How's Everyone Doing in LTL Right Now?

That’s right the whole finger print thing and what not. I’ve been through it all before, just have to do it again.

 

Cleveland, Ohio your Columbus correct?

 

I've heard that our Old Dominion on Old Rockside Road here in Cleveland is a little on the slow side, but that wasn't from anyone who worked there so I don't know how true that really is. I also heard that Ward Trucking is really slow.

 

I'm sitting here looking at the Hazmat book right now. I really don't want to quit, but my dilemma is this, I think were slightly over staffed on our line haul board and there's more drivers then there are people, it would be okay if management could balance the hours out a little bit better, but that's not what's happening. We also have some cheaters and pickers and choosers, the run I had last night was a good run, and my boss gave it to me and took it away from a known picker and chooser. We don't have bids see we go from our yards to our warehouse and then from there they send us on another run. So last night I went from my yard to the warehouse, then went to the big city yard in Cleveland then drove back to the warehouse and headed home back to Lorain. So we do like a double run thing. Well there are more drivers then there are double runs, and certain people think they have "routes" but there's really no such thing, there is nowhere in the handbook at all that says any shuttle driver has exclusive routes that's not a thing, but some people think it is. I'm not one of those, people but some think it is.

Management hired this girl and she's a nice girl, but she doesn't know and she's got guys in her ear saying this and that are all mine, well she doesn't know and all the guys who were doing that were totally circumventing management. Then management got a little testy because now all the pickers and choosers and cheaters are going behind their back and what's happening is I ended up losing all my miles. While all these cheaters are picking and choosing and cheating all the way. Well I told my boss this is some BS and he agreed. See what happens is there are some guys out there and mind you it's not everyone it's not even most, but there are few cheaters who on their first run will drop a set of doubles hook to one trailer and leave a converter dolly and extra trailer in a yard and run out of there. Well that's not the job, and eventually there will be extra equipment in yards and will have to go and pick up after them. I don't care about that, if management says so and so cheated and now we have extra equipment sitting at one of the spoke yards go take a converter there and pull back 2 trailers that's fine, but I can't base how I make a living off of stuff just coming up because someone decided they wanted to cheat one night.

So what I take issue with is, why are all these pickers and choosers getting miles/hours and me who's never picked and chosen and never pulled some fake seniority card and by the way where I work at Gordon Food Service I'll just say it you all already know anyhow. Seniority doesn't mean anything. All seniority means is you have first dibs on vacation time and some stuff when it comes to switching job boards other then that as far as how work is divided and balanced out it doesn't mean anything and there is nowhere in the handbook that says it doesn't management can run you and do whatever they want with you and truth be told there isn't anything you can do about it.

We don't have enough work for me to have 5 double runs in a 5 day work week that's not going to happen and I don't expect it to. I do expect though 4 double runs a week and when management was doing the schedule I was getting 4 double runs a week, but once management gave up their right to do the schedule and just had a rank and file person doing the dispatch schedule my hours and miles plummeted. Now I'm back up to this week 3 double runs which I can kind of sort of settle for because they are decent runs but the middle one isn't really one that would normally go to me, so it's not really a solution so I'm kind of stuck at 2 runs a week with this in-between run that I am taking over for someone else for now, but that could go away.

So I don't know I hope they can fix it a little bit more, but I'm not going to hold my breath or ask for much more I think they pretty much did the best they could for me, until they can iron out some other things, but the way this has all shake out is not ideal, now management is working on cleaning it up, but there is still more cleaning to do.

Meanwhile my wife thinks that no matter what I could make more somewhere else, I understand and get that sentiment our transit shuttle job isn't the best doubles job out there, it used to be better, but I think it's kind of middle of the pack now, I think it's better then our food service competitors, but it's not better then the LTL companies at least not the big time high performance regional carriers like A Duie Pyle, Dayton Freight or dare I say Pitt Ohio. However I like it and it's easy all things considered and the money isn't that bad and besides a few fires that management needs to put out with certain things, it's pretty good. My boss will listen to and fix any problem that is legitimate so there is that. So it's not all bad, so hopefully they clean this up.

I feel so unproductive when I just have an out and back to do it's like really that's all you want me to do is run 6.5 hours, and then it's kind of a waste for my company too, because they are wasting my driving hours and the actual truck that I drive too, but that's on them. So part of me is like if there is more money and more miles somewhere else that could use me that's fine, but I don't really want to quit and never really planned on it to be truthful, but well will see what happens it's still working it's self out. The good news is management and upper management said they recognize that it's become this inmates running the asylum situation and they have had about enough, I'm waiting on them to fix it now, if management brings the hammer down things would be better so I'll give them a minute to fix things.

 

I saw Dayton's top scale or at least what the website said $31.00 something in the city and it looked like $0.71 a mile or something like that out on the road. I thought that's pretty good mile wise I am probably a dime underneath that and don't run the miles. A big night for me is like 520 miles that's about as big as it gets.