Random LTL Rants (all are welcomed)

If you find a good company to work for, and you like your job, it makes "caring" a whole lot easier!

 

Here's one of the few things that really bugs me in this business: bad PTIs by the driver who pulled the trailer last.

The other night I pulled a loaded (linehaul) trailer from the door, all excited I was gonna get really good miles and get done fairly early in the morning. Unfortunately, it was one of our older air-ride trailers, which I think was a failed experiment because all the newer trailers are back to good ol' trusty spring ride.

Anyway, I checked it out and found a broken shock with the two halves completely separated and with oil all over it and also found an airbag with a huge leak. Luckily I was at a terminal with a shop. Two mechanics NASCARed it and I was rolling in a half hour. I was fortunate it ended up not being too big of a deal.

If I had been at a terminal without a shop, they would've had to swing the freight. If I had been at a dark terminal, it would've required a road service call. Bad PTIs screw the company by delaying freight and (more importantly) screw our fellow drivers.

 

Yeah our maintenance is done through Ryder. So all of our breakdown stuff goes through them. We really do not have many spares. What they bring us out a spare Ryder and have ours towed if its within a certain distance from the nearest terminal. Anything outside that they tow out the replacement. On that note though, if i can get a "quick fix", as long as it is nothing catastrophic im trying to put together with duct tape, than we can do it to get it back to Ryder.

 

We all see this. And it really pisses me off that the companies do not do any follow up when this happens. It seems like everybody EXCEPT management knows the drivers that continually pull this crap.

 

Yesterday we had a spare truck break down with a set of doubles headed towards the yard. The turbo broke and it started taking in oil. It was a huge fiasco and caused two trailers to not get to the yard until about 9am. The delay was huge. It ended up making additional time for me, because when I was done with my route I boogied out to Geauga County to help the drive who was late or else he would have been out there until 9pm at night.