Snackbar is chillin'....at Shaffer

With every load, they remind you how to do your job. Right down to reminding you to get your Walmart sticker or stamp. Put your lock on the trailer, take your lock off the trailer, don't speed thru construction zones. If going out west, EVERY load, you're reminded, going out and coming back, to make sure you have your tire chains. Going into Cali AND coming out of Cali they remind you of the 40' bridge law. Same with going in AND out of FL with their 41' bridge law. Every load to a Walmart DC you're reminded not to deliver early or late or it's a service failure. (That's only been Walmart's policy for what, 2 decades?) Every day, you're you're reminded of your hours(like we have never done a elog before, and don't know how to keep track), including a reminder to certify your logs daily. This recent weekend, we were told, not once, but twice how to calculate your hours to include the time change...like we've never done that before. I consider all these reminder messages we get as a form of micromanaging. Then, on top of that, we get bombarded with the exact same recruiting message, over and over and over, like we forgot all about the one they just sent a day or two ago. They nanny about everything like you've never done this job. When you do your arrival at a shipper, you get a virtual PTA message telling you when THEY project your PTA...how the heck do they know how long it'll take to live load me?....some customers are quick, others are molasses in January. Do we need 2 videos about how to release a 5th wheel? All their reminder messages, along with all the ever increasing crash prevention driver distraction devices they keep adding on their trucks, proves one thing to me...they don't trust the half-tard chimps they hire to drive their trucks...I am willing to bet that there is a regular conversation in the back rooms of the executive offices along the lines of "since we can't trust these drivers to think for themselves, what else do we need to add to their trucks and their lives that will ensure they are being instructed how to do their job correctly". I am surprised they don't have a "thinking for yourself" certification class that we all have to take before they actually trust us to go that far. But they remind the drivers to do everything but how to breathe. I am waiting for the time when you come out of the bunk after a 10, switch from Sleeper to Off, that we get a message that, if we are going PooPoo to remember to wipe correctly, and if we need instructions to contact our Asset Manager or our home terminal....oh, and if you spend more than 11 or 12 hours in the bunk without checking in, the send a wellness message asking if you're o.k....which is ########, it just polite way of saying "we noticed your slacking off, get your butt moving"...we don't have that many drivers dropping dead on a break to warrant a wellness check.


1200 watt inverters in all trucks. On the Cascadias, I think sometime in the late 2019 model year, those inverters started coming with one hardwired 120v outlet right under the front edge of the bunk. (The 2019 I had only had a regular inverter with outlets on it's case that you had to run extension cords off of.

No APU's or EPU's. Opti-idle and the standard Espar bunk heater.

Good maintenance on their vehicles? Are you kidding. They do an 'A' service at 37,500 miles(basically a grease job), and the 'B' service (oil change and vehicle inspection) at 75,000 miles. Ask any O/O who wants to keep their truck on the road as trouble free as possible if those mileages would work for their equipment(if you want a good laugh out of them). They claim that those mileages are the manufacturer's recommended mileages...but the manufacturer is the one selling the parts to fix the worn out trucks to the poor schmuck that buys one of their trucks after they trade them at the very end of their warranty coverage. So naturally they're gonna say it's o.k. to under maintain these trucks, it's how they make their money.

 

Mine are too, at least the ones I spend here.