Honestly I'm prepared for #### sandwiches if worse comes to worse. I haven't seen this friend in years and it took a lot of trouble to set up this weekend. I know not everyone is lucky enough as I am to have a bit of a cushion for ups and downs in income. At the end of the day, life comes first. If I can't see my old friend for a mere two days even if we made plans a month in advance, then I have no life, and I can't have that.
I feel for you. Decades ago I started like most do with the big uglies. They are big and ugly. Your a number on a screen. As soon as you can find a smaller company and find some sort of dedicated position you will start feeling like a normal human being again.
While I couldn't tell you the exact macro, this is spot on. I remember the last time I worked for Swift, in 2012, they do something called "plus 1" or +1. They will still offer you the load, and its up to you to accept or decline. If you accept it they basically take it that you're willing to stay out a little longer, "so your daughter can have that pony at her birthday that costed a lot of money she wanted more than you". That is the only reason I remember that orientation facilitator using those words. The way he said it was kind of screwed up, but funny at the same time.
Plus 1 was their way of getting you 'one more load per week'. Basically, they tried to shorten your time on any given load so you might be able to squeeze one more load in that week. One more load in the pay period means a bigger check. What a joke it was. It was just a tool they used to make you run harder. They would hide the actual pick up and delivery windows and use a computer program to regulate your hours. They put a pretty positive spin on it, just like a good politician would do. It lasted a coupe years before it went by the wayside, like so many other little things they have done.
Well, like I said, that went by the wayside long ago, Now we see the actual windows again. Swift has tried lots of different things in the dozen years I have been here. Some stuck around and some didn't last. Most of the things I haven't liked haven't lasted, and some that I like are still here. I have been at Swift longer than any other job in my life, and it has been interesting sticking around that long. Long enough to see the inept and the competent, and how it mostly has balanced out. So far.
Well I managed to reach Columbus on Friday, and my dispatch has already given me a good pre-plan for as soon as I come back, so the "punish with #### loads" outcome definitely didn't happen. Just goes to show if you work hard and don't be too much of a diva you can get away with putting your fist down on reasonable complaints.
So as I’m nearing my 6 month mark I’m seriously contemplating looking for a better company. Hopefully one that I can stay long term with. We will see, I generally dislike instability but my miles are lately quite crap, the scheduling of loads leaving way too much illogical downtime, sometimes even within a load as they’d have stupid delivery appointments that can’t be rescheduled to be early. I talk about my latest bad experience here in the “trucker rant” forum: https://www.thetruckersreport.com/truckingindustryforum/threads/stupid-dispatch-blunders.2477926/
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