Traveloko Is a rippoff!

100%! I make sure to tell them often how much I appreciate their time, dedication and help. I wouldn't trade them for anything.

 

By controlling his time and not offering him trips he can drive legally?

I just love the argument that says you don't have to do what your employer wants because you can always stop eating and paying rent.

 

You can always quit at 8 am and have a new job at noon if you have a good driving record.

 

FFE used to send me out to collect abandoned tractors from drivers who were fired and bring them back to Lancaster. They paid me a bounty of sorts to go get them.

I always examined the units as if it was stabotaged, then examine the contents of the qualcomm which without fail in those days include 20 pages of converstation of a degrading nature between fired driver, quit driver, mad driver, or someone who has issues at home that must be taken care of at a human level and FFE refuses to let him out to get it taken care of. Things like that. It all goes generally the same frame work reduced to something like this.

"Boss I need to go home to take care of sick kid for a couple of days."

"No, stay in Americold Arlington until you are loaded, then we will discuss your time off."

"Boss, kid is very sick I have to go take care of him tonight this week."

"No you will stay there at shipper and load, bring load to yard and talk about time off"

After driver understands it's 12 hours waiting on the dock and half the next day before hes out of there and back at the yard, the situation from wife about the kid going really difficult becomes too much. The converstation becomes...

"Boss, im taking tractor to yard, you send someone else to get (Bad word Load)" (Dispatcher will see bad word replaced by qualcomm system as Love or some nonsensical word that is nuetral and non flaming)

"No, stay there and load like you have been instructed."

"What part of my sick kid do you (More and increasingly difficult language) not understand, I need to be there now at home by plane... piss on this load"

"Driver, if you fail to follow dispatch instructions to do your loading you will be written up, suspended etc."

and so on. Driver goes parking at the yard.

"Driver why did you park at the yard and leave us?"

What? All these pages back and forth about the sick kid? What part of all that don't you comprehend?

And it really gets nasty from here out as Dispatcher issues a variety of disclipinary actions. Driver is in a position to simply just walk to the airport and go home, FFE be ######.

Hours later I show up to collect the tractor and bring it back to Lancaster so the shop and safety can process it. Im usually the first to read all these pages of back and forth by satellite.

Certain things with truckers, they will run for you heaven and hell, but if you box them in and force them to feel they cannot leave the shipper without being fired or disclipined for wanting to go home and take care of the sick child its not a wanting. Its what Fathers do. You cannot stop a driver from going home to take care of his or her children any way than you can stop the tide from going in or out in the ocean. They are going to go.

There will have to be big time changes in Dispatch, for example walking downstairs and into the corner TV room with 30 drivers telling stories, playing on the internet or whatever at Lancaster and pick one to go to get that loaded trailer at Americold. But they will not do that. They will sit there on their computer desk and run down the usual scripts of increasing weights of company policy against driver that they are going to lose one way or another trying to save the loading for that trailer.

I don't blame the dispatcher for that, but again all they have to do is walk downstairs and pick a replacement driver and have him or her unconnected in any way with a sick kid to take over the loading at Americold.

If I found damage or stabotage, then I get the job of reporting same. There are times depending on the situation presented by the driver, I simply just have it fixed as a vehicle defect and make it so that the driver does not get any more damaged financially or otherwise for his actions in the brief mental stress of the incredible force to go home and take care of the kid.

Until there is flexibilty or freedom in this industry then bad things will continue to happen to good drivers.

 

They do lease on trucks too so that much might be true.

 

Must be something new then

 

What a lode of nonsense. No you can't.

Return the old truck. Move out of it. Canvas jobs. Find one and apply. Wait for approval. Go to orientation (3 days?), drug testing, medical, road test, etc. Truck assignment. Move in. Start driving. Get first settlement when?

Changing jobs is a major PIA, and that's all assuming your old job doesn't slander you and you have no trouble getting in the door somewhere else.

 

People go to work there because that’s where the YouTube famous “experts” were going because it’s the best company ever.

 

I said have a job, I didn’t say start working

 

There must be more than one definition of the word "have" then. I don't see how you can have a job without doing all the things I listed, at least through completing orientation.

 

Unless you’re hiding stuff most people will know if they’re going to have a job before orientation starts. There’s no reason for them to send a good driver home after they bring them in for orientation.

Another good example for why you need a savings account. That way you can leave a bad job and not be worried about going a week or two without a paycheck.