THE ADVENTURES MK III - Still doing it my way

SNI is pissing me off with this NAT crap. I got a call last week that I was made unavailable (didn't matter 'cause I was at home lol) until I called in to discuss these new NAT policies. Apparently the planners (or someone) are now freaking out when drivers NATs have expired and they don't have a load on them.

NAT (and NAL) stand for Next Available Time and Next Available Location for those that don't drive for SNI and read this thread. SNI likes to throw fits when these aren't updated.

The problem that just because I am AVAILABLE doesn't mean that I WILL have a load on me. They say that I should just push my NAT way out when I know I won't be available and to bring it back when I will be available again. But what is gonna happen when I don't have a load on me, but I am looking for a load, and find a load that I want? Now the process becomes: Update NAT, wait for that to update, then try to assign the load, and find out that the load is already gone because I had to spend the extra time updating my NAT and waiting for it to go through the system before it would let me assign the load.

I guess the reason they are throwing fits over it now is because contractors are becoming a much larger part of moving freight for SNI. When I started out contracting for SNI the majority of trucks were still orange company trucks. Now it's a pretty darn even mix of company drivers and ICs. The problem is that the NAT is absolutely meaningless for drivers like me. Why?

Because:

My NAT is absolutely meaningless. Just because I am showing available after I drop this load does not mean I won't just say to myself "hey I'm bobtailing home". Seriously sometimes I decide to go home because when I drop a trailer there are no empties at the location. Or it could be because I am craving some Arbys from the place up the road from where I live. Or because it's nice out and I want to spend a few days working on the M35A2. Maybe I need to do some work to my truck.

Just as useless is the NAL. Sure there could be 50 good loads out of the location that I am dropping in. But does that mean I am going to take one out? NO. I may deadhead across the state to pick up another load that I want.

Stupid.