I feel like I’m being jerked with getting layover…

Friday I’m sent to pick up a trailer, set for an all day pick up, I get there and the place and gate is closed. Long story short someone knows one of the guys personally, and he come and open the gate for me after they removed me from the load, but I told them to put me back on it.

I drop this off on Saturday morning and I don’t get a load until Sunday morning a full 24 hours. So I’m at the terminal and they tell me to pick up a trailer, that’s already at the terminal at 11:59pm sunday (why pick it up at 11:59pm if it has been sitting at the terminal for 3 days, why not now?) and drop it off at 7am Monday only 50 miles away. So I go and do it.

I leave there to go do my next load on Monday and get to the shipper about 2 hours away and they tell me this load is not ready, so I sit from Monday to now Tuesday I’m about to hit the road and drive 8 hours to pick up another load that came in my sleep.

for all of this I was compensated $100

 

I have a guaranteed minimum pay every week. So it put the pressure on dispatch to keep the truck moving. It has down side also. They pre plan 4 trips and it can be difficult to keep the schedule. Last week I had 2 pm live unload. I show up and nobody is there and doors are locked. I call customer on phone. My company never told them I was coming. They said it would be 2.5 hours till they could come and unload truck. The only good news is I paid detention pay after 1 hour by my trucking company. It doesn’t depend on the customer.

now my trucking company is complaining drives are not getting enough miles for the week and pushing or trying to get more miles. Now they said something about asking drivers for more flexibility on home time. Basically they can’t get enough miles it sounds like to cover the minimum pay guarantee. They have been trying to raise our miles up. They said they need to get like 40,000 more miles per week or month for the fleet.

I don’t think they can the way they have been dispatching the trucks. All of a sudden they are giving me longer runs and more miles for last two weeks

 

We only have your side of the story and we never read any of the policy info your company may give to all new drivers. Don't quit a job until you have the next job. If you quit every time you have something unpleasent happen you will be a job hopper and nobody worth working for will hire you. When something bad happens you need to decide if this thing is bad enough you need to quit or is it just something you don't like. Nobody can decide for you.

 

Newdriver.....

You don't say/specify who your carrier is, who the relevant customers are, where this occurs...or what type of freight is involved -- so it's kinda tough for experienced drivers to accurately "weigh in"...with usable feedback &/or advice.

With that said -- the freight industry is in a slump right now...& for the foreseeable future; thus, staying put employment-wise is strongly suggested.

If you have almost a year with your present employer -- staying put there for a year or longer will yield real rewards...later.

-- L

 

1. Can you clarify the above for me? It sounds as if you had a load that you could have picked up and even possibly delivered Friday. Be honest, did you drag your feet picking this load up?
2. What hours do your main dispatcher work?
3. What is the first name of the weekend dispatcher?

Honest talk, hand…if you could grab that load at any time, but you didn’t until Friday afternoon, the whole weekend fiasco is your fault. The people that make decisions at your company and the shippers are ready to start their weekend after lunch on Friday. If you are hungry, you have to eat before everyone closes shop and goes home.

 

A lot times those load times are either computer generated, or sometimes someone will just enter some random time just so the load is in the system. Best thing you can do is keep your dispatcher updated on your ETA. Not sure what type of carrier you are working for, but also remember many dispatchers are working with 30, 40 or 50 drivers at a time, so it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle. I doubt it’s anything personal.

 

This is why everyone should use a 24 hour clock. Forget this am/pm crud.

 

Why did you "have to" pick up the load by 23:59 Sunday? So you can't claim layover.

 

Don't do OTR at companies without layover or guarantee pay.. I did, but this was before covid stuff where good companies wanted 2+ years

Micro fleet OTR(classified ads) usually have layover pay and just want 6 months now. I don't know of a mega that does; which makes no sense