Getting safety points for people "calling in on you"

Someone tagged "crash" over "class" on my old ### "Best in Class" trailer outside of Bakersfield. Best in Crash. All day. 60 years of delivering a better life indeed.

 

Swift put out a memo threatening punishment to any driver caught painting over or otherwise obscuring the 800 number on the trailers.

 

Well there goes my idea of spray painting a big yellow smiley face over the number.

 

Whats so sad about all this is you only hear from people who have issues with someones driving we very rarely see anyone coming in and saying how impressed they were by the common courtesy of a professional driver does that mean that no one has any manners any more or people have just stopped appreciated good manners and common sense?

 

No, just that the "expected" behavior isn't out-of-the-ordinary, so nobody notices. Only when that big truck doesn't act in a manner the self-righteous motorist expected when they felt entitled to whatever space the truck needed do they get their tail feathers ruffled up and start making phone calls.

 

Just so others understand the system at Swift or any other mega; This is the time of year that Safety points (or violations) are assessed. In December, they prepare for the big firings in Jan and Feb. That is when freight drops off and if they didn't fire drivers, they would have to lay drivers off and pay them unemployment. Firing drivers is cheaper and easier. Drivers will always be confronted with stuff as much as 10 months old in Dec. or Jan. Your chances of defending yourself, or even remembering the incident, is no matter to Swift; they are just trying to relieve themselves of drivers as cheaply as possible. For example of that see Scotty's post:

 

I feel warm and fuzzy reading this.

But I am a cold hearted ####### when it comes to taking that space necessary to make that turn into the avenue towards hunts on the left two lanes while cars fight each other to get in front of me.

At some point in the future when humans are no longer doing any driving, maybe the computers will give the harassed trucker some space.

So let em ruffle feathers, scream into the phones all day. If I am lucky I will have them on video making trouble for when the suits in safety arouse themselves from the doughnut box long enough to raise hell with me.

 

I guess what i'm getting at is there seems to be no reward at all for good driving there quite happy to penalize us for bad driving writing us up on citations how about the authorities giving us rewards for good driving perhaps that will have a more positive influence on us actually caring about how we drive.

 

It's not until the driver makes the news saving a family from a burning car that they will get the praise for being a good driver. Well, I take that back. Some drivers are recognized at various companies with MillionMile stickers on their truck or maybe a veteran/military skin on their entire truck as an ambassador of the company or like Swift, they reward their best safest most productive drivers with a Diamond Driver logo truck. So there is some recognition going on for safe productive profitible drivers out there.