Post Gordon ~ Thoughts, Commentary & Reflections

The Writer Giveth and the Writer Taketh Away

Now that I have sung Gordon's praises, let me--in true Gordon fashion--treat Gordon as Gordon would treat me. I gave Gordon something; now I take and tear Gordon down some. It does not befit a company with Gordon's wealth to require its drivers via forced dispatch to work for free and for less than federal minimum wage on what I call 'stinker' loads than it did for another wealthy company, Wal-Mart, to deprive its workers of their breaks.

In fact, I believe it's actionable and all it takes is three. On those 0-300-mile loads, where Gordon has you work for free for two hours loading and two hours unloading, Gordon should pay hourly, especially for loading and unloading. I don't think it's any accident that out at Rancho, in litigious California, that Gordon has a fleet of shiny day cabs. Could it be, in part, to reduce Gordon's exposure to just such a lawsuit? If just three Gordon drivers (or former drivers) documented their losses on stinker loads, they could represent all 2000 Gordon Drivers as a class. Three. Just three.

No, I'm not going to be one. I know enough about litigation to know that 95% of litigants would better invest their time into therapy; they'll get more benefit and a lawsuit would probably be a pyrrhic (empty) victory for the drivers because the attorneys would take the lion's share of any settlement. Defending a federal suit can cost $250,000 or more, though, once it gets past the beginning 'challenge' stage where defense lawyers try to get it thrown out of court. Thus, Gordon's exposure is not trivial. And imagine Gordon paying back at least minimum wage for all those stinker loads, start to finish to 2000 drivers company-wide. Oh, whoopee!! Ice cream tonight!

Yo! Gordon! Are you listening? In legal parlance, I think Gordon has a practice that is both pernicious and egregious. In fact, I think it's despicable. At some point towards the end of this narrative, I'll write about Gordon sending me bobtailing from Lathrop to Sacramento to drag a load from Gordon's drop yard 12 miles to Safeway for a 10:30 p.m. appointment which meant working two hours for no pay once I got there and a total unload time of up to five hours. (These Safeway loads typically take 3-5 hours to unload.)

I hate to work 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. and I was so angry about this dispatch that when I got off the phone with dispatch and my Fleet Manager, I shot Gordon a two week notice both by QC and email. More on this later. Suffice it to say for now that IMO Gordon has an unfair business practice that I believe involves a significant potential exposure and all it takes is three, three drivers to document how Gordon ripped them off. IMO.

So far the legal community has not awakened to the injustices in the trucking industry, and there are many. This, IMO, is one of those injustices. Gordon is too good a company to rip its employees off this way and for ownership to sleep at night. A lot of that huge concrete pour, looks to me like enough for a big, big landing strip over there in Lathrop, I believe was paid for with money that should have gone to drivers Gordon stuck with stinker loads.

Oh, yeah, I'm at the first rest area going into Wisconsin and it has been muy, muy wet. I think I even saw a couple ducks wearing raincoats!

 

OTR Drivers: The Backbone of the Country

From the Flying J at I-94/SR 65 in Wisconsin returning to Indy from across the border in my home state, Minnesota. (I live in Indiana now. Grew up in Grand Rapids, MN up in the cold north, Bob-Zimmerman-Dylan country.)

tow614 is right, "Most of his gripes are not situations common only to Gordon but the industry as a whole."

Can you imagine for five seconds McDonald's or Wal-Mart requiring its workers to come in and work up to two hours for free before starting? And then working two hours free afterward? As a condition of employment? Wouldn't happen. Or at least not until it was exposed. So how is it that OTR drivers are relegated to this second-class citizen status? After all, OTR drivers are the backbone of this country. The backbone.

