Dealing with brokers as a company driver

Not saying you're wrong, but if a driver is going to be a doormat, he's going to get walked on. There's nothing in the employee handbook that says anything about a Doormat Policy.

 

Now I want to get my employee handbook and right in a doormat policy... Sounds legit I'm awful

 

Well, maybe so but he likes to pay his bills and the paycheck helps with that. If he had more experience the interaction would have gone a lot differently but he had 2 months solo and this was his first direct experience with brokers.

he was ready to walk over this issue but knowing how responsive his company has been on other issues, I dont believe it'll happen again-especially since the brokers won't have his number and his dispatchers have more sense than to do that to their drivers. Lesson learned.

 

I never give out cell phone. We had one for a while with several companies. Lucky for us the QC (Satellite) handled the comms with dispatch. Once in a while a broker did get through to us using information buried in our application papers to find the phone number which is like deep in personel's filing cabinets...(Sheesh...) they are told to beat it, call dispatcher and battery is taken out of the phone the remainder of the day.

CH Robinson on the west coast is really notorious for this behavior. Which is it Mr Broker? You want the load there on time? Leave that phone alone. That way you don't create a problem causing us to stop. Sometimes ETA on our team loads were less than 10 minutes to spare a phone call with no established end goal ruins it.

 

So call the dispatcher. If I have problems I'll call you. Not the other way around. If you are too stupid to understand why drivers don't need to be dealing with harassing calls while driving, you are likely too stupid to put your pants on properly in the morning.

On an unrelated note, are you capable of taking a leak without dropping your pants to your knees?

 

While I haven't had the situation as described by another member, who's husband was hounded by dozens of redundant calls, I know certain brokers do require an extra level of communication. If I get held up by unexpected traffic from a crash up ahead and reroute, I am immediately on the phone to both dispatch and the broker to revise my ETA.

You noted this is how to get "max money" from brokers. I agree. I pulled a few loads at mediocre rates for a certain broker, gave them MY usual level of service, and lo and behold the rates went up. Since I have incentive to get maximum rates, that means communicating gives me a raise worth five figures.

Getting hounded? That's definitely uncalled for. A few check calls a day is perfectly in reason.

 

So you keep calling the fork truck operator? How about the line guy packaging the product? What? That's absurd? Of course it is. The driver is not the face of the company. The driver is not your customer, he just works for your customer. If you don't like taking to said companies dispatch then hire a new company.
And yes, o/o and to some extent l/o's are different. I'm talking company driver.

 

"Also it really does seem lost on you that we're the people paying for that load. That means we're the customer. We have a right to know what's going on with it in a reasonable way. No we shouldn't be using that right as an excuse to abuse the driver. But yes if you were supposed to be at the pickup at 2pm and it's now 3:30pm and I just heard from the customer that you aren't there I'm going to blow you up. Because if I don't get ahold of that driver and find out what is wrong before I find a replacement truck he's losing the entire load. It's just business."

Hey @boredsocial No, it's not lost on me at all. How you can sit here and justify more than 2 dozen calls to a driver when there was nothing wrong IS lost on me. Nothing they did was reasonable. One of them told him they were required to call at regular intervals regardless of where the driver was or what he was doing. It was their m.o. pure and simple and not the result of some problem.

 

Uh... @hoosiergirl ...

I believe @boredsocial said, as you quoted, "We have a right to know what's going on with it in a reasonable way. No we shouldn't be using that right as an excuse to abuse the driver."

That right there tells me he isn't on board with what happened to your husband. That was harassment. It also tells me that brokerage is highly disorganized, incapable of keeping status updated and so they constantly have to "remind" themselves what's going on. Very very inefficient.

 

Shut your phone off while driving.I drove for a company for 5 years and all the loads except a paper load was broker loads most got to know me and knew I don't talk on the phone while driving and only called once and left a voice mail.They knew I would call them once I stopped.