Some of my tips for being successful inspired by Dave_in_AZ

Hi everyone,
I have one more thought I want to share. This truck driving really isn't about driving. Allow me to explain. A couple years ago I was thinking about working for a limousine company here in Cleveland part time and I ended up passing on the job, it wasn't for me and I wasn't real keen on the owners and how they wanted to run things, however it's there business and they can do what they want, but I didn't need it and let it go.

However I did learn something during the orientation there, what I learned was and this stuck with me so in a way it was a good thing I went. The owner of the company said "It's not really about driving here, the driving part of the entire thing is just a by product of what we do."

With trucking that also holds true really. 90% of what's talked about on these forums has nothing to actually do with driving. 90% of it is paper work and loads and what not.

Look it's like any other job and what I mean by that is, the entire thing even if it's an "easy" day is still a headache and it has to be, if it wasn't a headache it wouldn't pay to have someone there.

When you work for a private fleet like I do the driving part is really a by product. It's almost the least of what I do. I'm making deliveries and then after that it's all problem solving after that and what I mean by problem solving is management calls up "Hey we got a pick up that got missed can you go get it?" Look I know people get down on management and stuff and maybe it's just me, but my beefs with them have been pretty minor most of them at the end of the day aren't even worth remembering to be honest. You know once I'm back at the yard at the end of the day it's like so what? Whatever happened happened, but it's all over now it's all in the rear-view mirror.

Yesterday, a driver came in he was HOT he had a very heavy load and it took him a little longer then normal.
Now, I want to stop right there for a minute. A long day at work (I'm not a big fan of the saying "bad day") and some turbulence mainly a heavy load that's a real teeth pulling contest is not brand new. Everything is just going to take way longer. When our loads get real heavy and they have us cubbed out the load quality goes down it's a law of physics I just get mentally set for a long day nothing your going to do.

Any how driver comes in he's all red in the face he's all cursing and it's all the warehouse is bad and there going to hear it from me and this that and the other and pictures and phone calls to the boss and so on and so fourth etc etc. While I understand the frustration the rest of it, is just a waste of time and energy. None of that gets you anywhere at the end of the day. There's a wonderful member of this forum named @Big Don who has said "The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but it's also the first one to get replaced."

This driver was mad because he didn't get done early. I'm sorry, but every now and then I don't care who you are, your going to have a long day once in a while, why do people find that fact of life so hard to accept?


The problems come into the office, it's the bosses job to break the problems down and get people on them to get the problems solved. The job of the driver is to help the boss solve the problem. A problem doesn't automatically mean that the stop or dock or run is a hard one, but none the less it could be an easy run, but if there's no one there to take care of it suddenly the easy run is now a huge problem. Last year I spent an entire week at our warehouse in the road division pulling 50ft doing a lot of behind the scenes work. The runs were easy and it was a great week at work really was had a lot of fun, but even though it wasn't hard all those runs and work still had to get done and they were short on guys and the company thought this was so much of a problem that they paid me to drive my car from Cleveland to our warehouse in Pittsburgh and they paid for all my meals and my hotel for the week and were willing to pay me a few bucks extra on top of whatever the runs paid and the boss at warehouse at the end of the week came up to me and said "Thanks for helping out, this helped a lot."

One hand does help the other. I know you read a lot about the horrors of dispatchers and McMega Carriers. However, I know for a fact there are guys on here who have worked for the same McMega Carriers for a little while and just kept there noise to the grind stone got stuff done and climbed the dispatch board and were at the top and ended up doing alright.

To many times and this isn't exclusive to trucking it happens everywhere people foster this us vs them attitude and that's not the key to success. The offices job is to take problems in our case it's shipping problems the company exists to solve transportation issues, they take those issues sort them out and then employee people on the ground to help solve those problems. The dispatchers take the bulk problems sort them out and break them down into little bite sized pieces and take each piece of the problem that's more manageable and give it to a "driver" who's job is to solve that one variable of that problem.

If the driver and dispatcher work together they can solve the problem. Sometimes it does mean the driver has to do some figuring, but that's kind of part of the job. Usually though, like where I work we get paid "stop pay" and that's money that were getting paid to do some figuring and paper work and what not.

Were helping to solve the problem. I think often times and this isn't 100% true all the time, but I think often times people want dispatch to do everything for them. I'll be honest though and this is where @Dave_in_AZ says it takes effort. Yes to be good out here it takes effort it takes effort in things that have nothing to do with driving. Things like keeping up on paper work. Things like keeping up on equipment care weather it's cleaning out a trailer, polishing a truck rim, spraying a pallet jack with WD-40 or making sure you have air in the tires of your two wheeler. Often times those are all things that are "someone else's job."

Dispatch might send you something that they don't have the answer to 100%. Well now a days in this era of smart phones and GPS and Google Maps it's not a big deal. I'm kind of amazed at how many drivers at my yard wont even bother to put in an address into google maps to see what there looking at if they don't know something. This also raps back around to complaining, now and then there are legitimate complaints that need to be dealt with. As someone who has done a lot of math in my life LOL! You can solve a problem wrong and get the wrong answer and sometimes dispatch does solve problems wrong. However, there are people who cry wolf to much and if your one of those people who is constantly on the horn about everything, your not going to be taken seriously after a while. Vs the guy who usually is steady eddy and just does his work and when he has a legitimate problem management is usually way more prone to take his issue more seriously. I saw it happen in real life at the beer company.


Bottom line is this, your helping solve problems. There's a job that needs to be done or series of jobs that need to be done jobs could also be translated into problems that need to be solved. As the driver your the man on the street doing the work that is the job. The dispatchers job like I said is to break the bulk problem down into bite sized pieces and assign a man on the street a different piece of the problem to solve. Now where the break down comes in, is dispatch might screw up assigning equipment to a job to solve the problem. You don't send a 53' to a straight truck stop and sometimes that happens, but I think to many times drivers think the dispatcher is the enemy or out to get them when really there just a person who's trying the best they can as well. Even our packers who pack our trailers sometimes I say give the guy a break he's loaded 3 trailers and touched probably 1500-2000 cases he's not doing stuff intentionally wrong on purpose he's got 700-800 cases flying at him off a conveyor belt he's just doing his best. At the end of the day your all on the same team work with each other not against each other.

Thank you.

 

One more point. When big carriers or even medium carriers when they go to market them selves they always say "We have state of the art dispatching computer satellite tracking systems and a fleet of modern late model equipment as well as the safest experienced drivers and dispatchers to handle all your shipping needs."

The reason they say this is because it has to be true.