Glad I moved over to Poly Trucking

Long story short , backhaul is not a keeper for poly , not when they refuse to understand that "WE" are not out here for charity purposes.
Long version:
You screw up the drivers back haul by not getting him something reliable from his home time , then turn around and deny him a 900 diff so to be able to arrive at the p/plant G>P> Thurs. night with a load that del's Fri any time between 10 and 4, "Denied can't do next day del's" ... Bull S #1 especially when you know the guy is looking to get in for a P.M. , and hoping to be available for a load Sat.
So now you del your load, but you also know darn well you may not get PM'd Fri. due to the time you're getting on the yard. So you head to truck stop for shower to be sure if you do go there at least Friday afternoon you'll have had a shower in the event you can't get out of there until Sun. I used to have no problem going in there in this situation because they had a shower and now it's gone.
I call the shop 17 miles from the plant , and find out there are 5 pm's ahead of me and I'm still not gonna be there for another 45 minutes. I ask M.H at shop if he can put me on that list and he with a raised voice comes back with "NO IT DON"T WORK THAT WAY". Another wards you have to come in here get locked in and stand in front of me that to happen.
Bull S #2 , I'm not 2 days out ,
I'm not next state over and I would have been there 2 hrs ago had this plant had a GD shower.
He then tells me that something's not going to be up and running Sat in A.M. and it might be Sun before you can get P.M'd. So I said screw it , I'll see you Monday and I put myself on Outbound for Tues.
Final results , is I'll leave home Monday 8/10 , and maybe get a load out Tues , 8/18 in which from home to my next load I get about 1400 miles over 8 days.
I'm not going to spend the next 6 weeks bashing them for this , for the simple reason , that this is the 1st time in 2015 that I get totally screw by their Bull S nitpicking screw the driver focused policy regarding the Backhaul dept and the Shop.
Now as I've said in the past , I know there's a man upstairs that frequents this thread , and he knows who I am , because I told him once who I am. I absolutely will not sacrifice my personal hygene to make money here at poly. That be said , due to the fact that your shop will not allow us to get on the list for a pm until we are standing in front of them even though we're in the area just tending to personal hygiene , that will force me to look and when you rec'v that 2 week notice , you know in advance why.
My personal hygiene supersedes these 2 cent policies always has always will. You all at the plant may think of a drivers personal hygiene as a last on your list of priorities , but it's sits higher than your retail loads on my list. What gets real tiring in this unskilled profession is it seems the only personnel expected to make any sacrifices anymore are those that hold a CDL license. Please don't debate this either , because if it weren't 100% true , by now you would have pushed daily to either change the pm list policy so driver indeed could get a shower prior to getting to the plant or , install showers somewhere on that 100 acres.

 

I remember the bags of keys Tony gave me as well , good luck in finding the one that opens it , you'll need all the luck you can get.

 

I been with Poly a while now.
Its definitely a balancing act trying
to hang on at this place.

Im seriously having thoughts of
becoming unaddicted to the hub
mile thingy ,remove the corporate
dog leash from my mind and do
better for myself.

Regional is on the burner.
Southeast regional kind of thing.
No more snow , no more ice , closer to home.

 

I hear ya... my sentiment in the past here has been Poly is a decent gig for some not all. It's a good fit for me more so because of different variables like where I live and certain health stipulations like RA. IT'S not a good fit for all , but neither is it for all other companies. It doesn't make them a bad outfit. Even as right now I'm irritated with them , I know that most likely it'll be 5 or 6 weeks or more before I have any irritability that of a side effect while on the Poly med.

 

I am within 300 miles of a PM and had full intentions of getting it done. Thursday afternoon I would have been #7, with #1 and #2 just pulled on the pit...so, I walked in with hat in hand (so to speak since I never wear a hat) and asked for my miles to be bumped out...without blinking, they were bumped out. I guess they realized that there was no way I was going to get in and done before the pit went down for whatever they're doing to it. But, now here I sit, trapped waiting on shipping....again.

MITMoon...dude, the anger you're expressing is exactly the way many of my post's have shown my mood...now you're starting to feel the way many of us have been feeling for quite a while. Guess Poly better get ready to put in a bigger revolving door, and get Tony an assistant...if they've angered your mild mannered temperament...imagine how many more are already doing interviews to leave....welcome to the venting club

 

Keep in mind though , I also take a moment of pause these days when I'm ticked off , it helps me tremendously to not overreact to an isolated situation SSB. You did pick up on the fact it's the 1st time this year I've fell victim to the screwing ROYALE right ?
Note: No I'm not ignorant to the fact that backhaul has issues , and then the 2 cent policies they claim there's no alternative to. I'm also fully aware there's no company that's an exception and that I can do a heck of a lot worse.
Here's the big difference between us , money is a must for you , I'm not rich so don't get me wrong. But I over the years haven't mismanaged or overspent, therefore I can tolerate more than others. There are limits to my generosity though, if it continues I only fall victim to their ways once or twice a year , I'll be fine. But twice within a couple months and the ice starts to thin.

