Load that can't be done legally

Well I have to add something else here, and it is important.

I expect 100% out of the people I hire, I get more than that out of them but I am also very critical of them in private if something happens, I take it that they are professionals, deserve my respect and I never let them forget they are more important than making money.

Now that said, I am very critical of the industry and the problems we have, which many of them trace back to the attitude "this is just a job **** it". Which comes from two things, ourselves and the FMCSA with their crackerjack licensing. We are our own worst enemy, we justify things being done by saying "the man is trying to put all of us down" (yes I'm aging myself) and by supporting stupid <<< yes stupid actions to cut corners. The public sees this on the road and in an accident then screams about it every chance they get. SO we end up with poor drivers, draconian regulations and most of all things like this happening.

 

Swallow crap in reefer, that's at least a bi weekly occurance. Oh here's a 2500 mile run, but first heres a 150 mile run that will take all day.

600 mile run, delivers later that day. (Can be done in theory at 62 mph.) Have done it in fact. Also had to say on more than one occasion "customer took to long, it'll get there at...."

Wal-Mart- 2hr minnimum unload in the frozen or fresh sections. 4 not unusual. 6 often occured.

Kroger Memphis- just settle in for a long winters nap, took 1 and half hours from gate to giving them my bills. Like 5 after that.

Unified Grocers- never again. 11hrs locked to the building, 6 more hrs cause Hershey sent them a bunch of crap they didn't want. But that was thrown in the trash cause the refrigerated freight I had pictures of sitting on an open air dock for 6hrs. 90 degrees out. Fun.

I was an expedited reefer driver, that simply means the shipper is expected to take exactly 2 hrs, and I'm given 1 hr to spare between there and delivery on top of my 30min break.

Which means basically anything could make the load late, as it often did but I was never charged with a service failure.


Now that I have customers that don't hate me, and dispatchers who actually know my name. I'm never going back. "Oh it's buissness hours, just get it there" (less there's a crane involved or something.)

Though there was this unfortunate abomination of a load a few weeks back. They were tearing apart a refrigerated warehouse and scraping everything. 3 Swifty's there, there were others. Took 2 days to get loaded cause the guys ripping apart the warehouse had no earthly idea what they were doing. They tried loading them sideways "sorry divisible load, ain't happening." They tried putting those coils on top of that insulation "sorry we aren't sitting a giant piece of metal on top of styrofoam." Yes we can go 14 high. Yes we can go 4 over the rear and 3 over the front. Ended up about 2'6" over rear. So I'm telling em what they can and can't do.

But I did get paid for exactly that. Took 2 days, but I was paid 600 miles a day for babysitting a crane and forklift.

Not what you would get out of it by any means, and did I feel like I needed more, yes. But it's crap like this that keeps me on top of the list. Haven't got a crap run since.

My DM even told me he would have drove off, (this is why when I need something I get it.)



Hopefully that's what you were going for, I fell down a rabbit hole.

 

Bottom line is, dispatchers don't know what you have for hours if you don't tell them, sometimes they don't care if you have no time, if you let them run all over you they will always be doing this to you, and FYI never tell them your exact hours, if you have, 8 left tell them you have 6 buffer zone is way better than no zone

 

If you see yourself about to squeezed like this call dispatch and have it rescheduled .
This is a common problem with e-logs . Don't sacrifice for these companies .

 

At Swift they can see exactly how many hours I have left. It's all in the Qualcom, which they can access.

 

I find that somewhat hard to believe.

In the old days of paper logs the Dispatchers know what you had on the last 8 days that you turned in via trip express or something and can pretty much make a educated guess to what you have left based on what you have been dispatched on since the last logged day turned into your company.

In my last few companies prior to 2001, nothing moved without someone knowing in addition to myself what my current recap had availible after midnight and the next several days in terms of hours.

