Poor Treatment from shippers and recievers

Most are nice to me (big fella) but some can be bad normally the second time I go there they are better.. if someone starts by barking at me I normally laugh and say who pissed in your cornflakes and often they calm down

 

I hear about drivers having issues with shippers/recievers. I will tell you my experience having any issue is rare. Not unheard of, just rare.

Almost all issues I have run into can be traced back to management either in the trucking company or the shipper/reciever. Usually someone at the dock is trying enforce some BS that upper management came up with. Or, someone at the trucking company made promises that are not going to happen. And us poor truck drivers and dock workers have to deal with the fall out.

 

On a wind farm in MilfordUT, got out of the truck to take the tarp and securement off of a load, and this woman starts in on me. Clean white hardhat on. Looked brand new. She decides to crack the whip. I shake my head no, and walk around to the other side of the truck. I hear something about, "I'm not finished!" The rigging crew starts laughing. She follows me around the truck, I walk to the other side, and the rigging crew laughs louder. She gets louder and starts screaming at me in frustration. She follows me around the truck and asks, "DRIVER, WHY WONT YOU STAND STILL AND TALK TO ME????"

I stop, turn around, walk up to her, lean down close to her ear, and in my lowest softest voice, I whisper...

"because I have very sensitive ears, and you are yelling."

"Oh...", she responds. And she lowered her tone and we were able to talk.

Anyways, whenever someone gets heated and loud, whisper. The louder they get, the quieter you get.

"But Six, I was worried about this guy becoming violent."

He won't. He's just trying to push buttons. You know how they say Misery Loves Company? Well, when some people are in foul moods, they want someone else to be in a foul mood too. He could read you and so decided to change your mood.

Just remember that the Cool Head prevails.

Luck in battle.

 

I couldn't have said it any better,

“If you run into an ####### in the morning, you ran into an #######. If you run into ######## all day, you're the #######.”
Deputy US Marshall - Raylan Givens

 

I am fortunate that the account I run delivers to smaller outfits. Most of these places I walk in, open the door, clamp the dock, pull the dock plate and turn the spotlight on for them. When they are done, I do it all in reverse. It helps me, and it helps them. We shoot the breeze for a minute, and I head on out, this is in the South though, where most people tend to be more friendly.

I also have the assurance that if someone won’t unload me, my boss will tell me to bring it back in a hot minute and they will pay double shipping. I have the occasional Jack@ss, but they are like that in life, not just towards me.

 

When I used to haul for a mega, it was always the huge food distribution centers that treated drivers like sub-humans. They don't care how long you have to wait, and they're never in any kind of a hurry. The gate guards greet you with an attitude, and the lumpers could care less if you run out of hours waiting for them to get their crap together. When you ask how much longer after sitting there several hours, they laugh in your face. That's the main reason I quit working for mega carriers and refuse to deliver loads to those places.

 

This is why I pull tanker. Specifically dry bulk. I generally don't have to see too many people. Usually when I deliver, there's nobody around, just put the BOL in the mailbox and unload. We only load at a handful of places, and two are self service. The other places have someone load the trucks, and they're usually pretty cool.

In 18 years, I've pulled a dry van for a total of about a week, mainly helping out when that division was busy. While I do see some things about door slamming that I like, it simply wasn't my cup of tea. I don't like the idea of being held hostage while some crackhead warehouse worker with no real goal in life wrestles with whether to do his job that particular day.

 

I won't say it! Enjoy your evening.

 

While I', not saying bad dock workers (or whoever you flatbedders have to deal with) don't happen, they are very rare.
I've been to plenty of places that the driver comes in with an attitude and triggers the dock worker. Once I did see an altercation that almost came to blows. Dock worker took a 15 minute break, next guy in was all nice to, just like all the people that came in before the driver.
I've seen that more than once.