Stevens Transport Aviary . . cont'

The load assignment always figures enough time for you to do a 10 before the load is ready. That way you can grab the load and run right away. Remember your beat talk? "...plan on resting and being able to run as soon as your load is ready. DO NOT PICK UP YOUR LOAD AND LAY DOWN! If you cannot run at least 300 miles when your load is ready, notify dispatch..."
yea...I guess I've given that one a few times!
The load times are designed to start with a full 500 miles to start. Often we dispatch late or drivers dally before arriving or there just isn't enough time on their 11/14 after emptying out to get the deadhead done before the load is ready.
Dispatching can be a real challenge. I'll never be qualified to be a load planner because I don't have any hair left to pull out!
Then there are shippers that can't seem to hit a deadline to save their souls!
But think about the variables that affect the load long before you get there.
We know the plants don't start processing the load...they don't start the slaughter, before the trailer arrives. They don't have warehousing...they use trailers for space.
No trailer? No dead pigs!
So Safeway orders 40,000 pounds of meat on monday. The load is tendered, we accept it, build it and prepare it to dispatch. Meanwhile, the plant orders 90,000 pounds of live animals. The farmers have to fill it, the trucks have to get it there and heaven forbid if a bit of weather slows that truck down for a few hours.
Because Tyson, Smithfield, Swift et al planned for that trailer of yours to be right in front of that pig pen at the guard shack.
Now calculate the worker bees that call in sick, take a personal day or an electrical outage for an hour at the plant (there's been several of those lately) and do you see how fast this planned order is coming apart.
Meanwhile, you busted your butt, got there on time and whaddya know? They bust the DLD!
But that ship sitting in Oakland doesn't care. It's leaving the following tuesday at 1600 and anything not on that ship by 0800, ain't sailing!
So the pressure is on.
Who blew it? Everyone and no one.
This is fresh meat folks. There isn't time to stand around. June Cleaver isn't going to buy a brown roast from her local Safeway just because it was delayed a couple days.
Can you see the trickle down?
Is there an answer?
Not in this space time continuem...but we all have to do our best to over come problems ranging from natural disasters to inempt hung over lumpers.
But it's what pays our checks. We have to keep trying to be the best, no matter what we do, where we work, because if we've all learned anything (or should have learned), there are people standing in line waiting to take our business.
By the way, this problem at meat plants is industry wide. Not just Stevens. Every carrier struggles with it to a greater or lessor degree.
Each processor publishes a monthly synopisis of rankings based on performance.
Sometimes we're up, sometimes we're down. And each month, all the other carriers are bouncing around too.
We're all trying to get a bigger piece of the pie...or at least the part of the pie we all want most.

 

And by the time it actually gets ready, Ill be ready to sleep again. Then what?

Its now 30 hours since my "appointment" time.

My new student arrived in Montgomery, AL this morning where i was supposed to pick him up. Now he is in a hotel. Im still 10 hrs from there and still not loaded.

 

We are not machines that can just sleep with a flick of a switch, as much as dispatch would love for us to do. And once a load passes the DLD, I always found it hard to sleep or rest.

 

nope stevens does not pay detention on any pickups... it sucked. Produce loads are worse, as you arrive, and wait and wait, and can not get any sleep.

 

Chiming in, seeing the posts and understanding the frustration. DLD has come and gone? Screw it I am going back to sleep yeah I wont get the greatest of sleep cuz I will be waking up every 2 to 3 hours but when I wake up I call the shipper just to see. I guess I am finally one of the sheep and I dont let it upset me that much any more. As long as I was there at the appointed DLD time, I send the message out, back it up with a live contact with DM or dispatch and I dont stress on it any more. You do what you can and as long as your butt is covered thats all that counts. We signed on to drive based on mileage pay. Yeah things could be a lot more organized but always be prepared for the SNAFU. For you non military times that means Simply Normal All @^#$(D UP. ill give ya 2 guesses what the F stands for. If you cant figure out what the F stands for within 2 guesses then ya might be a candidate to stuff a truck in an airport parking garage LOL. It just plain sucks to get stuck out like that, I have had it happen to me to, and yeah I am ready to quit and chew nails and I am tempted to get on the phone to other companies but like Emuslified said it runs across all companies in refer. Far as I can see it only way to get away from the live load or the meat/produce patch is to go to dry box where the majority of the freight is DH on both ends, but dry has its draw backs too. There is no good answer, except its the industry. Shippers and receivers dont care about our clocks or hours they are concerned with where the heck are we gonna put this stuff and the hung over lumpers. What I think is pure crap is we pick up THEIR products and we have to pay to get THEIR product off OUR truck. I think if we started decreasing the lumper fee proportionate to the time they detain us things would change. Sorry too late to be accurate on spelling. ANyway it is an industry wide thing. Until drivers stand up and unite nothing will change. Back in the early days truckers had no problem uniting and shutting things down. Today that just wont happen with all the green card holders and foreign companies being let through the gates of our borders. Cheap freight is the name of the game, Stevens says it sells service but service only goes so far when it comes to the bottom line. I dunno what the answer is and now I am just rambling on. Bottom line is this, we all get a turn taken on us on the Daisy Chain from time to time and at least we can take comfort in that its not every load this happens on, It is frustrating yes, but we can always vent to one another if nothing else to release some of that stress. Extra fifth wheel grease makes it less painful though lol. Yall be safe and have a great day.

 

I dont usually let that stuff bother me, but when Im coming off hometime, and they send me 2 hours down the road to pick up, and I end up sitting for 36 hours ... yea Im gonna get pissed. Thats an extra day and night I could have spent at home.

I have a plan to keep that from happening again though, so it will work itself out.

 

Had that happen to me once. Came off home time, picked up a load in Albany, OR for the rail yard in Seattle. Drop my trailer there, and bobtail over to Mason Dixon to pick up an empty to load in Bellingham that night (a Friday). Well, there was no empty. So, ended up sitting the weekend in Seattle.

Now I do LTL for a local company, running the Western states. No more snafus like that one, or DLDs to worry about, making decent $, and home when I want.

 

Really PO'd is a mild understatement. Stevens and I had a disagreement on the importance of me being in Court in New Jersey and whether that actually took priority over me picking up a produce load in California. Then there was the added "miss communication" of Stevens paying for the plane ticket and a mild disagreement about 4 days on a Greyhound being quality home time.

I can not say I am a Happy Driver anymore, but I am back, and still rolling with them.

I felt the need to stay away from this board for a while to let the anger subside, because as I have said to others everyone's experience is different and I do not want to poison someone else's experience because I have run into a few issues with them.

Thanks for asking though.

 

What's with the mass exodus. Everyone is leaving lol.