Glad I moved over to Poly Trucking

never had to sit in WA before, even during the winter...from that area a Roadrunner load would be my expected backhaul. If you don't get a load soon, I'd start bugging the crap out of them.

 

Did you contact then this morning to insure you were indeed on the backhaul board for today?

 

Well my first run of bad luck in a while. Dropped my truck off at GP yesterday for a PM and another couple of issues with the plan to p/u a loaner and continue on to my New Roads, LA drop today. They had the showers shut off due to some fancy meeting which sucked after working about 14 hours so I decided to just reload hook back up and head out before my hours where up to grab a shower. About 20 miles form the terminal the old girl (3417) decided to start overheating and the old golden triangle showed up so I turned around and coaxed it back to the yard. So I switched my #### over to another truck and was out of time by then. Unfortunately I found out that only 1 person can create another trip number (and they didn't show up until 0800) as I couldn't use the previous one after I returned to the yard. Kind of a crock of #### if you ask me but not much I could do about it. So not much sleep and little spare time to make it to the delivery but got her done. Picking up in ALabama tomorrow for Houston on Monday and then a backhaul for GP.

 

Tony kept telling me over and over , " Poly isn't perfect " .

So yeah , nothing's perfect in this world .

We seek perfection but it doesn't actually exist

( I'm due for a PM and dreading it )

What happens if they shutdown your truck and don't have any loaners , where do you sleep ?

 

Call Pat or Martin & let them know there are no loaners to sleep in & ask for hotel authorization. Once approved, if you don't have translation, call the La Quinta you stayed in for orientation, reserve a room & have the shuttle come pick you up at the front gate. You will have to pay for room & turn in receipt, but show them your POLY ID & you'll get a rate of $65+tax.

 

My unbiased opinion would be that a high percentage of drivers do not even know Poly Trucking is a private carrier. Poly does not seem to mention that fact in their recruiting ads I have seen. How much turnover at Poly is related to mechanical issues with what looks like a big percentage of the equipment you have on the road? 48 cents a mile means nothing when the truck is in the shop and the driver is not paid for this down time.

I am not here to cause any trouble. I see you guys seem to have a lot of camaraderie going on here. But, my honest opinion is that most drivers do not know anything about the best parts of Poly. Most drivers are numb to the X number of cents per mile advertising and want to see other activity pay included that keeps your paycheck stable.

 

When I was in there over the holiday swapping trucks, there were a good number of loaner trucks on the list...how many of them were actually there on the yard I'm not certain, but it seems as though they are starting to catch up on loaners a little. I think what slowed down an already glacier like speed of the shop is the fact that they had to utilize manpower to decommission the old Freighiners so they could be picked up.

 

The lack of breakdown pay is one of the biggest rubs with most of us...couple that with the speed and efficiency (and effectiveness) of the shop, it does get frustrating at times. It would be an improvement if they would at least pay breakdown when you are away from the shop where a loaner truck isn't an option. But, if most of us look at our gross pay, even without that breakdown pay, we are still grossing more at the end of the year than most irregular route 'for hire' trucking companies.

Just checked my data usage. I have run this hard over the past number of weeks, but have still managed to use almost 90 gig of data, and still have a week to go before the end of the billing cycle...I have no idea how I managed that...but I have been hearing about this stuff called "sleep"...it's suppose to be good for you (although I have my suspicions...the info came from government sources)...has anyone tried it...is it habit forming or addictive?

 

All the extra pay is covered in the first 20 pages of this thread. That's one reason I stress to new posters to read them. Since that had been established, this thread has been about our experiences so as to give others a true sense of the job. I will agree that we have lost a few drivers due to breakdown issues. But like Snackbar said, compare our yearly income to other OTR companies, the ability to choose your outbound lane, given the parameters in which to accomplish our job & then left alone, and being treated as a human being & not a mind numbed steering wheel holder, and you see why many of us tolerate the negative issues we express.

 

What really working on my mind is Poly not being on E Logs

Since we run legal its costing me time on these paper logs .

Several hours per 70 !

Old school is killin !