 

I could fill up at least 3 or 4 pages of whats happened just since January
I say happened because stuff happens , if a truck breaks it
simply breaks , its not personal .
Poly's standards are whats in question.
For example the last 2 PM's , BOTH made it less than 50 miles before either ending up on the hook ( aka a tow-in) or Roadside repair dispatched to come to the rescue.
Both interestingly enough were due to engine parts not being secured ,
nuts and bolts not tightened , etc.
I spend more time in loaners ( hence the Screen Name ) than my
original truck. This is no joke , i challenge anyone to top my breakdown/repair record since Jan 1. Good news is I manage to keep myself rolling and am not one to give up,
so if i see a way to get a set of wheels under my tail i go for it.
I rescued a load recently where the driver simply walked away from the
freight. He apparently had enough and snapped.
Had to sort through 5 loaners to find one that was road worthy.
(Some wouldn't start , some ran but had no air/c , one had no brakes, etc)
Thats unacceptable and it reflects once again that Poly has no
devotion to being or becoming a functional trucking company.

Which raises an interesting point , ever since the day I started at
Poly the phrase ' We are not a trucking company' is repeated
quite regularly..... as if its something to boast about.
Is it really ? , How is it working out for Poly I wonder ?
The Not being a trucking company thing that is.

As far as drivers quitting in growing numbers,its worth considering breakdowns and being left indefinitely somewhere in the country with no pay for starters , no pickups by fellow drivers to come back for a loaner , etc. At least get the broke down driver back to Poly for a loaner so they themselves have a chance for heavens sake.
Management must surely be scratching their heads when their drivers are abandoning a .50 cpm per hub mile company that has a top shelf retirement program,pays almost 100% of their health care and to boot gives them enough home time to choke a horse.

Abandonment , its a two way street

Its time these motor heads started behaving like a trucking company
or suffer the consequences

...... rant complete

 

my 1st 6 months here I went thru more than a dozen loaners while my assigned truck was sitting waiting on parts, or sitting waiting for days to get in the shop, or supposedly fixed only to have to go back in because they fixed something that wasn't broken, but ignored the part that was written up to be fixed.

The reason most people come here is for the money and the home time...but if you're not making the money, what good is home time...maybe (and this is my opinion) they're not concerned about drivers leaving because they can always ship via outside carriers. And, with outside carriers they don't have any overhead, repair expenses, driver expenses, accident expenses...maybe they're working towards reducing the in-house trucking operation and relying on outside carriers. If an outside carrier rolls over a load, win-win. The carriers insurance pays for the totaled load, and they get to ship a second load to the customer

 

Shipping is more than 6 hours behind...because of people calling off...I really can't post my feelings on the matter because it would be overly emotionally charged and highly offensive...so I'll refrain...sometimes I wish they would close the trucking part of this company down...that way the outside carriers could rape the crap out of their profit margin with excessive detention charges...then maybe the corporate brain trust would get rid of these lazy ######## in the warehouse and get someone with a decent work ethic that could come to work more than one day in a row.

 

I can agree with most of what you're saying , and here it is in a nut shell , as I spoke of RA , I also spoke of where I live. Remote 100 miles from no where N.E. KY 14 miles from Portsmouth oh. Which a lot of companies wont hire , and the ones that do will not commit to anything less than 3 weeks out, then 3 maybe 4 days off tops. Now I also know for a fact from almost 8 yrs with Jevic that I could never spend 3 weeks out because they made sure I was miserable 3 days out of 5 , even though I made 63K a year and was home 45 W/Ends out of 52.
I made dam good money with them and absolutely hated my job 92% of my time. Now I'm about 53K a year , and happy about 92% of my time the other 8 is when I become a victim of the S.O.P. here. I recently help a former Jevic driver decide to hire in , but left nothing about policy out. Here's what probably helped me to not carry a bad taste around most of the time , I will suck it up and sit for 4 , 5 , sometimes 6 days straight without pay a couple times a year , and chalk it up as a loss. Like I am this time , I won't bounce truck to truck since day one with them because I carry $900 dollar injections per shot around in a fridge. I knew the deal before I hired in because I've been down this road since 2005 with these injections. Certain companies write me off and tear up the ap because I tell them up front what my needs are , and they can't or won't try to work with ya. Poly knew from day one what they were getting , and I knew what I was getting , 1st yr was rough , I spent I'll bet close to 6 weeks total sitting at the plant , ask Martin or Tony if I'm lying. Thing is, I have a savings account that continuously grows because 1 I don't drink , 2 I don't smoke 3 I don't have a big expense for a habit I have. Wife and I both work and she doesn't drink smoke or habitually spent foolishly on a habit not worth spending on. So for this reason I can suck it up , I feel for anyone that comes here , and I said it before , has a bare minimum of over 63 to 65k, because they're gonna have to play the loaner game , and deal with that stuff that really isn't meant to be taking long trips in. If by chance I get in a loaner as I have 2 or 3 times , it's to do a Dayton , and back up the next day. Maybe a HEB Houston and back up next day. But I'd be a monkey's uncle before I ever took a loaner for a trip up to lets Yakima Wa or even Henderson.