Alrighty, I'm going to tell you about a brand new lease driver at Prime. He finished his training and get his lease truck last week, and is calling me almost every day to tell me he isn't making any money, and that it's all his dispatchers fault. Let's take a look at his week so far: After getting his truck, he goes to the company store to outfit it with all the latest gadgets. He gets a GPS, fridge, microwave, and other various items. He charges this all to the truck, so it all goes against his settlement. He takes a $500 advance on his first load to pay his rent, meaning that when he leased his truck, he had absolutely no money whatsoever. First load, a 3 stop load. He makes the first stop on time, and drives to a truckstop 10 miles away from his second stop. Instead of taking an 8 hour break, he calls dispatch and tells them that he will be taking a full 10, and that he will be late to his second stop. This all could have been avoided by staying at his first stop (which has parking) and leaving 8 hours later and getting to his second stop an hour early. The second stop takes over 6 hours to unload him since he was late, and his final stop turns him away and makes him come back the next day, causing him to lose a day of revenue. Second load, goes to pick up, takes the shipped 6 hours to load his trailer, again, there is parking available, but instead of using it to complete his break and then leaving, he takes off as soon as he is loaded, and calls dispatch to tell them he can't make delivery on time because he needs to take a 10 hour break. Also on this trip, instead of using the map and Qualcomm to plan the trip, he listens only to the GPS which takes him over 120 miles out of route because it wanted him to stay on the interstates. When he gets to the receiver, they are just closing for the day, and make him come back tomorrow. Again, he loses a day of revenue. Third load, drop and hook on both ends, less than 200 miles total, yet somehow he ends up rolling into his delivery with 10 minutes left on his 14. Fourth load, picks it up, and sits for 12 hours before leaving on it. He talked to me about it, and I gave him a trip plan that not only would allow him to be at the receiver on time, but have a full break by the time he was empty. Instead of following this plan he stopped so (he) could get some real good #####. The morning of the delivery he calls me and tells me he is going to run out of hours 130 miles from the delivery. He decides to go over his 14 and make the delivery instead of having to again wait an extra day to deliver. Fifth load. A very short load, running 150 miles on all US highway. He goes into the shipper with less than a quarter tank of fuel, and then has to drive over 100 miles out of route to fill up due to there being no fuel stops available in route, and his own refusal to use any fuel stops out of network. If he had gone to the shipper with enough fuel to make the delivery, or fueled out of network, the receiver would have taken him a day early. Instead he ended up sitting at the receivers overnight. On his settlement this week, he is in the hole almost $800. Which is amazing given that on the 4th load I would have been able to profit almost $1000 with 6.5MPG (1st and 2nd load were on his first week, the rest were on his 2nd week). He calls me up telling me that his dispatcher needs to get him better paying loads because if this is what is going to happen, it isn't going to cut it. Last night he had a preplan on one of our must be ontime customers taken off of him. It paid $2.30/mi in a region where most freight pays $1.25/mi, and it was going to Chicagoland, where rates have been brilliant. I can't imagine why anyone would have thought him unable to run that load. My question to everyone here, is he correct that this is the fault of his dispatcher, or does having 2 service failures in his first week (and almost a third), and running out of route miles like he was getting paid hub have something to do with it? And yes, this is a true story. I almost took this guy for training but he was a smoker, and we stayed in touch.
sounds like someone is having trouble with trip-planning (and it's not the dispatcher) Thats actually my biggest worry out there.
He told me last night that he was going to get an atlas and use it since he ran so many out of route miles. ::facepalm:: The atlas was the FIRST thing I bought when I got my own truck, the cheap one that will fall apart in 3 months cost less than $10. Instead he goes for the $300 GPS that routes you extra stupid. I'm afraid that it's going to end up that his trip planning is going to end up being A. get dispatched B. call Sazook.
I smell a business opportunity. Sazook will think for you for only $60/hr. Looking at some of the people around me day in and day out, there might be some money here!
