Stevens Transport aviary

Me too, of course that was probably easy to figure out, LOL. We knew the trailer needed to have the coolant checked, they just run us so tight on time that we were just keeping a close watch on it until after delivery. Trailer we have right now has a bent landing gear which makes it a real pain to dolly up and down, but they don't want us to stop and get it fixed. When we have to drop it somewhere they will send someone out to fix it.

Best of luck to you during this phase and please keep us all updated. Hope to see you on the road again sometime.

 

I hope to actually get on the road sometime soon LOL!

 

Broken down in Birmingham, luckily I just finished T5. Greyhounding it back to the yard for OR2.

 

Finally got a trailer. On the way to Liberal to get loaded. Nice to be rolling again!

 

Liberal... Hope that you have a lot of time to spare... Thats where I sat for 3 days waiting to get loaded...

 

A great insight opened before my very eyes today. I think you all will find this interesting, since we keep asking why dispatch can't get us rolling smoothly.
Now keep in mind, this particular set of incidents were on a dedicated fleet, however, the same thing happens in the Div 1 fleet which most of you are dispatched out thru.
In the dedicated fleet, there are anywhere from one to 4 preplans, however the driver may only know about one or two. The others are 'soft planned'. In the Div 1 fleet, there is usually one 'soft plan' that you won't know about, but it's there.
Freight is given to the boards 2-6 days in advance and the planners 'accept' the load as they need. So let's say you are on a load from Salinas, CA to Dallas, Tx (Taylor Farms). You leave wednesday and deliver saturday morning. There is a 'soft plan' behind that load that picks up in Paris, TX saturday afternoon and delivers in Davenport IA tuesday.
In the dedicated fleet there would probably be one more preplan behind the Davenport load. Let's say from Ottawa, IL to Rochester, NY.
Now here's the kicker.
Shippers commonly have employees that call in 'sick' on fridays and saturdays. Of course they aren't sick, but they won't be there.
The shippers have two choices: pay overtime and get the loads out or 'cancel' the loads. Labor costs being monitored as they are, the shipper will opt to 'cancel' enough loads to make up for the 'sick' employees, then reissue those loads on monday.
Saves labor.
Now what do we (dispatch) do with you, who is emptying out saturday morning? We can't get loads the same day, and most 'next day' loads are scarce as well. In addition, if you're planned on a load from Ottawa, can we find another load from DFW that gets you up there?
Probably not.
See how this works? it's a domino effect.
The fleet I was working today has 34 trucks. Six of them were on home time or in the yard. That leaves 28 trucks to keep moving.
At 9AM this morning, our account emailed us 9 load cancellations that were to load today or tomorrow.
One third!
It was a scramble to cover the trucks, and I guarantee you monday will be hairy as we try and pick up the pieces for all the preplans that won't have a truck in that city.
It is very common for shippers to notify the trucking companies of 'canceled' loads on friday, for that day or weekend pickup.
Now the next issue, and this is the driver's fault all the way thru. I know most of you are probably good in this area, but about 25% of the trucks are in violation every day on this: Check Calls in the morning.
Every DM is at his/her desk by 7:30. Many, much earlier.
When trying to place loads, they check the QC messages and check your Check Call. Are you on time? How many hours do you have.
There is no automatic reporting from the new qualcoms as many of us have been told.
If you haven't done your check call, it requires the DM to search out your numbers and that takes time.
So they pass you by, take care of those that have done their check calls, then return to the ones that didn't.
Unfortunately, by the time they have gotten back to you it can be anywhere from late morning to early afternoon and that day's loads are probably already dispatched.
So that's today's insight.
Yes, there are stories, but I'll leave those for another day.

 

This one explanation ... if given in training or at least disseminated to the fleet at some point during employment ... would have saved me several days of being ignored on the QC for my asinine messages about sitting and having nothing to do. At one point during my languishing back then the thought did cross my mind that something like this could be happening ... but at the time I was on my third day with no communication with Dallas while sitting at the Joplin Petro. Not being a chrome addict ... it was a very boring existence to be sure. LOL

Again, Emu, totally invaluable information. I think that the best thing that could happen with communication at Stevens is your joining the dark side and continuing to post. Maybe now that side won't be a "dark" as most drivers fear. I just hope that one of the powers-that-be doesn't force you to stop posting about how things REALLY work in the office.

 

Now lets just hope that upper management will let Emu make some changes to make this happy merge between dispatcher and driver. If they don't feel like there toes are being stepped on and being shown up (So to speak) then they should let you loose and get things done. They should also give you a raise for showing them better ways to make things happen.

 

I do my check call, but I hate it. I think I just want to hate something and picked the message #1. Aside from that, I also discriminate against the message 58 and 59.... Pointless.

 

So glad that I dont have to send silly messages in all of the time. This past week I bet I got 2 messages all week. Both were messages sent to all drivers and neither even pertained to me.