Snackbar is chillin'....at Shaffer

How many trailers you pulling?

 

Only if you have the Uniform Hazmat Alliance Permit.

If you don't, you also have to stop in Ohio, Nevada, West Virginia, and at least one other I can't remember.

Hazmat represents less than 10% of Schneider loads but more than 30% of their inspections (at least for VTL), so can you blame them? Most of the time it's a quick phone call, and while it's never saved me it has saved the company MILLIONS. Since instituting the call in policy our hazmat violations have dropped by 60%.

Many years ago I went into the Grainger cross dock in Chicago to pick up a load. When I got the BOL I saw a bunch of hazmat listed, but on my way to the shipping office I saw the trailer I was picking up and it didn't have placards on it, so I asked for the placards. Shipping clerk said it doesn't need placards. I haven't gone through the entire BOL, but I can see there is more than 1,000 lbs so it needs some kind of placard. She argued that there was no more than 1,000 lbs of any one type of hazmat, so no placards needed. She was right that no line of the BOL had more than 1,000 lbs, but it was because this was a cross dock load going to 6 different warehouses so each stop's cargo was broken out. Rough math showed it was about 20,000 lbs of hazmat total, with at least 3 different classes. We went back and forth a second before I said "let me call my company to confirm" and stepped away from the window so she could help the next driver. The clerk INSISTED I sign the BOL right then, and I demurred.

Shipping manager entered the office and the clerk turned and yelled "I got a problem driver!".

Manager stepped to the window ready to slap me down.

I said "I think I need placards for this load, she says I don't, so I'm confirming with my company before I sign the BOL".

He took the BOL, glanced at it, and said "yeah, you need placards".

I said "okay, can I please have them?".

"Driver's are responsible for supplying placards. If you don't have what you need to do your job, go to the truck stop and get what you need" was his response.

Imagine what happens when a driver knuckles under, signs the BOL and gets inspected before he gets the placards? Even if Grainger had given me the placards, there were so many hazmat entries that it was hard to figure out exactly what placards I would have needed, so having someone 'proofread' just makes sense. It's been three years since my last hazmat load, do I really know what I'm doing or have I forgotten a step. I used to know all the states that require the Uniform Hazmat Permit to bypass scales, but I haven't been teaching hazmat for the last two years so I have forgotten at least one of them.

The hazmat check call is not micromanaging.

 

Nalco water is okay. They started me decent but they don’t. give. raises. I asked the recruiter about that in the first interview. I’d rather have pimp daddy Sam Walton #### me over on production than deal with Nalco unprepared. The pension is designed to never pay out. Don’t get me wrong my base pay is fine but it’s not a place to retire by any stretch of the imagination.

 

All this talk of tankers making me hunger for tanker again.

 

If I remember correctly in my old age, it is the Shippers responsiblity to provide the necessary placards to the driver.

 

I pull doubles most of the time. Once in awhile I will have a 53.

 

Yes, it is. Grainger didn't want to provide them. And it's the drivers job to make sure the shipper did their job, and it's the carrier's responsibility to ensure the driver is doing their job. So when a shipper tries to pull a fast one, if the driver calls into someone who does hazmat all day long it gets caught BEFORE the driver leaves.

 

That is how it is supposed to work. It all starts with the driver.

 

If I had a dollar for every time a shipper messed up a shipment and I caught it...