Got into Vandalia no problem. Thanks for the help kcmofire. I've been confused about this whole process since the day I drove down to Fort Wayne for C1. I just wanted to drive a truck!!!
Yeah buddy. I was confused the whole time as well. Im still confused. Wait till you get out on your own and they give you a delivery to a town that doesnt exist, and your dispatcher doesnt give you directions, nor cares enough to even look em up. On top of them giving you a load that has a pickup right in the middle of your 10 hour break. Forcing you to drive illegally. Then life gets really interesting
Haha yeah I'm beginning to see that. First night with Phase 1 trainer I drove 2 and 1/2 hours after my 14 hour was up... heh.
It's been my experience that, whenever your dispatcher asks you to do something sketchy or illegal, it's usually over the phone. I mention that because, if you were to (for example) run over hours as a favor to him/her and something bad happens because of it, now it boils down to a "he said/she said" type of situation when the company comes looking for a piece of somebody's #$$. This is a situation in which the driver almost always loses. If your dispatcher is trying to get you to do something you know darned well is ilegal then do what I do: end the phone call, then pick up the Quaalcom and verify whether he really wants you to do whatever it is. Unlike your cellphone, all Quaalcom conversations are recorded and kept on file for a period of time. At this point, if your dispatcher still insists that you do whatever sketchy favor he was asking of you, now there is cold, hard proof implicating his involvment in the bad decision. Most dispatchers tend to drop the subject at this point (because they also know that they are now on the record). No more leaving the driver holding the bag if he gets caught doing something illegal at the dispatcher's request. To sum it up: anytime you deal with dispatch, do it over the Quaalcom so that everything is on the record, warts and all. Doing your business over the phone allows your dispatcher to weasel his way out of his share of the blame and sell you up the river if something goes down badly (since there won't be any proof). Basically, it's a matter of the driver saying, "if I'm going down for this, then you are coming with me"
My problem wasn't the dispatcher, it was my trainer. I went on duty that morning at 6:30am. He tells me to take the wheel around 9pm even though he has 3.5 hours left in his day. As long as I don't get into trouble doing it then I have no problem running it for him. He has full power to tell USA that I am not ready for my phase 2 training at which point I will probably get canned, so I just do what he tells me, try to stay on his good side, and hopefully not get pulled over. I got a kid on the way and can't afford to lose my job. It took me 2 and 1/2 years to find this one! What else can I do?
