Trip planning

he would have been told that after he drops that load, go to xx place for his next load, then he'd be routed back to the terminal.

then he'd be fired.

bacisally, he refused to "make an attempt" to get closer before he shut down.


it's the same thing as a driver refusing to even leave the yard in a snow storm......"at least make the attempt"..

i actually had 2 scenarios where this happened to ME...

scenario number 1.....

as a driver, one company boss said, "Have Mr. Buddy clean out his truck, if he doesn;t want to drive in the snow"....so what did i do..??

seriolusly, i drove from MA all the way down to Richmond, VA to PROVE to that icehole, i can do the job.....(during a MAJOR nor'easter on the eastern seaboard)

the VP of the company (the owners LONG TIME VP) got onto the cb radio from the dispatchers window, and told me, "Buddy, don't stop now, get into the yard" cuz the streets in Richmond VA are NEVER plowed and guess what, not even the RIchmond yard was plowed...

VP asked me, "Buddy, why did you do that"?

(everyone from the company from the ME terminal to the Carolina's terminals KNEW i was driving during this massive storm)

i told him word for word what the Richmond boss said.....about cleaning out my truck...(we dubed him "Little Hitler")

the VP, me and that acehole boss, marched into the owners office, one Mr. James H. Cochran, the former founder and OWNER of Overnight (he had long since sold Overnite and started this new company)

after the most LOUDEST toungue lashing that icehole boss from Richmond got, Mr. Cochran said, "you leave this man alone, or your're fired...I LIKE HIM and his tenacity, to show you up, he's a bigger man than you will ever be"..

now by the way, this was all happening as a MAJOR snowstorm was hitting the east coast..I-95 in MD was closed, the NJTP was closing, but i got to the end "just in time".

i took one heck of a chance driving, but i was gonna be darned if some icehole boss made any such threat to me....

oh yeah, Mr. Cochran said to his VP, "Jim, this man can stay at the motel for the rest of this week, all taken care of by US" (i left out on a sunday afternoon, got to Richmond on a TUESDAY, kinda a LONG time driving thru this massive storm, i was usually at Richmond in like 9 to 9.5 hours...) so i got to stay down there on the company dime, all meals, cable tv, included in the motel)

scenraio number 2

i worked for Lily Transportation as a yard switcher/boss..

i had to deal with temp drivers doing ONE night run and back.

it was snowing, i was having trouble in the yard myself.

the temp driver showed up (he was called in by my boss, not me, to do the run)

he said to me, "man, it's crazy out there, my car was slipping and sliding"

he said, "i'm going home", i said "i have to do MY JOB and call your company, for refusing to work"....that may get your entire company banned.

i said "look, hook up to the trailer, go to the gate, and pull out, go a short distance and call me from the shopping mall, 6 blocks away, and tell me how the streets are"

he did....he called me and said the streets were bad, he wasn't even on the highway yet....which i knew the highways were treated

i said, "come on back at least you MADE the attempt"...

i called the boss, told hm the guy TRIED to make an ATTEMPT, but couldn;t go, the roads are REALLY, REALLY BAD...

boss says ok, the driver got paid for a FULL night (8 hours) for SHOWING UP and ATTEMPTING the job.

for the op to not even TRY to get closer, i could give a flip about MD/DC traffic, for god's sake i been there too....is a failure on HIS PART to make the attempt.

he's already complained about being an OTR driver, doing a local run and having a hard time backing...does he have easier times backing once every few days?

he IS NOT a driver.

he'd be FIRED had he worked for me.

 

Actually, he is a driver and he's trying to do the right thing. If he doesn't always succeed it might be because he hasn't been trained well enough or done the job long enough to figure things out on his own.
The easiest thing to do is a fire a driver. But then what? What are you going to replace him with? Another rookie?
Why not take the time to educate the driver and show him the right way to do things? If he still screws up or if he doesn't take the advice you give him you can always fire him later.
People helped you when you were young and dumb, no?
Just because you, personally, don't like the way he does things, doesn't always mean they're wrong.

 

Bottom line, did he make the delivery on time?

 

Well, there ya go!

 

actually, like my former employer, they had a minimum of 5 years experience. i liked that. my former employer was not a training academy.

there was a time (if you have been in this long enough, you would recall) that Werner too had a 5 year minimum experience level and many tanker companies had "up to" a 10 year experience level.

so in all frankness, had i been a business owner, he'd have never even had a chance to fill out an application. (although if i recall federal labor laws say, an employer cannot deny anyone an application, doesn't mean they are going to get looked at)

when i ran my garage, i'd let someone fill out the application as to avoid any laws being broken, but thier application went into the circular file..

i strongly feel that since there is such a rampant hiring of anything that has a pulse, is the major cause of inept people behind the wheel.

just the way i feel.

 

@Mototom

I like the way you handled your decision process with this load. Often I do the same thing, especially with ELD's.

My favorite time to go through metropolitan areas is in the wee hours. That's the only time you can run at the speed limit, unless they have night construction (Austin comes to mind, when they routed all freeway traffic onto side streets).

I also shut down early if taking a 30 minute break doesn't gain very much clock. For example taking a 30 only gets you a grand whopping 15 extra minutes and you are "hard up against the 14". Then it's better to drive as much as possible before that 30 minute break happens and shut it down for a 10.

Good time management ISN'T about driving as many hours a day as you can, conditions and traffic be ######. That's right up there at about the 10th level of stupid (unless you are on paper logs). Good time management means making your deliveries on time AND maximizing your miles against your 70. You are selling your time. If you are paid by the mile, make the most miles possible on your 70. Crawling in rush hour traffic earns less than minimum wage. Who wants to work for peanuts?

Another situation that requires an early shut down is when you KNOW finding a parking space will be impossible after 4:00 pm, for example. I get the safest possible parking spot by 4:00 pm and get ready to roll again at 2:00 am.

 

Good to hear you worked it out and did well on this.