Getting safety points for people "calling in on you"

i actually had this happen to me, but not from a mega carrier, but a smaller one. some one called to say i was blocking the highway and they could not pass...

i asked if they left thier name, number as well...i was told no, "they just called it in"..

i said, did the person taking the call follow company policy"?

he said..."no"

"well then it didn't happen"

for a complaint to be valid, that company by the way, BY THIER RULES, had a policy that a contact phone number, time, date, location, truck and trailer number and if possible what the driver looked like, in other words, they wanted it ALL to verify any complaint. ALL THAT MUST be taken to verify the complaint against a driver. seems that in the past, ex wives or girlfriends were calling in making false complaints.

after i told my safety mgr that it did not happen..??

he balled up the paper complaint and tossed it into the circular file, and would talk with the person that took the call.

thier policy was.."no complete information"?

throw out the paperwork.


those safety risk points stay on your employment record, nothing else, but THEY COULD include those on any DAC file they have on you, not that DAC is anymore a valid or respectable source as well anymore.

 

I do

I don't agree with swift waiting so long to tell you but many companies have how's my driving with a comment number on the back of their trailers.

 

yes they do, thing is that any moron can call it in.

on ALL jobs i have had, i apply duct tape over that number. some guys spray black paint.

some guys rip off the sticker.

not even the trailer shops in many companies, replace those stickers.

i think that's the worst thing any company can do.

it does NOT improve anything out there.

try and call RAC (Rent A Center) and make a complaint.....not gonna happen.

 

This is how it would have played out for me:

Company man: HotH2o, someone called and said you cut the blinker short and cut them off. You have bee assessed 4 safety points.

Me: The truck is parked (insert current location). You can come get it and shove it and those safety points up your ###.

Note: This scenario would never play out as I wouldn’t work for a company like swift.

 

I know anyone can call in bad safety you just hope there complaint is credible.I'm not convinced companies take each complaint serious depends what it is.

 

Happened to me years back. Company got a call that I was driving people off the road in atlanta. Didn't leave a name or contact. Safety called me and asked what happened. Couldn't give an answer. Had not been in Atlanta in months. Some times there are a - holes that try and cause trouble.

 

and sometimes, which i totally forgot to mention earlier, people "transpose" numbers from one truck to another or miss one number and "just add one".

i can't tell you or anyone, how difficult it was at one LTL carrier i worked with, that hade 53 foot trailers nearly identical numbered. like this

53123
98123
93123


forget about the 48's, and the pups, dear god, you'd be there all night searching for your trailers.lol

you see, they owned several companies, and they used all the trailers they could.

 

We usually ignore the snitch calls unless there's good evidence that the driver actually did something wrong...like somebody's fender hanging off of the mud flap.
What we get the most of are broken windshield complaints. They usually want cash to fix their windshield. We tell them to have their insurance company contact us and we never hear from them again.
There's no way we'd ding the driver for something just on the word of some anonymous stranger...that's just pure BS.

 

Same thing happened to me once. Don't sweat it. Two things I can tell you about the Swift safety department is that they couldn't care less what any driver has to say about anything (so don't bother arguing), and no one else at Swift cares what Safety says about you. If they didn't fire you, you got away with it. It's that simple. Move on.

You've seen trailers with the 800 number painted over or covered with tape? Drivers do that. I used to do it too. A couple of years back they started putting the 800 number way up high where you can't get to it to cover it up; but you also can't read it from a car with it up that high - so it's all good.