If you're late, you're late.....period

Here is another gripe of mine. I am anal about being 'on time'. I HATE when people tell me "ill be there in 15 minutes", and 2 hours later, they're still not there. it says alot about personal character when you cant judge time.

My thing is this, I like to be on time or early for any pick up or delivery. If i can get un/loaded early and get onto my next load....great. The problem is, everybody must not feel the same way.

For example, I have a 19:00 appointment time. I happen to be done with my previous load 12 hours sooner, and can p/u the next load about 10:00. Guess what, if someone picking up is even one minute late, they should forefit their slot in the schedule. if you cannot be on time, then you are telling the shipper, you dont care about their load. And if i was the shipper, i'd get someone waiting to get loaded into your dock and get him on his way.

Kinda when I worked for an airline....i use to LOVE passengers who would try checking into their flight 10 minutes before it departed, and EXPECT us to hold the plane. I'd always tell them, '...if you can make it....you can get on it....but doors close in 5 minutes...'. They would always come back down, and out of breath, get mad at me telling me "you told me i could get on!!!" If you want to cut it as close as you can, then you accept the risk of being passed up.

wish shippers would reward drivers who showed they took a little pride in their job and the customers load, and get them in and out. I just backed into a dock, super tight....but made it. I slide my tandems, open my doors, the works....just then another guy comes out and asks "did my guy tell you to dock here?" and i told him 'he did'. too bad the guy that told me to dock was talking some sort of 'jive', and didnt understand a word he said. Too bad that this guy cannot read the name of the company on my door and realize he was talking to the wrong driver.

 

Yeah, my mentor, who was on a Wal-Mart dedicated account, told/showed me, whenever we depart one stop for another, just to put in 11/11 11:11 for the ETA and PTA. And not until the last stop, when obviously you have a better idea of when exactly your ETA/PTA will be, do you put it in.

I just guess anyways, and dont correct it till i do my Mac 10 in the morning. No point telling your DM you have an ETA/PTA for 0700, when you really dont have a clue, and it will be more like 0900. then you get shafted and go to the bottom of the list to get a PP because they expected you at 0700 and not 0900.

would really make drivers pay closer attention to being on time, if they had to sit and wait for a dock to open after they were late.

 

I really never saw a problem with delivering early. But then again, my mentor and i, we almost always had frozen dairy/deli load, and we could kick out anybody we wanted to at the dock that was a dry van. He once kicked out this budweiser truck cause he knew the driver and that driver was a real ##$hole. HAHAHAH.

I did have one load when i was solo, that was going to a Costco (i think they are worse than Wally Mart) where it was scheduled to be unloaded at 8p, and i was getting there just after 5p. The gal inside said, "oh everybody just went home, and there wont be anybody here till 11p". Sometimes the planners dont quite get their ducks in a row.

But if i was early, and they had a dock open, and they refused to let me dock it and start unloading, i would document it, let my DM know, and then sit there in my truck and idle (they hate that) till they came out to say 'we'll unload u now'.....or 10 min. before my appointment time.

 

i wouldnt have worried too much about getting a service failure over it. as long as it was documented, i am sure you were fine...but it does suck sitting that long burning your clock.