Our SLOGAN ..That's just trucking man , Everytime it cost us money ?

Exactly why I do P&D at an LTL company(paid hourly). I tried OTR 4 years ago-never again. It is always the driver who has to take it in the shorts.

 

[

Did the sheriffs dept. not arrest some of the dot inspectors that time around? Inspectors tampering with equipment etc. I recall something about this,,

 

Yes, the top guy was put on trial and resigned his job. It was a horrendous mess for a long time because of the corruption. I was pulled in 3 times in one week in Tennesee and was driving for a Tennessee based company; XpressCo, a long haul flatbed carrier. I told the guy this was my third inspection this week, and he said, "The owner of the company isn't paying his dues." That's a fact; that really happened. The owner was Wayne Wise, a man I really respected and admired and he refused to pay bribes or give political contributions to crooks. He finally closed the doors of the company. When he passed away, he was the owner of Western Express. Doesn't matter to me what people say about that company because the man that started the company was ok and easy to work for when I was with his other flatbed company; he took good care of us and gave us the benefit of the doubt when there were problems.

 

You don't always get what you want, especially when what you want is a gravy train job.

That's Just Life.

 

Spoken like a dispatcher drinking the cool-aid.

Nothing is "pro-rated." Pure management BS. The piece rate per mile (CPM) of what a trucking company pays it's driver is just based on going market rates for drivers. Management is clueless to the work or time put in by a driver.

The piece work pay model is designed to relieve management away from managing the customer and allows them to misrepresent the job and the pay scale. Thats why we all say recruiters lie when all they do is claim "3,000 miles @ .XX CPM and weekly home time." They don't have a clue.

Company drivers, especially at the mega, are often strapped with long hours of customer kiss-### on loads a smart O/O would never take. But, what does management care, they can always say, "all that free work is 'pro-rated' in your base pay: BS accomplished, the work of managing the customer avoided, and trucking bank account filled with free work.

 

Recently:

My truck broke down, was down for 11 days with no miles. Got the truck back after it was repaired, and it broke down again within 24 hours. Been down 3 days again with no miles.

I got the line from my company "That just trucking."

Thats half a month gone.

Yes I got breakdown pay, but its quite a bit less than rolling.

 

Ouch. That is rough. It's also one reason I like working for a large company. If my truck is going to be down more than a few days, I can probably go grab a recovery truck and run some loads while my truck is being fixed.

 

having worked in quite a few industries, trucking is the best paying for an underachiever like me. i never thought there was anything i wouldn’t want to do for $1000/week paychecks, but working in this toxic industry is making me think otherwise. i’m amazed at the amount of absolutely free work i do sometimes, wondering how the hell it’s even legal. i really can’t wait to go local—at least then i get to sleep in my own bed after getting screwed all day.