Federally-mandated minimum wage law is there to prevent exploitation. Fact: Drivers are a commodity to most companies, albeit a human one. Don't hand me a turd and tell me it's okay because I've got the good end. Please.

tow614 is also right that, "I have been here for 4 years and have learned the system and am able to paint you quite a different picture." Yes, 'learning the system' is definitely part of the game. The lanes. The customers. The speed limits. Where you can push and where you can't. The zillion little tricks that cut seconds off here, minutes off there and even hours off in some places. Experience counts. And what it takes a reasonably competent driver to acquire that experience. This thread covers my experience and I've got many miles, many loads to go. This-thread-is-just-getting-started!

The first time to a shipper takes longest just like the first time you do a brake job on that car or pickup in the garage. The second time goes a lot faster, as much as twenty per cent I've read. After that it's a lot less stressful, too, because you don't have to think about each little thing as much. You just-move-through-it. At Gordon, it was a real milestone when I f-i-n-a-l-l-y got to a shipper for the second time and I think it was Post up in Battle Creek, Michigan! So it's not like a dedicated run where you have a couple shippers to learn and then you're good. Oh, no! Gordon is a world of its own and not a small one. You don't learn Gordon in a week or month or two, not at all.

The purpose of this thread is to reveal Gordon, the company. It's 'Gordon-ness'. Other companies may have some similar policies, yes. But they're not Gordon. chowick1966 has started a road blog and he comes into Gordon with much greater depth of experience in a Gordon-like work setting than I had. More than I have now. Nothing wrong with that. His experience with Gordon and mine should be different. But there will be a similar 'Gordon-ness'.

If tow614 has the time, I'll read his thread on his Gordon experience. He has in years at Gordon what I have in months. And there are many others like him. Gordon has roughly 2000 drivers, 2000 trucks. As I said previously, Gordon needs a constant stream of new drivers to feed the machine. I'd like to see his thread and more reports of actual, 'Hey, I ran this and made this.' Real life. Real dollars. Real truckers. And how long it took to get there, to 'pay your dues'. Thanks, TruckersReport!

Got the double-drop-and-hook done in St. Paul last night. First time to the shipper, of course, so a little uneasy about trusting my Garmin in but it was fine. Shipper not there and it looked really tight, railroad tracks and rail cars hard in front of loaded trailer that I needed to swap out and jack-knife the loaded inbound trailer into that spot. As well as parked trucks close around. Went fine. Heading back to Indy. Leisure like. Took a video with my Ipad so I could show dispatch what the situation looks like at that St. Paul shipper!

 

I am not sure that a significant improvement in pay and working conditions for OTR will ever happen either, it should, but evangelism isn't the point of this thread anyway. It's a narrative of my five months with Gordon--and five months that I don't regret at all, which I've said before and probably will have to say again and again. I want to post some more pictures in order to continue my narrative and can't do it from my Ipad. Have to get to a PC somewhere, easiest back home. So have digressed some from the narrative. Gordon has a 'you-gotta-give-me-something-in-order-to-get-something' approach to dispatch that I found darkly humorous. So after praising Gordon in one message, I wanted to do the Gordon thing and slap Gordon down a bit in the next message. When I called my DM about the Safeway load that I didn't want and wouldn't pay me anything, he said, "But, Vic, I'll have something good for you after." I just wasn't having it. I liked Gordon, liked my DM. It was a good spot, I thought, to cut the cord to Gordon. And I did. More to follow.

 

This Can't Be Happening

I really don't remember the weekend. What I do remember around that time is a lingering bittersweet sense that I had a reprieve I wasn't sure I deserved and also wondering at how deep a hole I had dug for myself and what it would take to climb my way out of it at Gordon. I remember it did occur to me that it might be possible to quit Gordon, disclose my screw ups somewhere else and just maybe sign on for their bonus; that is, keep Gordon's bonus and collect another sign-on bonus. Two bonuses. Go for the bold in bonuses. Sign up at a whole bunch of places a week apart and move from orientation to orientation. Preferably without tripping up with screw ups like mine. Screw ups. Plural.

