with bogus reasons to not pay you your final dues. Now you may have signed some paperwork when you started that allows him to do that but I would still have that looked at if things get messier. From experience I know that folks from Eastern Europe (among other places) don't take the time to learn all the rules & laws when running a business in this country and think they can play by their own rules.

Again, this was 20 years ago so my recall may not be 100% and things may have changed but it's something to look into...

 

As far as money owed to the driver, unfortunately as a truck driver we don't fall under your local wage and hour rules, since we are governed by Federal law. The only recourse you have to collect pay owed is to drag the deadbeat ex boss to small claims court. Unfortunately I have had to cut my losses in several cases myself where I was owed pay.

It is really easy to armchair quarterback his being late. Apparently none of you stop for food or bathroom breaks. I can drive a touch over 700 miles in one shift, in a governed truck on elogs. But that takes me 14 hours. With breaks I take, mainly to just get out of the truck. For me that would have been a 3.5 day drive.

Having worked for Bosnians myself, I know exactly how they think. It is all about the money. Rules don't matter. Get it there, end of story. They don't care how you do it, just that you do what you got to do.

Good luck.

OH, and last, I was left sitting in Kingman, AZ in 2004 by an unscrupulous employer, when I gave the ultimatum of fixing the truck or else. They chose the else and left myself and my late husband stranded. So yes, it can happen.

 

This is a perfect example of what is wrong with this industry. Drivers being pushed to run illegally. The broker knows you can't make a 2,400 mile run in 2.75 days legally, the shipper knows it, the receiver knows it, the dispatcher knows it, yet no one cares. The driver is expected to do it or risk his job, which is exactly what happened here. Yet the FMSCA keeps passing new Hours of Service rules every few years for us to follow yet never addresses the other cogs in the transportation industry machine.


OP I hope you sue the SOB. He won't even have one leg to stand on in court when you show he tried making you run outside of the HOS.

 

#### driver how long did you sleep? I'm sure that finding a flight from Huron, OH to Wash state, meeting the other driver and driving to your location would take a large amount of time.
Whenever things were sketchy with my dispatcher and I thought I might have to quit I'd keep my fuel tanks close to full so if the shirt hits the fan I will drive the truck home rather than be stranded miles from home never had to do it tho.

 

Wow...just wow...it's like, you drive for any of the large mega carriers, and the only thing you'd ever get fired for is failed drug test, bad accident, or way too many log violations. They have so many drivers, that when one is late, no one cares, it's just 1 load out of thousands.

And this guy fires you for one mistake, and the mistake might not even be yours. I hope this guy realizes how difficult it is to find drivers, much less good ones.

And now I feel like ranting about the whole industry, but I'll just say this. The company that can find the drivers will win. But the ones who do find the drivers, end up with 90% crap and 10% good drivers, and then they lose anyways.

I feel that if the gov't wants to go regulation-crazy, then really hit it hard and require extensive training procedures, for example, making trainers have to have at least 2 years experience to train. The gravy train will end right there. Personally, I'm hoping the industry runs out of people willing to become a driver, so that rates go insanely higher and the money flows.


And according to my math, leaving Cleveland at 10am EDT, by averaging 65mph , you could do 2,145 miles in 11 hours of driving, 1.5 hours for food, fuel and PTI, plus 10 hours sleeper all that x 3 = 67.5 hours, say 68 hours. That would put you at 4 hours away at 6am EDT Monday morning. With PTI and maybe another fuel, you could be there reasonably at 11:30am Eastern, 8:30am Pacific.

Maybe if you ran your keester off, maybe you could get there 1.5 hours earlier, or shave some time off from your stopping breaks over the weekend. In any case, it's a tight run with paper logs, and likely not doable with an EOBR.

 

The thing is, being forced to run along the edge is not the norm in the entire industry...just common for you guys that pull boxes. Yes, the others types of trailer haulers may have to go on the edge, but its not the norm on our end.