JB Hunt

You will find a Fleet Manager in Fayetteville, very senior by now if not promoted to upper by this time. This is one dispatcher (He was my immediate superior and thus earned the traditional title Dispatcher from me) of a very few that I will hold as one of the best I have been allowed to run for.

I was with JBH briefly as a experiment in December 2001 out of Prothro Jct Arkansas Yard off 40 here in NLR. I generally ran St Louis Beer to Iowa or Autoparts to Buffalo Ford or a few other van type loads. Keep in mind I told my dispatcher in advance several times a day if things are well, going badly or there is a problem. He was two steps ahead of me at times when he needed to be with problems I presented to him.

I give you one example to balance my post. An oppertunity. A distributor east of Des Moines had a appt time for sunday that was flawed. They arent open sunday so I went out of route to Des Moines to sit until Sunday night and then sat on the customer property with beer for them from St Louis to unload mon am.

I noticed a entire section of the building dock area loaded with what turned out to be empty kegs with tags on them needing to go back to St Louis. Instead of going god only knows where I thought to let dispatcher know this chance to load em up. Take the whole thing back.

The result was a two hour wait. Finally the word came down sorry but no. And thank you. From that point forward whatever I had to say was taken care of good or bad.

The bad.

They send me to Buffalo Ford Assembly with parts. No problem. except that the dock was set next to a gigantic relay electric mains for that entire section of the factory. Imagine the hue and cry if i told boss that I shut Ford down and burned the truck too. So I docked in there just a tad too far over and smashed all the nuts off one of the van doors back there. Came out with essentially one nut holding everything on.

A sentance to dispatch this is noon now. Buffalo was not happy. Neither was I. But they unloaded, signed the bills and told me bye. Adios. But first the door bolts. Where am I going to find say a dozen half inch bolts three inches long in downtown buffalo with a door that wont be much good back there? Especially now that Buffalo essentially told me to gtfo off the property.

A hour later a repair man showed up to my exact spot (I did not even tell dispatcher where exactly I was in that complex... they either nailed me down with satellite to 40 feet or they knew what is what from prior problems with the JBH trucks there) bolted me up and off I went.

The next load I was offered 5 options which way would I like to go? Essentially offered the entire United States as a personal choice.

When Dispatchers do that they tend to create a driver loyalty that is pretty strong. What I did not explain was that week between Iowa and Buffalo, I took out a car with a older cabover truck. Just like I warned the recruiter, the recruiter's supervisor, the road test master and his instructor supervisor.

Why?

In those days they had about 30 Conventional new tractors parked in a box in the far corner of the shop untagged, unpermitted and unpapeered, not ready for OTR work. And handed me a old 83 international COE without Jake and without decent engine specs. It was not much of a ungoverned truck, it didnt need to be, it was that POS. Which made scheduling a challenge.

Lo and behold just like I warned several levels of JBH management I took out a vehicle with the left steer of that COE. Which created a 2 am problem for a supervisor to come out with a checkbook and pay the man I hit a bunch of money on the spot and consider firing me or not on the spot after a proper and complete inspection of me and everything in that truck. (I passed)

JBH paid on the spot the moment that 5th wheel hooked onto Paper down in South Arkansas at the Plant down there. BIP> Taxes withheld, net pay how do you want it? Cash, comcheck, direct deposit or fuel card?

Until that moment, no one in the trucking industry has ever paid so accurate so quickly and on the spot soon that 5th wheel went clank onto the load. If everyone paid like that top to bottom much of the financial problems would go away.

Ultimately I left JBH because I literally had about that time 20 years of accumulating medical issues and again the company was a experiment. If I had a conventional instead of a cabover I might have stayed. But life isnt that way sometimes. There were other considerations as well.

I am not a dispatcher, I interviewed once for one and found that I myself is a dinosaur whose time has passed. You are fixing to get into a very big company with a batch of drivers assigned to you. Some you will have to baby sit. Others you can let them run free. A few you hold onto for problem solving. And the rest are just average who will come and go eventually. You will grow to hate the whiners, babies and others who seem unable to function on basic mission oriented goals and appointment times etc.

How long you can tolerate that, will decide your success and failure behind that dispatcher's desk. When you have had enough and is fed up to your back molars with all the babies who wont do the work that they are supposed to be able to do you have a choice to make.

When that day gets to you in the future. You must be very careful choosing what your future will be.

If you are lucky, you will have a batch of drivers who will take your instructions and vanish and boom all deliveries on time perfectly executed week and week and week. You hardly hear from them. If you are unlucky, you might be considering a new future in child care. =)

Enjoy!

 

1. Don't micromanage--Drivers have alarm clocks that wake them. They are grown-ups. If they have issues with trip planning, call them in and discuss it. Don't babysit.

2. Don't cancel their loads because YOU don't know how 8/2 splits work.

3. Don't push them. If they say they can't make a load... believe them. If this is a production problem for you, then discuss a transfer with the driver or shift more loads to the rainmakers.

4. Don't press day drivers to run nights and vice versus.

5. Believe your drivers.

6. Get them home When theysay they need to be there.

7. For the new drivers... teach them how to learn from their mistakes, i.e., ask them how they could have avoided the situation, then give them alternatives. BE PATIENT WITH THEM.

8. Check in with the drivers every couple months until they get the hang of things. Ask them what you and the company can do to help them have a better driver experience getting their assignments done.

 

Make sure they get paid correctly. If they are owed detention time, or breakdown pay, or paid for making minor repairs, pay them.

Make sure the maintenance dept is fixing issues correctly.

Keep the hard runners on good runs, let the lazy ones get the scraps.

And most of all, communicate with them. It’s absurd in today’s world how little information is shared, even with fifteen forms of communication available.

 

Couldn't agree more. Don't lie. Just let the driver know what's going on.

Even though everything is computerized keep a yellow pad with a continuous updated list of who is waiting for a load. If not they will be out of sight out of mind. Nothing worse than sitting wondering what the hell is going on.

 

And many times they will sit there thinking things are slow when in reality...

The OBC is down!

 

this is a great read follow by some awesome feedback

 

JBHUNT drives a large square terminal throughout the universe assimilating drivers.

 

Worked at JB from 99 till 04. The best operation manager and fleet manager I ever had worked on the PPG account out of Delaware Ohio. What made them the best? They never lied about anything. Always tell the truth even if its bad, your drivers will appreciate it.

 

I just quit My Intermodal position in November........had 4 years in it ( 1 year Atlanta, 3 years Haslet, Tx).......you asked "What have FM' s done to build a win/win relationship".????? had only 1 who even tried .......and you know .....all he did was PAY ATTENTION .........he actually got back to me on issues we had discussed earlier in the day and, to an even more impressive extent, the PREVIOUS DAY!.......Too often, I found the other F M' s who succeeded him after he changed departments, not willing to interact on any level, other than Qualcom and canned messages........