(I wonder if anyone admits to doing this: Sign up at one shop, collect the first part of the bonus on your first pay; then, change your mind, get hired on immediately somewhere else and collect a second bonus. Or more?)

But then lightning struck twice. If you look at my pay (see message 17) for my first three weeks at Gordon, Dispatch #8 is for $11.78 and $30 short haul pay. That's where lightning struck. Right there. This-Can't-Be-Happening. But it did.

In fact, on Monday I found myself bringing my Ipad to the Safety Guy's cubicle to show him my brand new screw up. He was on the phone with a Gordon driver. An experienced Gordon driver, not a rookie like me. Probably someone who knew the Gordon system. Maybe someone who knew the system as well as tow614. Who knows? I sat there politely as the Safety Guy politely explained to the guy that he no longer had a job at Gordon. Ta-ta-a-ah!!

"No," the Safety Guy says to him, "This is your third one. You now have three tickets for following too close and Gordon is cutting you loose." Apparently the driver can't remember these tickets. The Safety Guy goes over each one with him. He does not raise his voice. Painfully, he goes over each ticket, the details. Of each. Very matter of fact. Not to rub it in. Just for the record. Just the facts. "You had one, then two and now three." This is the big 'Number 3'. Strike three and you know what that means.

I listened to all of this sitting right next to the Safety Guy at the Safety Guy's desk. He knows I'm there, he's gotta know I'm there. I mean, I'm right there. And he's firing this guy at the same time I know that he's trying to find out if my new screw up amounts to a Gordon cardinal sin and whether or not I still have a job with Gordon. I have pictures.

That could be me three years from now if I picked up tickets while driving for Gordon. But first I have to keep my job. If I do, I think I'm going to have survivor's guilt. That, of course, is where you took the last piece of pizza and your girlfriend or buddy doesn't get any pizza at all. Or something like that. That you got the good end of a deal and someone else got the turdy end.

Yeah, that's it. Guy probably has a wife and kids. Maybe years with Gordon. Me? I have three dogs. I just got a $1000 bonus that I probably don't deserve. Rookie. Newbie. Don't have a clue about Gordon yet. Or the Gordon 'system'. He just got fired. I imagine this family guy, a seasoned driver, taking his things out of his smurf-blue Cascadia so a rookie like me, a new-hire can put his things up into that Cascadia. For every new driver who gets into Orientation there's another unfolded Gordon story...

Yuppo. I just know I'm gonna have survivor's guilt if I make it through this. Lucky for me Gordon needs a constant stream of new drivers like me to feed the machine.

 

Hello-o-o, Wal-Mart!

Sorry for the delay. As soon as possible I will continue my narrative of my five months with Gordon. Today is the 4th of July (2013), I'm out-of-hours in Greencastle, IN. Got security, food, 24-hour bathroom facilities. Urban camper. And my big, diesel motorhome with cramped living quarters. Wal-Mart!

Friday evening I started out on an Indy-St. Paul MN-Indy run, delivered Saturday and returned Sunday. I'm always taking Mondays off (I opted for part-time so that I could choose my days off) because I do some volunteer work in Bloomington, IN on Mondays. In general I'd like to work 3-4 days and then take 3 off. That way I can get a few things done on my property, watch my bird feeders, play with my furry kids (dogs).

The (nameless) company I work for now surprised me on Tuesday by asking if I would please, please come right up and help them out, take a Chicago turn so I ran Indy-Bedford Park IL-Indy; I don't like to drive up to Indy for a run and then right back to my place in Spencer so asked if they would stack something on top of the Chicago turn; they offered another Chicago turn yesterday Indy-Dolton IL-Greencastle IN-Indy and it took three hours for a normally 20-minute unload and, oops, I ran out of hours.

Actually, the last load had been set for Cape Girardeau and got changed at the last minute at the shipper. Whatever. That's trucking, right? On Friday I have a run to somewhere in Missouri with a 1500 hours appointment in MO. All I know right now is that the details should be in my cubby when I get in.

