Random LTL Rants (all are welcomed)

We had a good number of OTR guys who got hired for P&D at Yellow would just ghost us before the 30 day probation period was up, when you would call and ask it was always about the hustle of P&D and hitting so many docks in a day as the reason. I loved the hustle made the day go by.

 

Yup, when I was hired with US Foods straight out of CDL school, the manager told me he’d rather take me as a brand new driver and eager for the opportunity, over an experienced OTR driver who will probably have the wrong expectations for the job.

 

Today this guy comes up to my in the yard hostler telling me “the fuel light just came on”.

I tell him it’s good for 50miles once the light is on we’ll fuel after lunch. Which is in a hour. This guy starts arguing with me “ I ain’t waiting. I ain’t listening to this beep until then”.

it has a low fuel alarms so it beeps.

I told him I’m not showing you to use the fuel card I gotta go to work. We can’t stop working in the middle of the shift to drive off lot for fuel. We go to a local truck stop to fuel the yard hostlers.

tells me he’s been driving since 1985, but can’t even do a 45 degree back… (to be fair i understand learning the equipment).

I think he’s got a problem with our age disparity(35 year difference).

I’m showing him how I do the job, and he wants to try to reinvent the wheel.

I’m like you’re not fast enough to pull empties as we go. Get all the inbound to the building first we can spend the entire night pulling empties they need their work now…

please make these two weeks until my transfer fly by.

 

Oh, this guy did the Cracker Barrel dedicated account before coming to the LTL division.

proceeds to tell me he couldn’t even do one trailer. After his second stop his knee started to hurt, and it swelled up. Another driving had to come rescue him so he could continue to the barn with the other drivers empty.

trust me I get it. I’m not doing food service unless it’s a four day work week, or I’m about to lose my house.

How they hell do you at the age of 63-65 with diabetes, obesity, paper skin, and smokers cough think you can go up and down a ramp all day hauling cases of root beer.

I told my wife don’t let me be like this when I’m old. If I’m 60, and my hips/back hurts climbing into a vehicle let me know so I can hang up my keys.

oh, and he refuses to drive a Volvo because he can’t figure out how to drive them and refuses to let me show him. They use a button on the dash, and have no column shifter.

 

I would posit that it wasn't the hustle that was the problem - it was the pay to hustle ratio.

If a driver has a choice between grossing $1,700 a week OTR without touching freight or $1,900 running local P&D, it comes down to how much he wants to be home. Commuting costs (time and money) will take a big chunk of the 'extra' money, leaving not enough to justify the extra work. The experienced driver will go back to what he knows and is comfortable with. The rookie doesn't have an apples to apples comparison and will likely do a lot more for an extra $50 a day than any of us would.

When I was looking to make a switch, all the local P&D work was going to end up paying about the same as I made at Schneider - just with a lot more work.

 

I get a lot of push back when I argue that I'd rather have 18 year old trainees than guys in the their 50s. They're ignorant, immature, and listen to bad music but it's a whole lot easier to demonstrate that they know nothing. They don't have bad habits to unlearn. Most importantly they don't suffer from GAM Syndrome. "I'm a Grown --- Man, stop telling how to do things!". The over 50 crowd requires a lot more patience and grace.

On the other hand, I remember my first week in yard truck. Oh, lordy did I suck. I know how to back, but all my timing was off. I'd try to set up a 45 and be way off. I'd get the vehicle to the point where with a sleeper if I chased hard it would slid right it. The yard truck would be underneath it so fast I'd end up overshooting the hole. I was instinctively looking in the wrong spot for the mirrors, and my 6'3" butt does NOT fit in a yard truck.

 

Honestly, the majority of men have outlived their usefulness by around 45-50. They become belligerently stuck in their ways. A lot are older than the management and won't listen to anything from anyone younger. And in trucking, 30 years in this industry will make anyone a bitter #######.

I've tried and tried again to tell management not to hire fat old OTR guys into manual labor and customer facing driving roles. You put a 60 year old chain smoking, hasn't showered in a week, 350lb tub of lard into a role of climbing in and out of a truck 50 times a day and moving 2000 lb freight by hand and it always ends up the same. They ##### and moan, offend customers, get injured, get moved to the easy work, perform poorly even there, and you have to wait until a heart attack gets their worthless fat ### out of your way. Less you fire them and they sue the company.

I worked a job when I first started trucking around some pretty rough neck kind of guys. We had a lowboy driver that was all of the above. Plus he was exceptionally stupid. Even by trucker standards. One day he falls out on the paving crew from a heart attack because the air went out on his truck. One of the newer guys says he's going to call an ambulance. The 6' 8" foreman tells him he'll be calling the ambulance and for nobody else to call. Nobody did and 15 mins later of this fat old ####### rolling around in the sun the foreman calls the ambulance when his flopping around has mostly stopped. Amber lamps came and got him, he spent a few weeks in ICU before croaking. Nobody he worked with went to his funeral. That story sums up what it's like working with most old OTR guys. They're hated. And for good reason.

 

The place I'm supposedly about to sign on with has the same problem. A fat old slob is about to get #### canned with me replacing him because he has lost the company about 100 customers and stolen from the company and deliberately sabotaged trucks he's been given to milk the clock and not have to finish his routes.

 

Wow, what a great bunch guys to stand around and let somebody lay there dying like that. Maybe the guy was a dick but #### that's still pretty cold on your and the rest of that bunch's part.

Attitude and perspective... A few years shy of 30 years trucking here. I've seen some big highs and some low lows but always kept a positive outlook. I look back at some of the really bad #### that's happened to me and weirdly I can always find something positive in it. At the time I couldn't see it but with hindsight I do. Things could be a helluva a lot worse and there's always somebody out there with a struggle way bigger than mine. Your attitude is what makes or breaks you in life.

 

Lot of it comes down to the #### head intentionally crushing a guys foot on the job with a roll off. Some other rumors too but never confirmed. Either way, working around rough necks, it's not a great idea to be a persistent thorn in the side of construction workers living life on the rocks.