THE ADVENTURES CONTINUE - DFO gets a truck and hops on Schneider's IC Choice Program

Oh my God these box planners are so bad at their job I just don't fricking get it. What is the point of them they are just totally useless. Check my work assignment this morning - shows me arriving at the customer I'm picking up the load from twice. Same customer, 2 separate workflow stops. Once to pick up an empty, another for the live load. Should have been a red flag, but well it sorta makes sense - there's an empty trailer sitting at the customer, so I'll pick that up, bump the dock with it then they'll load me, right??

WRONG.

Show up at the customer, first thing they want to know is why don't I have an empty trailer. I point at the one Schneider trailer that is there and tell them Schneider wanted me to pick up that empty and use it for the load. It's already loaded they tell me. Ok, is it my load? They won't say unless I have an empty. Great.

Get on the batphone with Charlotte. Sit on hold for 15 minutes before I finally get to a person, and explain what's going on, I sent in the exception but I am not going to waste my entire day chasing empties when the box planners are screwing me over as usual. They tell me to ask the customer if the loaded trailer is my trailer, and that another driver could bring in an empty later on. Nope, customer doesn't buy that one, saying it'd take them 3 weeks to get another empty trailer in. Still won't say whether the loaded trailer is my load or not, but they say it doesn't matter because they're not releasing it without an empty.

So, throughout a 45 minute phone ordeal with Schneider, we go from "ask if you can just take the loaded trailer" to "go 87 miles to pick up an empty trailer" to me saying "are you ****ing serious is that the closest trailer" to them saying "no that's not right hold on" to me waiting more then to them finally saying "yeah that trailer 87 miles away (SOUTH OF FRICKING CHARLOTTE) is the closest empty". I about blew a fricking gasket. I tell her that I had better be getting some pay for this absolutely asinine trailer search. $5 bets it doesn't show up on my stub and I'll have to call in and pull teeth to get it added.

Well, drive 87 miles down to south of Charlotte to Family Dollar to get a trailer, drive 87 MILES BACK UP to High Point to get my loaded. Get there tell them I have an empty for them now and they tell me "yeah that's your trailer" so I just drop the empty, grab the loaded get my paperwork and GET THE HELL OUT of there.

50 miles from Chapel Hill to High Point for the pickup. 174 additional miles to get an empty trailer. What a colossal waste of my 70 hours, regardless if they are paying me for the search or not. Unreal.

When I get home next time I'm going to take the Deuce and ram down some trees and make a spot to park a trailer at home. I don't give a #### if we're not supposed to take a trailer home with us. I'm done wasting my time with these sorry excuses for box planners that are the most incompetent waste of a salary in the entire company. I mean it was a TA14XXXX trailer, doesn't it even have a camera on that box mounted on the front so they can see inside the trailer to tell if its loaded or not??? Shouldn't that be a red flag right there to the box planner that is trying to send someone there to pick up that trailer as an empty??? Just... WTF. It's too bad they're telling all the company drivers they have to go 60MPH now, when they should just fire all the box planners and save more money that way.

Ok, rant over.

Had a nice drive down to the Atlanta OC where I'm parked for the night. Got here right at midnight, it was nice to be able to cruise down 285 without a bumper to bumper 75 MPH dragrace occurring like it does every time I come through here during the day.

Still have about 185 miles to go to my delivery in Alabama tomorrow, then I'm picking up a load a couple miles down the road that is headed up to Illinois.

Thankfully my load leaving Alabama had enough of an appointment window that the trailer search from today won't make me miss my pickup. I am worried about getting home (hours wise) by the 20th now, though, because I'll be pushing my 70 to the absolute limit. Oh well, if it means I have to sit for a bit to let my hours catch up, it is what it is. Not the end of the world.

 

You know, yesterday I would have probably agreed with a lot of what you said Dipschitt, but today's experience makes me once again stand by what I said about my feelings towards the box planners. Bear with me here for a few.

I got to my delivery to Kraft up in Champaign, IL. After pulling off the mission impossible backing maneuver involving getting out of the truck about 6 times to look, I finally wedged my load of pallets into what was by far the tightest spot I have ever had to put a trailer into, you know the area to the left just after you cross the railroad tracks in the yard? Yeah, second row. That one.

Afterwards, I bobtailed around their mudpit of a lot looking for an empty trailer, while seeing about 8 spots that I could have backed my trailer in to without such a hassle. Oh well, doesn't hurt to have a challenging spot to get into once in a while does it. You know, this is pretty much the ONE reason that I would not want to get a hood truck like a 379 or a W900 in the future - with a short wheelbase, maneuverable truck like this Cascadia, getting the trailer into that spot was possible. A long nose Pete? No way. Just wouldn't happen.

