I got hit with my first service failure and I don't agree

Drivers learn as they gain more exp unfortunately they have to learn the hard way.

 

Which caused me to develop the theorize that the first year or two is the most dangerous in any new trucker's time out there on the big road. Many simply are discarded or fired for relatively minor preventable. You do not toss a baby for teething on the furnature do ya?.... we should not be firing people for rubbing trailers... heee..

 

i would NEVER toss a baby for chewing on my furniture, but touch my food, and it's history!!!

 

Could a O/O get a service failure put in his or hers file. Sorry x1Heavy if this is a dumb question.

 

Ahem actually no.

I interviewed for to become a Dispatcher once with a wonderful outfit who.. had someone old enough to deal with me that day. I was taught several things about what they want from a dispatcher should I be hired on.

100 drivers to hold hands and wetnurse all day. About 20 will demand high maintaince worse than any you have ever known in your life. About 50 can be told go there and they are there. They don't always follow proper form but they will be there. The rest you will talk to at least one time each day. And about 10 will be on the late list at sunrise for you to focus on to determine if the lateness is caused by themselves or something out of control. Basically passing the results of information finding to higher so they can fire late driver that day.

My responses to the questioning revealed that I was a little bit of a dinosaur and would not.. fit in well with the average 30 something year old dispatchers used to being nice with honeyed words and overdone greetings of be well etc. /sarcasm. In fact I would scare some of them should I resort to bad words applied just so to the problem driver.

Shrugs. There will always be time. And always be a driver. But hardly a dispatcher.

 

ROTF. You finally did it. Caused me to wipe tears of laughing today....

 

How much do you think these companies make profit off each truck per month? If swift makes $10 a day off each of their trucks they make a $200,000 profit each day. If they have 20k trucks. I'm sure there biggest costs is the drivers. If the would pay more, expect a higher standard and motivate their drivers it would help with less turn over and accidents. Treat your drivers like they are important and not like dish washers. And there will always be some drivers who are turds or never happy. Pay more than everyone else and you'll get best

 

I tell you what I think.

Let's say JB Hunt is hard up for 10.00 spending money today. 15000 tractors, call it 13000 drivers. If all of them layed around on reset and did not burn fuel today because it's end of summer and winter isnt that cold yet... he will have about 8 gallons fuel saved per truck times 13000 = 104000 gallons at about 3.00 per... maybe $312000 dollars in spending money for today. To fix whatever stuff that 100 or so problem drivers broke....

When you are Mr Big and have the money flowing if the trucks aint breaking stuff all the time and working hard it's easy to spend a million or two today.

 

I have waited DAYS and NIGHTS in fact Americold in Salinas CA is our current enemy so to speak. 4 dispatchers told us to be there ASAP way back in 2001, emergency. Code red, they have a load to put on wife and I team truck within the hour asap etc etc etc We busted our logs and truck heading over there.

Dock boss said wait, we will get right to you.

Roughly 64 hours elasped (About 3 days and nights) before we finally had that hot load put on us. We had burned half our tractor fuel, burned 2/3 reefer maintaining precool of -10 and so on.

Never again. Will we suffer such a waste and loss of time as a team sitting on our luxurious zero dollar making ### waiting on someone in Salinas. Do you realize how much local and regional California-Oregon work we could have handled in that time period???

That would be the one thing with FFE back in 2001 where I felt everyone dropped the ball to figuratively stab us in the back that week. But... we are so over it. We know how to wait hours and days if necessary. What we wont do is waste more than a week out of a month if possible doing nothing. It is no money in it.