I'm a little concerned that chowick 1966 (Pastures new @ Gordon thread) names some of his shippers, like Staples. Might be better not to do that because right in the Driver's Manual, Gordon states that the identity of its accounts is privileged information such that disclosure could/would damage Gordon. I don't have my Gordon manual with me on the road since I no longer work there but I would gently suggest that chowick 1966 be a little less specific and not risk Gordon's ire. Please check your Driver's Manual.

Most anyone from Gordon in the Mid-West would know that if he had a five-stop load out of a certain Indiana city it's probably a Staples. The lynchpin on those loads, by the way, is you've got to make the first stop on time. I found that they will call ahead for you and let the next store know how you're doing. After the first stop, how Staples unloads you at each store determines your timeliness. You just drive it out after that first stop. But you get to the first stop on time whether it means run at night or what ever. Most are pretty good, friendly. I had one gal who was a bossy, abrupt grump. And be mindful of the time zone EST/CST. I busted butt to get to one first stop only to realize that it was on CST and I had an hour to kill. Could have been much more leisurely.

By the way, the DM he mentions I will call here Astro-Turf, the only DM at Gordon that I would gladly drop kick. All the others are good. All of them (that I had contact with). IMO Astro-Turf is petty, petulant and retaliatory toward drivers. I'd stay away from him.

More about Astro-Turf in due course.

 

Finally, the narrative continues...

Well, you're up, then you're down. On Friday when I put my mark on trailer 54453 (see message 47, page 5), I was down, way down; later on Friday when I got the reprieve, I was up. Kind of. Sort of. Feeling a little dizzy. Truck driver loopiness, I call it. I had a reprieve I didn't know whether I deserved. By Monday afternoon I was facing the gallows all over again. That reprieve was fleeting, I tell you.

Of course, Gordon had a problem, too. Gordon had paid me a $1,000 sign-on bonus and direct-deposited it into my checking account. Gordon doesn't want me to fail out. After all, Gordon has seats to fill; Gordon has empty trucks due to attrition, due to Gordon's own weeding drivers out for tickets and safety issues... Gordon wants its money's worth. Gordon did not become Gordon playing fast and loose with wasted $1,000 payments to anybody.

Then on Monday, lightning strikes again! I pick up a load; I don't even remember where it was going. The QualComm has been an ongoing struggle. Codes for this, codes for that, arrive code, departure code, loaded code, unloaded code. And the machine is clunky. It barely moves from screen to screen. It likes one way, doesn't like others. It freezes. So you shut down the truck, use the battery disconnect to cut the power which reboots the machine.

Plus, it reboots on its own. Right in the middle... Arrgh!!

At least while I'm learning, I like to do things as taught. Learn first, think about it afterwards. So arrive at location, enter the arrive code. Easy enough, but a little awkward depending on how the shipper is laid out. There really isn't always a place to pull over as you pull in. Loaded code and unloaded codes are pretty easy. No problem. Completed code. I understood it had to occur within 5 miles of the shipper/receiver or the system would kick it back. What am I supposed to do, turn around and go back?

On Monday morning there's no place to pull over once I checked out with the guard shack. So down the street I go and there's again no place to pull over. About a mile away I get up to a left-turn dog leg and enter the dog leg. A light flashes in my head, get the darn code waiting for the darn light. Hah! Not a good idea. So as I'm fumbling with the QC, the light changes. Gotta go.

After 18 months off, driving only my automatic-shift transmissions, I drop the QC to the cab floor, my right foot moves from brake to accelerator. My left foot still has the clutch down. The truck rolls backwards!

I catch the truck and look in the side mirror as a car door flings open. I've just received a reprieve, right? I hadn't hit anything in 30 years. 30 years. (By the way, if you have a PC you can click on the photos to enlarge them. If iOS, tap on them to enlarge.) So why is all this happening? What's going on here!?!