I want to thank Ridgeline for taking the time to talk to his Dispatchers on the special trip he took, I hope that he understands clearly why I do and say the things I say sometimes towards dispatchers as a driver over the years. There are a handful of dispatchers I consider very good and will run through hell with Cerebus as a passenger to boot if asked to.

There is no load short of time of war that has any value to be somewhere any faster than a ordinary single driver or even a husband wife team can get it there. Occasionally I have hauled loads in which I was told that it's headed to war somewhere and it really needs to get there to the Depot or to a port from a Depot. There is a ship waiting for it. Once there was a large transport plane in a secured airfield that took the 40 foot box. I don't know what was in that box but it's mighty something valuable to someone or a bunch of someones.

I think there can be a good service done when Dispatchers are taught a certain way so that these impossible loads will stop putting drivers into a bad position of having to say no and here is why. (Usually time...)

One evening with FFE we were a husband wife team happy to escape the ongoing winter storms around Ontario-Buffalo and back around to Erie rolling west and south with a 2500 pay miles load to Sunny Phoenix of all places. Chicago dispatch had gotten onto our Qualcomm with a very special request for us to go into the Detrioter near Detriot and get another Ontario (Usually Toronto or Brampton... there is a whole mountain of factories up there doing a bunch of cross border work in both Canada and America) and we turned them down. Part of the attraction was the very long haul we had that was going to Phoenix (And their dispatch office was in touch with us before we got to Erie informing us that they were looking forward to our services to the area in the near future with pleasure...) so... what do you do?

We found out in due time what Chicago thought of us simply by not being dispatched out of there again the remaining time with FFE. We were not fired or punished or any of that with Chicago for the refusual to go into Ontario but whatever the situation was going on that night it was a loss. Phoenix put us to work after giving us a day off in sunny Phoenix (Like 110 degrees there that day, kind of hard to adapt to really fast after 10 degree ice/snow work for weeks) and proceeded to work us into and out of Nogales which was far as we were concerned deserving of combat pay.

Fast foward to looking over my paperwork with my Driver Manager in Memphis under my name at the file kept on all drivers we discovered that Chicago had indeed some bad things to say about us for refusing that Ontario load but considered the situation not important enough to be a ternimation deal. I have said in the past trucking companies do keep a file on everyone and bend over backwards to put anything negative into that file. Don't think they wont.

I would like to see or spend some time discovering that Dispatchers do know what is the problem is on the drivers side when they say go here, be there on this date and time. Oh by the way don't be late and don't worry about that inconvient logbook problem... I don't think so. Something must give and I think they can start with the perception that a given load is somehow the Ark of the Covenant and it has to be there at a date and time not lawful in anyone's logs. Come on dispatchers, lighten up. No wonder we have occasionally problems that we have when drivers are discarded and fired for standing up and saying no on one hand and need a new appointment on another. Way better than I'll get it there when it gets there. Don't you think?

 

Lol yep and lots of other things you dont tell a dispatcher .

 

I just finished a long day, so I am too tired to look up the link, but about a year ago IIRC, a new law or regulation was put in place that carries a $10,000 fine for any shipper, receiver, or dispatcher that threatens a driver with consequences if they won't run a load that is illegal for HOS, Hazmat not in order, etc.

 

Sometimes I THOUGHT I had to swallow crap to survive, BUT that was before I really learned to work the system when I drove for Swift. I spent some time doing meet and greets at company terminals with planners and dispatchers. Since I came back to driving after a 30 year career in business, I could speak their language and start to learn what they are up against, how their work flow and procedures interfaced with customer requirements and driver availability.

It is a RARE event for me to ever turn down a load, when I was with Swift or now that I am an owner operator with ACME. If I have the hours, it doesn't matter when or where the load is going, I take it. The only exception is when I know I don't have the hours available to meet the schedule.

With Swift that usually caused me to call my FM to find out what the REAL windows were. With ACME that's a negotiation to see if the customer can change the schedule (usually not with expedited freight). It's always best to decline a load with hard and fast times that you have a good chance of missing.

 

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!