After not finding any empty trailers there, I bobtailed over to a little plaza and waited 20 minutes. No response, so I called in. Sat on hold for 15 minutes before getting through. "The box planner knows and is working on it, they'll send something out soon" I get told. After 47 minutes of waiting, I finally get a task to go pick up an empty. Its along the way, no problem. North towards my pickup, get to Grainger, of course, no empties. Send the exception. Macy's is right on the other side of the interstate, I'll just run over there and check to see if by chance they'd have any that they would be willing to release. Nope, they don't either.

Call in, get their "we are experiencing extremely high volumes of calls" excuse which is really just the same volume of calls as always but being answered by support shift staff of 2 and a half people.

Sit on hold for literally 30 minutes before getting through. Still no update on the exception I sent in, either. I explain that there were no empties at Kraft, no empties at Grainger, and no empties at Macy's. Can I PLEASE bobtail. "No, the customer doesn't allow bobtails, hold on" I get told. So I sit on hold for 10 minutes then she gets back with me saying "we have a CONFIRMED empty trailer, we've tracked it to the back of the yard at Ecolab". (So yes, they do have the ability to see exactly where the empty trailers are). Ok, off to Ecolab. Arrive there and the gate guard who could have passed off as a homeless man is in a real crappy mood and is extremely rude and impaitient, so I put up with his BS, and go inside.

Grumpy lady at shipping tells me "no, we don't have any empties, we don't even have enough trailers for our own loads".

I just walk out.

Hand hobo the gate guard my hard hat, give him a big smile and wish him a merry Christmas. I love being super nice to people who are ***holes because it just pisses them off that much more.

Back on the phone. Sit on hold for 20 minutes. Explain to the support shift guy that there are no empties at Kraft, no empties at Grainger, no empties at Macy's, and no empties at Ecolab, I'm running out of time, wasting my 70 chasing ghost trailers, for the love of God what do you want me to do.

Sit on hold for 10 minutes, gets back to me saying they've found 4 "CONFIRMED" empties at Dollar Tree. Ok, off to Dollar Tree in Joliet. Arrive there, Dollar Tree too cheap to plow the snow off their lot, so driving around their lot could have made me the next star of 3 FAST 3 FURIOUS - FREIGHTLINER DRIFT until I finally find an empty trailer and just about slide right past it.

Hook up, drive to my pickup location. Guard asks for the pickup number, nothing I have matches up. I tell him I'll have to get on the phone with Schneider but that it honestly might take 30 minutes, so he lets me in the gate.

So, I'm sitting there on hold when I realize the pickup number is the MBOL number on the Qualcomm, but as usual there are a good 10 digits in FRONT of the necessary numbers, and its cut short and I can't see it.

Still sitting on hold, I get an idea, so I grab my laptop and bring up the shipment on the load board - sure enough I can see the entire number on that. So, walk back up to the shack, get my papers, drop the empty, pick up the loaded, and FINALLY, FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY I'm making progress today. Drove to the Gary OC and shut down. I give up for today.

With all of this time being wasted chasing trailers I honestly hope I can make this delivery within my 70 hours. It's going to be very close. I may have to suck it up and do 70MPH the entire 800 something miles to the delivery - we'll see what the hours situation is looking like tomorrow and then make that call. I don't want to, because I know that's gonna be a lot of fuel pointlessly burned, but what more can I do.

So, THAT is where my frustration with the box planners comes from.

I don't like taking empties home because some other driver may need it, I sure know if I was in that other drivers position I'd want to be able to pick up that empty and use it. It's also a catch because on the 0.01% chance that you left the trailer sitting in the open without a lock or tractor under it and it got stolen, Schneider would throw a fit. But kingpin lock it and block it with the tractor and Schneider is going to throw a fit too because the driver they sent to your house can't pick it up.

I realize that I may have to drive far to pick up an empty. That's just part of the job, it happens.

What is not acceptable, though, in my opinion is that Schneider has the ability to a. see where the trailers are, and b. see if they are loaded or not; why do we get sent places where there are no empties? Why do we get sent places where there is one trailer half-full of garbage?

Craziness, I tell you.

At least I've got my load and should hopefully be able to make the delivery on time, 70 hours permitting. Tomorrow should be a day of nothing but driving - nice and relaxing - I need a day like that.

Also, Gary OC had a #### good cheeseburger tonight. Wonder if they have anything good for breakfast tomorrow.