How's Everyone Doing in LTL Right Now?

A couple things I've noticed about our new AAA Cooper central dispatchers and organizing meets. One, they almost never have the phone numbers for any of the drivers you will meet, and there are a lot of new faces lately. This has bit us already once that I know about on a Saturday when AAA's driver was idling at the meet point and our guy hadn't even left the yard due to a flat trailer tire and nobody around to either reload to another trailer or fix the tire. I admit that when I called to dispatch myself I was pleased to hear they were dealing with a "first class #### show," the meet.

The second thing is there seems to be a misunderstanding about the limits of speed and time for interstate highway travel. I don't know how many times I've been told I'm meeting someone at 2130 and what they really meant is that I'm supposed to leave at 2130 for a meet four hours later. But hey, what's four hours of idling to a truck driver? Its not like they can't crawl in the back and take a na-

On the positive side I learned we are opening a new terminal in Oshkosh, Wisconsin (when, I don't know). I assume that will cancel all the Mauston, WI meets between Minneapolis and Chicago drivers. Can't wait.

 

FxF has a lot of faults, but they deserve a lot of credit for creating a solid system for meets compared to some of these other companies out there.

Drivers must depart within the 30-minute window between the show-up time and the gate time, so no one is sitting at the meet point waiting beyond their 30-minute break. The gate times are setup so both drivers arrive at the meet point around the same time (if one side has a longer drive than the other, their gate time will be earlier to account for that). Our handhelds show the meet driver's name, truck number, and info on the trailers they're bringing, along with a live ETA. It also verbally announces the ETA shortly after you hit the road. And central dispatch obviously has access to everyone's phone number, so if you break down they can call your meet driver and let them know what's going on.

It's honestly surprising how well everything runs despite the ancient dispatching software they still use.

 

From what I can tell, Knight-Swift is having AAACT take over all of Midwest Motor Express' systems so the LTL business is one big AAACT operation now.

 

Hopefully you will get you a few Teamster shirts to wear proudly while piloting that big Green Union Rig. Those on this forum with open minds will realize that the hard working, extremely enthusiastic, occasionally long winded young trucker many of us really like, will be the same hard worker as a Teamster that he was slinging groceries for GFS. I think you are making a great career move that 20 years from now when you have some really good Seniority and you are thinking about retirement, you will be glad you made. I am looking forward to seeing some pictures of your triples and hearing about how much you like your new career.

 

They just bought the old Saia terminal in Evansville Indiana. I interviewed for a terminal manager job and they were not up and running yet. During the interview I asked a lot of questions about swift-knight take over. Cooper is adding more terminals around Midwest this year. They are doing pretty decent I guess and they have all new trucks in Evansville. I seen one yesterday.