Swift Gremlins

they base thier efficiency on not knowing what the other is doing.

 

Oh your telling me. When I talk to the mechanic about something I need done he tells me to let my dispatcher know I need to come in empty or whatever. I'm sittin the scratching my head cause all he has to to is walk 15 feet into the office and tell him himself.

 

he considers a driver to be his personal assistant or lackey....

 

You need to tell him you ain't drivin' Ms. Daisy no more!

 

to the OP, if you don't like G. Anthony's comments, you will hate mine.

First off learn how this all works before thinking they are out to screw you (the impression I got). The game is logistics and the competition is fierce. They staged you for Walmart, this happens all the time, especially with a large customer who expects moving a lot of stuff.

We have to deal with it because the customer is king, they call the shots and if the LM says "we may need four trucks Tuesday" and the company has only three there, they pull one over near the pickup. IF that's you and you don't get used because they already filled the trucks and the customer says no more stuff, then you sit because you are at the bottom of the list. My trucks have this happen all the time, the newest in the fleet went 1100 miles only to find the competition sitting there getting loaded with the load that was supposed to be on my truck, of course we got compensated for the move, and got another load but the carrier is also billing the broker for the entire amount of the load, may even put a lean against their bond for non-payment - it was a contracted load.

I get the crap about expecting to be paid for working but if you want to blame the carrier, remember their investment into you, the trucks and so on and how much they have to deal with customer's demands all due to the fact that this is an easy business to get into, easy to find drivers and train them, while working with crap counter offers from the customer - who again runs the show.

BUT what drivers should know is that the dispatcher isn't the brightest star in the sky, many of them are plain stupid and not many consider their job a career. I've dispatched in the past, I've also watched crap from dispatcher who covered their tracks, so I don't buy the excuse of date problems, they either don't know or just lied about it.

That said, if a company has a 100% turnover, it is out of business. There is no **** such thing, it is made up to support this idea of a driver shortage, which is created to allow relaxed regulations for training. A company can not survive with a throughput of employees more than 20% at most, maybe even a lot less.

Just get used to it, make sure you pad yourself for the down time and learn how the system works to work around stupid things - we all have to put up with stupid crap all the time.

 

He was trying to do you a favor, by explaining in detail what goes one behind the scenes with a large carrier. I think a thank you or at least silence would have been more appropriate.

 

If you get/have an hourly driving job who cares if you drive around backwards all day. Yeah I've had those.

 

Incredible. A worthwhile post from ol Goober. Even tho it will go through your targeted audience, in one ear and out the other unfiltered, it was an excellent post.