Truck Abandonment

So many companies put lies on your DAC and who has to suffer,you the driver does.Law knows this happens why can't something get done about this.You see all kinds of websites on dac reports and how to fix your dac but this happens on a continual basis.Drivers can't find a job because a trucken company put lies on their dacs.

 

You don't understand why truck abandoment is such a bad thing? I will start off by telling you that I have an abandoned truck on my dac. In my situation, I was stationed out of Denver, and moving back to my beloved blue grass state amid a divorce. Swift KEPT putting the money into the wrong account. It went to my soon to be exwife, instead of to me. After three weeks of driving for free, I told them I was going to park it at the terminal in Columbus, the threatened to right it down as abandoned on my dac, because that wasn't the terminal the truck was assigned too. Long story short I offered to take it back to Denver for a bus ticket home. Remember I hadn't got paid in three weeks! The refused to pay for a ticket, so it was either homeless and stranded in Denver, or abandon the truck in Kentucky, where I had a job available, or drive it to Ohio with no way back to Kentucky, and have the same thing on my dac as just leaving it in Kentucky. So I chose to leave it in Kentucky and let them get it, because frankly I wanted to tell them where they could stick it, as I had inadvertanly worked almost a month for free. Btw that's why my name is prisonerofthehwy. Because I was driving and not getting paid for it.
Ok, here's why truck abandoment is bad...... First off, the equipment belongs to the company not to you. Secondarily, the equipment is extremely expensive. If you abandoned it, any hooligan can come along, and vandalize the companies unattented to property. It is expensive to get someone to the truck to pick it back up, and it may be two thousand miles from the home terminal in some cases. How would you like to hire someone to mow your yard, you let them use your lawn mower, they abandon it somewhere other than your yard where it belongs? Same basic concept, only much more complex.
It's stupid to abandon a truck, and I wish I didn't feel forced to, but I wasn't going to work any longer for free.

 

I had a guy who worked for my company abandon his truck. He was in Auburn Maine, on Tuesday for a Wednesday delivery in Lewiston, He took the truck and load to Rutland Vermont, when the company dispatchers came to work on Wednesday morning they checked to see where all the trucks were. When they saw the truck and trailer in Rutland they turned off his fuel cards. We get paid on our Comdata card, the driver called me and told me if he couldn't get his money off the card he was going to go turn off the reefer and let the ice cream melt.
I called the boss and told him about the driver. The owner of the company told me they had already sent someone to get the load and take it to Maine. I spent most of the day taking calls from the driver and relaying the messages to the owner. Finally the owner of the company released the driver's pay from the Comdata card. The driver wouldn't call the owner of the company. The next day the driver told me he was going to sell the Rigmaster off the truck if they didn't pay him his final check. Then on Saturday the driver left me a voice mail that he was going to pour four gallons of water in each fuel tank. The owner had to have the truck towed to a safe location because he didn't have anyone in Vermont who could go get the truck.
When I got back to Vermont I had to go get the truck from the towing company and pay $1400 towing and storage. Then I had to go get another truck that another driver abandoned, when I got back to Iowa the owner had another driver and I drive a company car to Vermont to pick up the two abandoned trucks.
Needless to say, this driver who abandoned his truck with the load will never get a good reference from us.

 

I worked with a guy that got mad because the company we worked for would not give him an advance while being in las vegas due to knowing his gambling habits and losing his money then wanting another advance to cover the first one.. so anyway he loaded in nampa idaho where the yard was,, inroute to pheonix arizona,, when he didnt get the advance he took the truck and trailer back to the yard in nampa idaho cleaned out his truck and went home,, needless to say the owner had to get another driver to take the load to pheonix ariz, paying double the wages and then paying double fuel and late fee for the load being late, like 2 to 3 days late due to driver stupidity,, thats why truck abandonment is bad,, i have heard of drivers abandoning trucks way across the united states and gett ing a bus home leaving loads on the trucks and keys in them as well.. glad they were not my trucks..

