Rum's Rants

I am the type who like people to speak there minds. a good vent now and then are needed. keeps you from going crazy.
I am glad you have your post. best to know before hand what some one is in for. this way if you go ahead and sign on you have no one to blame but your self.
from reading lots of post about roehl seems at one time they were a better company then they are now. of cause never working there before I can only go by what I read.

to be honest if I went with roehl I would want some one like you for a trainer. by the end of the training I would know all the good and bad.

 

Rumandcoke 123

The one thing I like about being a truck driver is that we can shoot the breeze, argue, tell our war stories, gripe & complain. We can talk about the good and the bad and our own experiences with life on the road with others who have been there. I don't take disagreements with what I say personally. If you start name calling, that's different, otherwise I see this forum as a bunch of drivers sitting around a driver's room killing time.

You are right that I shouldn't lump the dsr with the planner and lately I have had some loads that tell me the planner is either new or "out to lunch." I stand by my general statement that the dispatcher makes or breaks the company for the driver. There has also been research done that backs this up. When drivers change jobs without an economic benefit (better pay, better home time) the reason can usually be traced back to the dispatcher.

As for driver's complaining, just remember the title of this thread is "Rum's Rants." Need I say more?

 

rum you have 10 years of trucking. for that I say thanks. you guys have one tough job.
how many of your 10 years have been with roehl?

 

This is why I dig what you write. It is alsowhy I refuse to believe anyone in management is actually reading any of this. Sure the occasionally odd dispatcher may stumble upon it. I cannot for the life of me see how anyone with the abilty to affect change can read well laid out arguements about small but important issues and not seek to implement changes. Here's one for ya Rum. My new company provided me with a wrench to swap fuel filters. A small seemingly unimportant issue but I always rubbed me wrong that Roehl actually charged me for the tool that saved them money every time I used it.

 

You are right about the newbies getting a wake up call. I was a trainer with a local dump company. They hired people right out of school and it amazed me how few people got through training and into their own truck. They just couldn't handle the job. Mind you this was a job that you worked five days a week twelve hours a day. These trainees were guarenteed $100 a day minimum while in training. Unloading meant flipping a couple of switches throwing a couple of levers and hitting the accelerator. It didn't pay very well once you were in your own truck which is why I had to quit and go back on the road. The point is these newbies had no idea what they were getting themselves into. I'm sure they thought things would get easier when they got their cdl, they didn't realize all they had was a permit to learn how to really drive a truck.

I've been behind the wheel for almost three years and I can assure anyone concerned that I am still watching and learning. I guess that is one of my rants, drivers who think they know it all or who can't do the job and aren't willing to learn.

It would be nice if Roehl and other companies really felt it was a good idea to read what we are saying and implement changes. I just had to get $140 in two cash advances to pay for Florida tolls. It cost me $15 in unreimbursed service fees to get that money and all I get out of payroll are excuses. Maybe someone should investigate the entire Comdata system and why trucking companies like using the system. I hate Comdata and only use it when required to for company use when I don't have the cash in my own bank account. I'll bet we could start an entire rant just on Comdata.

I can't speak to the company car in Gary, but the van in Marshfield is junk. Rum, you are right about the routing and directions. I asked for directions for a consignee in Miami, what I got was a complaint that the exit was Sunpass only and the driver ran the gate, but no directions. I have never seen such poor directions as what is on Roehl's system. Have you tried finding an empty trailer lately? I don't know where you drive, but I have had to drive as much as three hours and make four stops to find an empty. Their opti-stop routing system also has a nasty habit of sending us on restricted routes.

I am not saying there aren't legitamite complaints that need to be addressed. I am also not labeling someone a complainer just because they air their frustrations. Let's face it we all know drivers that if you handed them a twenty as a gift they would complain that it wasn't a hundred. We all need to vent and their is nothing wrong with that. I guess my experience with trucking companies is that if I don't expect anything and I will never be disappointed. I know it is a very cynical attitude, but it allows me to work without driving down the road ready to kill something or someone (my wife appreciates not being my sounding board listening to me yell and scream.)

My statement that all truck drivers complain is meant for the new or potential new driver that wonders if this life is for them. Driving a truck, being away from home and wondering if the directions you have are correct is a hard life. It can be very frustrating to invest so much in this business and when you look at your pay you wonder if this job will ever pay off. At the end of the day this job pays enough to support the family, you don't have to spend all day kissing butt to keep your job and push come to shove if you are doing a good job they are going to listen to you when you tell the company what it is going to take to get the job done. It is far easier for a good driver to find another driving job than it is for a company to replace a good driver, the companies know this whether they admit it or not.

 

Ok, here's my thing.....I keep reading/hearing about the directions and the routing and I don't understand why this is a problem so maybe you can fill me in.

It used to be the drivers that were putting the directions for stops in.....until a few jerks decided to screw with everyone else and start putting in a wrong turn or 2. We found this out the hard way...we used the Qualcomm directions and ended up somewhere we shouldn't have been. Lesson learned....we call the shipper and receiver on each load. Neither of us wants the fines and/or mark on the driving record for a mistake that could be avoided.

The routing is another one of those things that you should be looking at before you leave the shipper. Check you route with an atlas, or whatever software you want, but make sure you are not heading somewhere you shouldn't be. If you find a problem, a simple message across the Qualcomm should be enough to get your route changed. Again....learned the hard way....lesson learned, won't happen again. DSR's are different on how they handle a route change. We had one that would change a route, but you had to call him and explain why, and then he would change it. We also had one that wouldn't change a route...he was new and told that because of fuel mileage, fuel tax for the states, and blah blah, the route sent was the one drivers had to follow. We had to go over his head to get a route changed. The DSR we have now tells us, if the route isn't good, pick something else and let him know what it is so he can change it. The biggest thing is to make sure you do let someone know....there is something with the insurance company that can refuse to cover accident damage because you were off the route you were given.

We've never run into not having enough time to look at a load, but then again, we make the time to look at it. If we can't make the pick-up, we let our DSR know when we can make it, then go from there. (we run flat so it's very rare we actually have an appointment to pick up anything....usually it's anytime between 7-3) We look at the delivery time and miles, divide the miles by 50, add a 10hr break if needed, and confirm the load with either the eta they sent with the load or the one we come up with. We never check the route until we are getting ready to leave the shipper and then make those changes if we have too.

IMO~All of the above are the responsibility of the driver anyway. It's all a part of trip planning, and cover your ###. The truck, trailer and load are your responsibility as part of your job. Something happens to any part of them and it's your ### on the line, wether you got the directions from the Qualcomm or the shipper.

What I really don't understand, is if you've gotten wrong directions and routing....why are you still relying on them and not checking them out for yourself?


The payroll issue I've argued here before. Yes, they will back pay a driver for a payroll error...if it was Roehl's fault. Again...another thing you have to go through your DSR for, and depending on wether the care or not, they will fix it or you have to start calling payroll yourself. A missed tarp, a yearly raise that took 2 months to figure out, oversized load paid at dispatched miles instead of hub.....all paid back after being looked into. Sucks that it happens, but everybody makes mistakes. As long as they are willing to correct it, why is it an issue?