Good Night From II

Couldn't agree with you more (about paper logs).

 

Butte, MT tonight.

I'll have just under 9 hours on my 70 tomorrow to make 486 miles, then 11:11 coming in Thursday to make the final 610 miles to Inver Grove. Barring any major slow downs I should be fine.

 

Odessa, TX delivering to the Family Dollar in the morning. Home time in Houston for the 4th to see teh nice Russian psychiatrist, and all the planners want to send me is Amarillo Copper Refinery or Azteca Milling. Yeh, sorry. The broker won't even pay me enough to pull that stuff. I might just pull some shady moves and get a load anyway. =D

 

Lathrop terminal.

I seem to be running across many more Swift drivers than usual that don't get trained very well.
It's mainly in backing situations, but all of them have been very easy setups. These are places where you have room to pull around to have a straight shot into the dock, but it seems to really confuse them.

This evening as I was walking into the terminal I was called over by another driver. He could not figure out why the QC would not let him send his loaded call.
He had dates and times wrong, and a few other things. He also did not really read and understand the load information, and the 24 hour clock really confused him.
When I asked about his training he told me that he had gone solo about 1 week ago, but he had been trained on a dedicated account so he never had to deal with the macro's and figuring out times.
I helped him out and gave him a few tips, and talked him out of leaving the terminal at 1810 for a 2100 delivery that was only 10 miles away. He was giving no thought as to where exactly he was going to sit for those hours before delivering. He was just thinking that he had to get there ASAP.

How stupid is that, to throw him out here OTR when he has no training in how we do things?

 

I ran across one in Virginia that didn't even know how to open the hood on his Cascadia.

 

I guess I'm spoiled because I had a trainer that actually trained me correctly.
But what is happening these days?! !!! How do these drivers even pass to become solo?

This afternoon at the Costco in Tracy, CA there was a Swift driver that had to back in to a dock.
No one around her and she had a straight shot. But she would back a few feet, adjust her angle, pull up and adjust, back up and adjust... and it went on for over 10 minutes before she got the nerve up to actually back in.

Swift really needs to do some serious evaluations of the mentors' abilities to actually train someone, I think.

 

Good luck with that. I'm amazed they can even pass an inspection or know how to handle one if they don't even know how to open their good.

 

Spent 5 hours at a shipper here in N Las Vegas before I finally gave up and left (it's not ready, we'll call you). Parked at Morton's, will check with dispatch in the morning and see what they want me to do. Seems my "stacked load jinx" followed me here from Swift.

 

That'll teach you to take home time ...