My KLLM company driving experience so far...

Sat at XXXXXXXXXXX yesterday near Atlanta for nearly eight hours. Eight freggin' hours for them to wheel off 20-something pallets and break them down, yet they still charged their full price for their "service". Had I known it was going to take them that long I would have just unloaded it myself. one of the many injustices of this job is that lumpers can do this to drivers and not even blink when they charge $200 because they know that there's no penalty to them.

Their slowpoking caused me to be late for my next appointment, which caused their employees to stay late to get me loaded since it delivers this evening and they had to get this load on the road. They were not happy with me at all, but I explained to them what happened with the previous load and they chilled out. took them 15 minutes to get me loaded and out the door.

Went to bed pretty early last night, and I'm 8 hours away from the receiver. Currently just wasting time until a more reasonable time for me to leave (I'm 8 hours from Indianapolis, but my appointment time is 12 hours from now). Going to stop at a Wal-mart on my way up there, and I have no fuel stops on the way. No sense in leaving now in case dispatch has something for me this evening.

 

Wound up being one day late getting home, not KLLM's fault at all - had a genius forklift operator break my trailer door while getting loaded and that gobbled up my 14 pretty quick waiting to get it fixed.

I've been at home now for 4 days, I had 5 days off but I'm getting bored here. Went and watched a TNA House Show at UNO on Thursday night, spent a couple of days with my parents on Friday and Saturday for Mothers day and my 31st birthday. Nothing else to do while home. Likely going back tomorrow afternoon and head back out. I have a feeling that this next trip out is going to be a long one - probably near 8 weeks. I just got assigned a brand new shiny Cascadia with 15 miles on it. Had to do the elogs class and such, spent most of Wednesday on the yard trying to get my stuff out of one truck and into another. Since that crap happened, I've decided to get a couple of storage containers to keep in my car in the event that happens again and I can get my junk transferred more efficiently.

 

Also, for your amusement - I saw this a few weeks ago:


This is one of the abandoned tunnels on the abandoned turnpike that I came across a few posts back...


And one of the caverns that we deliver to and pick up from:


This is a pretty solid reason why more and more WalMarts are putting up bars to keep us out. Look at all of that damage around there...


BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!

 

First run in my new truck was a multi-pickup Tyson load from Forest and Carthage, MS. Just delivered it to the receiver in Chicago's Fulton Market. What a freggin' nightmare that place is. People jumping on your trailer steps wanting money, tight as hell 90 degree turns with cars on every corner, forklifts everywhere in the streets, bridges with 13' 4" clearance....AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!

Shot a video of it to show everyone. uploaded it to fb. i'll put it here when i get home. just glad that I delivered that at 1am and was out at 4am before the four wheelers started showing up.

 

Wow, this run has just been a nightmare from the preplan. to say that I'm getting frustrated with everything right now is a HUGE understatement.

Wednesday evening - getting ready to leave for Chicago, get the preplan for my next load. My delivery in Chicago was for 2am Thursday, the next pickup was for 1pm approx 150 miles away. I send a message to dispatch at 2pm saying that I will more than likely not make that appointment on time seeing as how slow receivers are these days, plus I'd have to get trailer cleaned, yada yada. I got no response from dispatch.

I arrive in Chicago at 115am, takes receiver over three hours to unload. At 2:17am I send a message to dispatch saying theres no way I'm making it on time to next load. Still no response. I leave receiver at 430am.

I get to the Portage terminal at 515am, state to the local dispatcher that i had to do a 10hr reset. my 14 was less than one hour to go, and there was no way for me to make it to shipper legally. Earliest possible eta was 530pm. still nothing said to me from dispatch.

I complete my reset, hustle to the beacon to get trailer washed and head up to get loaded. i call shipper to let them know that Im on the way, they inform me that they close at 5pm and if i want to get loaded the company will have to pay a fee. i call dispatch to inform them, get tossed around from extension to extension because nobody is answering phones. I stop 10 miles away from shipper because no sense in showing up if i'm not getting loaded when I get a call at 505pm saying that theyre paying and go get loaded. I get to shipper at 517pm and its a ghost town, everyone is gone. Nobody from kllm, myself included I guess, bothered to call them to say we are paying the late fee. I call back, told to go wait at a truck stop and get loaded this morning.

Today, I wake up at 6am, fuel, drive to the shipper to be the first one on the property. Shipper wants to know why I'm a day late, and I tell them the above reason. I get loaded, send in all of my macros. message comes across that I need to give an eta, which I do. I give myself a little wiggle room and say 4pm.

I drive straight there, stopping once at a rest area to use the restroom and make a sammich. I arrive at the receiver at 245pm, and security tells me that i'm 7 hours late and theyre refusing the delivery because nobody is here to unload. I state my disbelief that nobody rescheduled the load, the receiving clerk states that no, the company did not reschedule the load for me.

Now I sit here with a 14 hour clock that is about to expire. I was originally supposed to be getting loaded and headed to Atlanta tomorrow, but thats not going to happen.

Dare I ask for layover pay for this? I already know what the answer is going to be - no, because I was late. Even though I gave 24 hours notice that this load was going to be a problem for me to do legally, its my fault I guess. not sure what else i could do, all I know is that this has been a load of ######## from the word go. Just getting people to answer their #### phones in Jackson has been a task in itself, and Im sure that local is getting tired of me calling them - but when they try to transfer me to someone else, they don't answer.

just got a message from some body saying
"ITS APPEARS WE HAV 2 GO THROUGH SEVERAL PEOPLE 2 GET THIS ISSUE SOLVED - PER xxxx GO BK IN TOMORROW 5/19 AND SEE IF THEY WILL TAKE Y OU - FOLLOW UP W/ W/E DISP - THX!"

That's a joke, right??? Go back and hope they take it? If not, pass this problem off to other people???

COME ON MAN.

I'm a company guy and don't complain publicly, but to expect a driver to sit on a 300 mile load for two days because people in Jackson keep dropping the ball is laughable. I'm willing to bet that I will be on this load all weekend after getting that last message of "hope that you can do our jobs for us, we're going home."

 

Another reason why I'm so ###### annoyed is that the entire time that I was at home for my days off, I was getting called by the company to go back to work. first they had a load assigned to me on the first night I was at home, then they were wanting me to go to dallas and bring trucks back to jackson (on my birthday??), then wanting to know when I am coming back.

I came back tueday and have run 1100 miles since. I guess that's my fault for not being on time, even though this run as set me up for that.

AGGRAVATED!!!!!!