I'm baaaaaack!!!!!!!!

I took the job at Risinger. The truck won't be ready til the end of the month so I'm going into beeyotch mode for a couple of weeks. Bigfoot, if you're still reading this... you might want to see if you can be dispatched out of another terminal, maybe Pacific or Pontoon. What I've seen here so far leads me to believe the Indy terminal is a little dysfunctional, and the ops manager has a background in politics (she told me she was a speechwriter for the governor of Michigan -- completely not germane to the discussion we were having at the time but she has displayed a tendency to want to win every conversation), apparently not so much in trucking. The dealings I've had with people from the main terminal in Pacific WA have been overwhelmingly positive. The Hot Chick says it seems a little weird that night and weekend ops is so superior to the regular crew.

 

Pick up today at 1300 in Germantown WI at Gehli Foods, then 450mi to Pontoon Beach IL by midnight on a freeze protect load. Once there I need to visit the shop for IFTA stickers and permit book update. Today could be my first "normal" day in a while. Too bad there was nobody there looking out for me for the last four wks; they might not have lost a perfectly good driver.

In all fairness, when I squawked a couple of weeks ago about miles and poor driver support, the ops manager did shoot me some bonus money to compensate for the short miles-- although she left me with the impression that she thought I was a bit of a whiner. I got the same impression when I called the following week to complain again that I could grow trees waiting for any information and that my DM had a listening problem (she assigned me a new DM after telling me they had stated a new board with my old one, a recent Celadon transplant).

Since shortly after orientation I've felt that there is a great company here somewhere, and I've been kept hovering just outside the system, maybe while somebody experiments with something new. I've caught glimpses of that greatness but as I haven't been allowed to participate I have been growing increasingly frustrated. And my two encounters with the ops manager at Indy have made me decide to leave rather than try to fix the problem again.

Gordon will go on without me; they won't even notice I've left, and that's fine. I wish them no ill will. It's just a shame they seem to think I signed on to be a local/regional steering monkey or a cleanup boy who exists only to take the garbage runs the planner's drinking buddies don't want. Guess they'll never know how good I could have been for their OTR division. I had exactly one chance at a real run with these guys, and I'm wondering if it was deliberate that the 2300 mile assignment was impossible to pick up as dispatched.

I'll keep posting. If Gordon management wants to know how they lost one in such a short time, they'll have to read this thread. I'm not interested in trying to fix the relationship any more.

I am Captain Zoom.
I have spoken.