Dispatched loads wasting entire day

Yeah, it can be crazy out there. I made it almost 3 months pulling a reefer and made the decision that my health and sanity were more important than a paycheck. I let the boss know while sitting in Pharr, TX for the THIRD day waiting to unload apples from Wenatchee, I was done. Got to sit two more days at a Pilot(?) near Dallas before a backload to Tacoma showed up. Not happy, and broke.
Got back to the yard eventually and there was a 40 year old Utility curtain van with my name on it. Lumber, bricks, steel, shingles-whatever. Jobsites and lumber yards are my natural habitat and I enjoyed doing that very much until the health card was played. There are lots of options out here, don't settle for a gig you hate.

 

one of my drivers today was complaining about having to load tomorrow morning instead of this afternoon, I told her that you are there for the load, the load is not there for you. I added we depend on the customer to provide an income, there is no way to dictate to them what we need or want, we have to deal with them on their terms or someone will replace us.

 

100% agree with you. We are in a service industry. Our only purpose is to serve the customer, everything is secondary. People feel that it is beneath them to serve another. What they fail to realize it takes strength and leadership to serve. It takes almost no skill to just be the consumer. The ones that serve are the strongest, the ones that consume are the weak. That is why they need someone to provide the service. Every time I hear someone complain about work, I just think how pathetic they are as an individual. Going in public and showing off their weakness. It’s completely unreal. Just like all the guys who went out of business recently, I just don’t understand it. It’s not that hard out here as people make it out to be. Just don’t do as an individual what a mega carrier does and you probably will be OK. I think the bar is set so low that people have no idea how to actually put it in real effort. All those that want to call me out well, I came in when the going was good and I’m still here. Always be elite and fortuna faviet fortibus.

 

i have a friend yanking reefers around once he got to the warehouse to get loaded they told him to go take a nap it's gonna be 15 hours before they could load him and he had an appt

 

I quit Ozark because they would constantly do this. I wasn't running reefer, but other than that, it was almost exactly you said, even the times are the same. I told them I slept all night, I can't sleep all night, be up all day and then be ready to drive all night picking up at 10pm running FedEx Memphis to Chicago arriving at about 7am in Chicago. I told them at that point I would be up 24 hours. They told me "You know what you signed up for when you came to work here." I said "yea, but I've fallen asleep and hit the rumble strip that woke me up 3 times now. I thought you guys cared about safety. Apparently not. Route me back to the house, I'm done."

I made it VERY clear to any new company I applied for, I drive 2am to 2pm or 3am to 3pm. At 3pm I shut down, period. Plan accordingly if you don't want loads to be late on pickups or deliveries. (of course there is some give with shippers/receivers who offer overnight parking or if my destination is a company yard with guaranteed parking)

They've managed to make it work for the most part.

 

Yes, but they need us to haul the load, without us, they eat their product. So no, it's not all about them. Not when I am sacraficing EVERYTHING to live in a plastic box for 21 days at a time so I can sit for hours unpaid before getting the pure honor of hauling their crap around. I'll work within reason to accommodate, but there are plenty of shippers out there that need product moved. If one customer won't work with you, another would be happy to.

I've had several warehouse people tell me that they HAVE to be nice to truck drivers because without us, they would have full warehouses and empty pockets.

I'm not doing a job and going home every day like they are. I'm not seeing friends or family for almost a month at a time. I will refuse any load that does not conform to my requirements. Why? Because they won't pay the parking ticket or parking fee if I get caught at their place without a place to park at 10pm with no drive time left. I have to take care of myself because no one else will. Call it selfish, call it what you wish. But I'm not ashamed at all to say I've refused loads knowing I wouldn't find a place to park afterwards. If the shipper will let me sleep the night, I'll give in a bunch. But no overnight parking? Ok, then no pickup until the next morning. I'm tired of sleeping on the sides of roads and crap and having people beating on my door at 2am telling me I can't park there. No, **** that.

I don't complain about work at all. I made 4000 paid miles the last week of January coming out of hometime. I complain about lack of parking, lack of clean facilities and lack of pay sitting for hours where I can't go home or leave if I want to. As truck drivers, we are at the mercy of what we find on the road. We can't go home every day to our nice clean houses and have a guaranteed shower and food. So I have to run my truck the way that works best for me. If another driver wants to grab a load that leaves him parked on the onramp of the interstate out of drive time, that's on them. But that WON'T be me.

 

You retired?

 

I got out of reefer for stuff like this but I worked for Roehl Transport. I hate having to sit for hours waiting to be loaded or unloaded when I was doing national OTR. I switched to their Kraft dedicated fleet and was told that I would mainly be doing drop & hooks and I did for the most part for a little while and then more and more it got back to doing those long loads and unloads with very few drop & hooks. Probably the biggest difference was that the Kraft dedicated fleet primarily ran during daylight hours whereas OTR had a completely chaotic schedule where there was never consistent sleep hours, resets, or really anything else.

 

Hi Reo
Yeah, the big C got me.

 

Reefers are great. Used to run for transam. If you can't get a reefer load then you can haul dry stuff. Heck, I've even loaded stuff that I felt should have been on a flatbed. If you're a runner, there's hardly ever a shortage of loads to run. Specially out of DC, they got bs rolling out 24/7! LoL