Random LTL Rants (all are welcomed)

What terminal are you out of?

I feel like we need completely new managers. Maybe former drivers and not some clowns with college degree. All they do is sit on their ### all day and chew tobacco while we are being short on drivers and equipment. Hell even our maintenance shop can't keep up with fixing all those broken tractors. There is at least 20 trucks siting behind the shop waiting to be fixed. FXF is a good company, but management sucks big time.

Dock workers damage the freight every single day and they don't get in trouble, but god forbid you put a scratch on the bumper of your tractor. You will have to complete tons of paper work and receive preventable

oh well...As long as they pay for every hour I work and the checks don't bounce I shouldn't be complaining right?

 

I'm PRS, but I've worked out of about half the yards in Arizona over the past decade. The worst I've seen was about 4-5 years back, when PHX hub was always running way low on congears, but they finally ended up buying a whole ton of them so now we have enough. I've never seen a situation like you're describing--last I was down to PHX I saw a couple of Ryder trucks parked in the line, so it doesn't seem like they have a problem doing what needs doing to get the freight on the road.

I think it's just your particular barn. When was the last time your regional/district higher-up(s) paid a visit?

 

Back in August and September I have seen bunch of managers on the dock watching supervisors and dock workers. Main reason was a lot of freight was being damaged at my barn. Not sure if they were district managers, but I do know that some of them came from Nj and some from Harrisburg. They were on the dock every day for 2 weeks.

Also lately we were told no to use tractors before clocking in. You can put your stuff in the tractor, but no driving in the yard. I think that's stupid...

 

This was at my last stop this morning at 8:00am at the Cleveland Food Terminal.

Happy Monday everyone!

I worked the over night volume run last night, so I was off of my normal broadline route today and they had one of the newer guys run my normal gig.

Our volume guy took some flex time off which I should be doing. But I'm addicted to work so that's how it goes.

Anyhow, I got to work last night about 9:30 maybe I don't know sometime around that time.

Got the hand held loaded up and ready to go and did some pre-tripping and screwing around with the truck a little bit and by maybe 10:00pm I pulled out of the load and headed to the warehouse in Pittsburgh.

I sailed gracefully across the finally finally done and repaved Ohio Turnpike right on into Pittsburgh and slid right into the warehouse lot smooth as ice.

I had an empty trailer with me so that was one plus however, that's where the pluses stopped the 50' parking and pool was over flowing.

There was a lonely 36' parked in the 28' pool. I was out of options where to park my trailer? What's a girl to do? .

So I did what any of you would do and I asked a yard hostler where he wanted the trailer, which when I got to the warehouse they were in a state of action. Yard hostlers buzzing around there amber and green strobe lights and LED Light Bars piercing the pitch black darkness of the Pennsylvania Midnight. The strobe and reflective action of the strobe beacons blinding to anyone around. So I got out of the truck and I don't recommend this, but if you're ever at a busy break bulk terminal or food terminal it's always best if you can help it to stay in you're vehicle because usually during the busy hours of the day or night it's like stepping out onto a miniature racetrack. Yard Hostlier trucks buzz around like it's Indianapolis 500 you have to be careful.

Anyhow all the 50' parking was full so the one hostlier just told me to park the trailer where I was and so I did. Then I drove over to the fuel island and filled up and then went on about my business all ready to get my new trailer and load and head back to Cleveland.

Nope . Warehouse had a heavy ship night and was running 2 hours late. So Midnight comes and goes. One Am comes and goes. Of course I tried to down load my load at midnight and the route didn't come through. Which means the warehouse probably didn't even have it fully selected or even loaded yet it certainly wasn't "released" to transportation for delivery.

When I was at the warehouse I did however in my 2 hours of waiting manage to locate @double_r 's hand held. Even saw a couple of his co-workers in the chain division meandering in. Now I noticed there's no trophy case for warehouse transport groups. I noticed the chain division 2017 transport team of the year plaque is just propped on top of the key box. At Cleveland we have a big fancy trophy case for all of our awards. Also they have cable or satellite TV at the warehouse in the drivers room they have a remote for the TV and everything. We were loosely watching a documentary on the death of Dale Earnhardt Senior in 2001.

Anyhow, 2am comes and finally my paper work is up and the warehouse loaded my trailer and released it for loading and I sailed across the night back home. For a while I was pacing a set of GFS doubles, but we hit an uphill grade and I had to get around him because he was going to lose a lot of momentum and so I passed him up with ease and out of sight as I sailed onto the turnpike at 3am. Passing Youngstown, and the dark city of Warren, Ohio and the soon to be idle GM Lordstown, Manufacturing plant.

Traffic was light at that time and I made it smoothly off the turnpike onto I-480 the miles clicked by click, click, click.

I slid off the highway right onto the main road and straight to the hospital, where I had to whip the 50ft trailer around three different times and three different doors before I was able to get into a dock where the dock plate worked or there wasn't some obstruction in my way.

After a 1/2 hour there I had another hospital to go to a smaller hospital and once that was done I had a meat company down at the food terminal which in a 28' trailer is no big deal, but it took me a few pull ups and shake overs to finally get the 50' trailer into the dock. The problem was the dock is inside an old building and it's pretty dark in there and it's hard to tell with the 50ft what's going on back there. The stop it's self is easy and actually I like them, there good people it's a small family owned meat company the women who run it are sisters and there old man I think started the business and they took it over there very nice.

Anyhow that was that. Made it back to the yard and then got home at about 9:30am and I don't know I went to sleep about 11:00am and got up at 3pm or so and kind of milled around.