Avoid Kenco Byhalia, MS

Kenco at
39 E Wingo rd
Byhalia,MS

This is a new facility connected by a new road and this is the only slack I'll give them. I feel bad for the staff from PA that came to train staff here because the staff here just wants to cut corners and collect a paycheck.
If you still want to come here Gateway Global Drive doesn't exist anymore its now a extension of wingo road.

I get there and instead of taking the first entrance I take the third one, I can see there are to many trailers there. The third entrance, which due to the amount of dropped trailers there is now a one lane driveway. If you can, park on their front lawn or on the side of the road and go into the shipping and receiving office which is the front office, its not in the back. The lady training the staff here says "drop it in door X, if you can't have the yard jockeys move the trailers out of your way or have them put it in for you". I lean into the window and whisper because I just gotta ask this question. The other office workers are clearly busy listening to loud music or talking to each other. In the last 9 months I've been all over the country. I've seen the (just 1 field everything else is corn) amber waves of grain, the purple mountains and both seas.

I lean in "Have you noticed how people here (from Fort Stockton,TX to North Carolina excluding Dallas and Tennessee) just seem to have the life just sucked out of them?". She responds with "Yes its like they have no ambition but their polite though." I respond "Really? Because I get some of the worst CS in this area of the country" The trainer goes "Your load hasn't been picked yet" I ask for a ETA and its going to be a few hours. I get to the back and its packed with so many dropped trailers that they have two rows of trailers going the length of the facility in front of the parked trailers. You would think that because space is needed so bad that this row would be so uniform and tight this would't be a issue. Wrong.

I try backing into the dock with tandems forward and back and a PTL trailer is blocking my swing around. I drop it in front of the yard jockey, he was not amused with this added work. He complains that if he docks my trailer hes going to have to do it for everyone else. I then ask him to move the PTL trailer and he renegs. His buddy in a day cab puts it in for me and I watch as other trucks start dropping their trailers and leaving. There are two drivers who have already been here for 6 and 8 hours. At the five hour mark I have had a red light for 2 hours.

More drivers start rolling in and asking for empties or dropping trailers. Werner bobtail rolls in, two O/O roll in, MVT, Taylor, Big G Express, PTL, TNI, Ozark and Schiender. Most are getting stuck, or are trying to maneuver around the trailers to no avail. The really unlucky ones are trying to dig up non-existent empties. PTL gets stuck right in front of me and can't get out. Werner tries to help him but he wont take the help, then Werner notices air leaking from his trailer tandems. She freaks out and takes his information down to call his company. She asks me to tell him to slide his tandems forward because he wont listen to her and I say "No let him learn on his own". She then complains that hes going to kill someone because this tandem chambers are "missing some sort of seal" (I couldn't get specifics out of her). At this point PTL almost takes out his drivers side mirror and he drops his trailer at a 45 degree angle to the 2 rows of stacked trailers. Thats when I start hearing the air leak.

I go on the dock to see whats going on at this point its been 7 hours with 5 hours with a red light on. Every single door on my side of the building is unlocked as the employees take their smoke breaks in the doorway. My trailer is empty and nothing is stacked by the door for loading. I go into the office and ask them whats going on. The trainer is shocked because the fork lift operator was supposed to be picking then loading directly into trailer. The office workers then start to complain how they can't get any of the floor or yard staff to respond to them. I'm told a few more hours. 30min later I poke my head in the door and I catch the slowest forklift operator ever. I have never seen anyone that slow on a forklift, I wanted to walk up to this guy and ask him if hes considered a career as a forklift ballet dancer. 30 minutes later as I'm walking back from the office (no vending machines only a nice restroom) I catch a whiff of the air coming from his car. The guys at Home Depot have a no snitching policy, you chip a pallet and you gotta drop. So I'm thinking the same thing applies here.

The yard gets interesting again as a Swift O/O is trying to blindside into a dock and even the yard jockeys are having trouble moving around. A yard jockey comes speeding past swift drivers side, as swift stops to check his mirrors the jockey speeds past losses a mirror bar. The mirror which already was taped up is now bent inward. I start chatting up a o/o, trying to pick his brain about the lanes he runs and where he thinks the industry is going and *scrape*scrape*scrape*scrape*. That same jockey is trying to pull out another trailer but rather than move the trailer in front of him hes dragging a orange trailer against another trailer nose. He just keeps going until he gets it out. The o/o and I then try to estimate how much these guys are being paid I put them at 11.80/hr.

At the 8 hour mark I'm told that they have 2 more pallets and they will then do my bills if I wait in the office. 15 minutes tops I give them 30. Well later it turns out they can't make the BOLs because the pallets were not processed correctly. They will have to make me manual BOLs, when told the trainer was surprised they could even do that. I start talking with another driver about whats been going on and the office hears me talking about Mr. Cheech.They were not happy about that. They say 1:30 more I give them 2:30 as I have 10 hours of off duty at this point and I'm not collecting detention anymore. I shoot down to a mom and pop and come back and since then they have reloaded my trailer twice. With the first time due to the wrong things being picked. I tell them after calling my dispatcher I'll pick the trailer up in the morning.

I come back in the morning and I look over the bills they hand me, I already know they are the wrong bills. I don't even need to look at them because there are way to many pages. She hands me the right bills and the seal that the night shift was supposed to put in the trailer along with a packing slip. Shes caught on as there was no packing slip in my trailer when I checked it out for damage. I run off to get my trailer and...... the dock light is still red. No problem I'll just pretrip the trailer, 10 minutes later the dock light is still red. I go on the dock to see whats up and a fork lifter operator tells me he will look into it. 20 minutes later after two phone calls to the office I go up there. The office worker on the phone couldn't understand how I had BOLs but a red dock light so I dumb it down for her. "I can't leave until you disengage the dock lock which only happens when the light is green." The trainer goes red and asks if they left the dock lock on all night. I left but not before watching a yard jockey try and 45 a trailer in with tandems all the way forward, while trying to avoid a new 3rd row of trailers.

I though that place I went to in Compton was bad when the yard jockey blindsided it into a parked can and they took 4 hours to load semi unpalletized goods into me but this place takes the cake. Avoid this place until they finish their warehousing extension as they have so much overflow that the sherrif almost gave them tickets for leaving trailers out in the street. The volvo plant across the street is being cool and letting them store trailers there but drivers can't access the facility.

I will never come here again.

 

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