 

But the root of the problem was that YOU wheren't paying him? What the driver threatened to do was wrong, but not paying someone for their work is STEALING from them, and I don't blame him. He should have done it.
Why wheren't you paying him to begin with? Abandoned equipment is bad, but not paying the driver is even worse. I hope your company goes bankrupt.

 

He was being paid, until he went missing with the truck. Any company will turn off your fuel cards if they see the truck somewhere other than where it should be. The driver didn't have enough back bone to call the owner of the company and say what his problem was, he just called me (just another driver) to ##### about not getting an advance to pay for unloading. He asked his dispatcher for an advance, and didn't get it. He should have called the owner of the company and explained he couldn't get the advance. The driver cost the company over $2000 between towing, storage, sending another driver for the load and sending me for the truck, and the owner of the company still paid him for his last trip.
The company didn't do anything wrong, other than a minor SNAFU with dispatch not getting his request for advance to the person who puts the money on the Comdata card.
I think the driver just doesn't think rationally since his last stroke, he's always been hot headed, but recently he's been worse than ever. We've known each other over 11 years when we both went for a company in Vermont.
I told him that if he had a problem with the President of the company he should call the guy who owns the company, and he would fix the problem.

 

I'm sorry Swift got you for truck abandonment.You did'nt abondon their truck.So many truck companies ARE REALLY BAD.Why do they have to treat drivers like a bad disease.Heck if it was'nt for the drivers they would'nt even have a truck company.The dispatchers as well as the corporate idiots get away with everything meanwhile the innocent drivers get fired or they quit for good reasons.Then when you want to talk to somebody about it ,you get better response talking to a wall because nothing ever gets done.In the trucken industry the corporate idiots and some dispatchers are saints and the drivers are low class in their eyes.

 

Did u ever stop and think maybe that driver abandon his equipment because u shut off his card and did'nt tell him you was going to do this and didnt tell him the reason why.maybe hes in the wrong and maybe he had a good reason.There are ALOT OF DRIVERS that abandon equipment and they have good reasons like being stranded in the middle of nowhere,not paying the drivers,ect.There are many reasons.But you would have to be a driver to understand this.

 

it is bad because the truck owner has to pay someone to retrieve the truck, that could cost 1000,00. this is one of the worst things to do esp. for a new driver.

 

I've never abandoned a truck although I can say there have been times when I've been real close. I worked for USA for two years back in the late 90's and I had been called for Jury Duty. The company told me to write a letter explaining to the courts that I was an OTR driver and that I couldn't promise to be home for those dates. I did and they would not relieve me of Jury Duty. I had the date postponed three times and finally they said if I didn't attend Jury Duty on 12-29-98 that I would face fines and possible jail time. Teresa, my dispatcher, and her boss Mack knew what was going on since May so they finally got me home (after being out for 6 weeks and many threats of quiting) on Christmas Day and I was to stay home untill New Years. I got a call on the evening of the 28th from one of the night dispatchers telling me I had to pick up a load 100 miles away early in the morning of the 29th. I told him I couldn't do it because of Jury Duty and his response was that if I didn't p/u the load that I would be considered quiting my job and abandoning my truck. Keep in mind that the 28th is my birthday and what I gift all this was. The whole night I ended up worrying about my job and Dac. Everything got resolved, but it was a long drawn out hassle and there were a few times I though I was going to have to abandon the truck to do Jury Duty. USA had from May untill December to get me home to do Jury Duty and since I was only home once a month to check mail, I would have to worry non-stop if the courts would give me more time. Not like I wanted to take a day off from the road to sit in court all day, but that wasn't mine or USA's decision to make. I understood that it is hard to book the loads to get you home at a specific date and time, but I tried to get out of it and I couldn't. I can definitly understand why trucks get abandoned sometimes (not all the time) and yes companies use that DAC against you anytime you don't want to or legally can't do something for them.