Attention all company drivers!!!

Well, here is the truth rookies:

It is YOUR CDL. Tickets count against YOU. Accidents count against YOU.
(although laws now a days make it harder on the company if you have tickets/accidents, so again the slow monster is changing).

Companies can not "black list" you. It is illegal. ALL they can provide to a future employer is the dates you worked there.

So how do you keep a company from screwing you over? Well number 1) Do NOT do anything illegal. Its YOUR record. If they tell you to get something to the receiver that is 6 hours away and you only have 4 hours left, park it. If they fire you then you have a valid complaint for the DOT. Report THEM! They will get fined HUGE. They will be put on the DOTs watch list and will be closely monitored for years to come! If you are too tired to drive, even if you have the hours, then PARK IT! Again, they give you static all you have to say is you didnt feel it was SAFE to continue (same goes for driving in bad weather). If they are telling you to operate what YOU feel is an UNSAFE vehicle or in an UNSAFE manner, dont do it. If they fire you, THEY ARE DOING YOU A FAVOR!!!

Next job put on your ap the reason you were fired. "They wanted me to get my load to Denver by 9am and at midnight I was still 500 miles out and only had 6 hours drive time left because of icy roads, so I parked it."

Any company that wouldnt hire you because of that is a company you dont want to work for anyway!!

 

That's great advice, but hard to take when you have bills coming in. Still, you have to see the long term problems of harming your license. I am not sure how much a company that doesn't know you is going to believe a driver. I was put in a terrible position of hauling containers. Never had done it in my life. I got a one hour explanation, and it didn't cover everything. Two days later I got one that was overloaded (as many are I found out), and when I took a corner at 20 mph it went over and took me with it. Now I have a "rollover" on my license, and no amount of explaining will change that. Some insurance guy riding a desk that has never driven a truck in his life is just looking at numbers and reports, not at reasons. At least with a union, you would have someone with knowledge to arbitrate and decide who was really at fault.

 

Your safety record is the thing that matters, trust me. As long as your tickets/accidents are clean, you wont have to wait more than a week to find something. They need YOU more than you need THEM. Again, as long as your record is clear. If it isnt, well then thats YOUR FAULT, isnt it?

The container was YOUR FAULT. Period. No union would get that moved to a non-chargeable. If you needed more training on it, it is up to YOU to get it. Or you refuse to do it. I got fired by the post office because I hadnt been trained (non-driving job) in what they wanted me to do and said so. I fought it and after a while I was reinstated and then I said screw it, that job wasnt worth having anyway. But it went down as I quit rather than got fired. The ONLY good part of the PO was that my army time counted for vacation/retirement.

But mail haulers (contractors) is a pretty good gig, or used to be anyways. I have done that several times, including my first job out of school in 84.

You pull an over weight trailer, thats on YOU. Even if the company pays the ticket (most will), the ticket is still on YOUR record. If its over weight, you tell the company to get a permit or someone else to pull it, because I wont. Hazmat same thing. Not placarded correctly? Guess who ISNT going to pull it?

 

It was my fault fot not knowing any better. There is an old saying: you dont know what you dont know. Its true. Yesterday i had to take a load in a truck i knew nothing about, and I was leaving early in the morning. It was a KW T700. I spent hours on you tube learning everything I could, then found the owners manual (which was poorly written) to explain the rest. Made it ok, although, not a fan of that automatic.

 

I am a 52 year active 0/0 48 states, I learned the old way, from drivers who loved the job. You had to know how to fix them and change your own tires on the road. Its a whole different culture today, many dont even know what a truck is before they get inside one. Driving schools, you talk about how much it costs to train a newbie, well let me tell you this, I had an offer to train new drivers a few years back at a very reputable school. I went to see what was going on. I saw that the taxpayers were paying for these newbie drivers training and more than half did not speak english. I asked, how can I pass them and certify them if they cant even speak or read english? I was told dont worry about it, its ok to certify them if they can operate a rig. Really, this is what I was told. So, with more and more non english speaking drivers on the road, do you think this has an impact on driver retention and pay for new drivers? PS I DID NOT TAKE THE JOB

 

Try working for an expediter where most don't speak English well and have no concept of what is morally right for dispatching you. This is what it has come to. I even see these drivers get out at warehouses wearing flip flops.

 

Lol what are you supposed to wear if your sitting in a truck all day

 

You drive in Flip flops? I dont think that's safe. We should take a poll.

 

Personally, I kick my shoes off.

 

I don’t wear anything

I prefer being naked and leaving butt sweat