TMC experience thus far.......

Most definitely. You are being ran and poorly routed home on Fridays like myself, which makes me wonder if we both share the same FM, ...he told me to remind him middle week for a decent load for home one time. Lol He got me home brilliantly by noon. That happened again never, and for me it's Saturday mornings/early afternoon rolling in for that "great" weekend he tells me to have (as the long Friday drives home with no clock laugh at me lol) Like he will blindly send you the wrong way if you do not reminded him that yes, I am a real human and need to be out of the God #### truck a tad longer than 34 hours...preferably with timing to be able to come off the reset with time to park up Sunday night, which requires to be routed home with some intelligence, not werckless abandon.

I do my part, never truck stop it unless things like a shipper screws up and the load pushes back. I slept at a truck stop, including tonight, 2 times. The rest is at the consignee or commando style off some dead end street very close. So I start each day with an unload/empty before I even start my clock, giving load options and 11hrs to run it on the road.... I don't do it for money, I do it for a good Friday return.... And each Friday it's the same ignorant routing the wrong way. I don't know how much longer I can chase this carrot dangling in front of me.

I've been strongly considering turning in my truck. And it doesn't have to be this way either. I could be home for real on the "weekends" with some thought and consideration...I know the loads are there.

 

Fellas don't feel alone! Something's going on here. For the past seven weeks thing have been off of my normal with the same issues you speak of. I passed my house today delivering my Friday load. Now I'm sitting at Delta oh for my 10. I will get home on Saturday again. Last Saturday I got home with 3 hours on my 70. This week I will have 13. I haven't been able to park Sunday nights for 6 weeks all because lack of hours for my 34. All I can say is stick it out for awhile for freight to get better. And you can always have a little talk with your fm and tell them to wise up ,but that's another story. Be safe

 

Worthington or Blue Scope???

I know that struggle well. My second FM there was notorious for doing that kind of thing to me. His "ideology" was that I didn't want to land within 100 miles of the house on Friday morning, somehow supposing that I might not get a load thru home for the following Monday. (Home for me at that time was Indianapolis--virtually EVERYTHING goes thru there, ha.) Yet for some reason I'd land 80 or so miles from the house on a Thursday--and then get sent 400 miles either to somewhere in Missouri with a wallboard load from Silver Grove (if you been there, you know the place well), or like the above quoted poster, somewhere up in Northwest Ohio (be it Delta, or worse, Holiday City--if none of you has yet experienced the "pleasure" of the Menards distro center up there, hope that you don't).

After about two months of it, I finally let him have it...spoke my mind on it. Never mind the fact that I ran my royal tail off just to even get home on Friday. (Some Saturday mornings I could understand due to traffic--did somebody say CHICAGO??--or shippers taking forever, such as just about every place in Granite City IL, certain places back in--wait for it again--CHICAGO I shall not name, or that CSI [?] place down in Assumption IL that shops the grain bin parts.)

Needless to say, my third FM got the point, and he and I developed quite the working relationship.

It sucks when it happens, but it's an unfortunate part of trucking life. That said, some FMs are better at managing that than others. (So long as the drivers are also doing theirs, which it looks to me like you all are and have been doing.)

 

Worthington. Just about every time I load out of here I spend the night. Done that manards deal two times too many. Found out Monday my fm no longer was with the company so now I'm on number 3 , so we shall see how he works out.

 

Do FM's typically come and go at TMC?

@Buc yeah, I've been to Silver Grove, Ky four times now...each time, ya know, that little DOT HOS just vanishes right before your eyes. lol

I pulled in there a few weeks ago and the race was on. I pull around the horse shoe, but another driver parks 20 yards past the security gate, having arrived after me but now ahead in a way...he tries to run-walk into the office to beat me, to jump into the staging line sooner. I'm literally at a sprint from my truck parked in the securing area having seen his slick trick...he beats me in anyway and we play it off...inside we start joking about how our day is pretty much done because there is no getting out of here in under four hours. Claude behind the desk did not like that...and later in the day I went in to get a edge protector pole...was sent to get my driver's license as collateral...I was pissed, cursed walking out the door haha...got a phone call from the fleet operations manager the next day and routed to INDY to see safety who, once seeing me, said this is not a safety issue "WTF are you doing here"?

I since been back and apologized for the unprofessional representation of TMC (and I mean that).


Most days I want to quit, then most days I find some enjoyment. It's a roller coaster.

I got home today (Friday) by 2pm...only because a load got pushed back and I lost a day...but made up for it having done enough loads in the week to get me 5 in....but mannnnnnn were they all 630 loads, nothing great.

Being out of the truck is sooo nice. I will continue to go on trucking....though I carry only minimum necessities that can fit in a duffle bag anymore...you never know/// this "six months" mantra is true, skeptical of it at first, now I think that it really will take that long to get used to the brutality of trucking.

I seen a kat at a consignee the other day and I marveled for a second when he said to me that he's been with TMC for five years.

 

I'd day that "6 month" mantra is pretty close to true. For me I started "solving the puzzle" about four months in, but it still took me about a year before I fully "got it", and another year past that to get the WHOLE picture (because there's some things you'll run into that you don't know that you don't know because no one's shown you and/or you haven't yet seen them...for me that was a/ going out west for the first time and b/ enduring WI TERS out west. Once you get some good wild west winter driving under your belt, you're pretty well-rounded, lol.

But yes...I always like to tell people that in the trucking 90% of the time things go the way we expect, go right, or better than expected...but then it's that other 10% of the, when things go wrong, that when they do go wrong, they can go HORRIBLY wrong, to the point of canceling out the other 90%. Once I realized that in my own mind, I took a hard look at things. Now yes, at that time (& sometimes even still now), I felt like, due to my background (15 years in the Army plus a college degree in Graphic Design, which I spent a considerable amount of time doing before it all went south), trucking was somehow "beneath me", like I was built for more than rolling around in a mobile prison on 18 wheels picking stuff up and dripping it off...but then I looked at the positive aspects of it: one, the job is more useful to the American economy (it is), and two, all the places I got to see that I'd never have gotten to see otherwise (to also include places I hope I never see AGAIN--haha, like a certain lumber yard down in West Virginia by the name of Jim C Hamer that I hope NONE of y'all ever have to deal with--or any of the CONSOL mines down there for that matter). But...I also got to see Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana--well everything west of the Missouri River except Oregon, to include a weekend in Vegas on my way back out of Los Angeles by way of Long Beach. So there are many positives to the game too.

That said...much of one's enjoyment also depends on personal factors, such as wife/girlfriend, children, things like that. Not everyone can deal with time apart like that. And if you ain't got a STRONG woman back home (for those of y'all who have one--the majority of my time out I was a single man with a single daughter ad my only primary commitment), who can hold down the home front while you're out winning the bread, then the stresses of the OTR thing probably will run one out. It happens.

 

Some drivers are like that. When I first started, I was still high on the koolaid to make the big buck. After awhile I found out I was making the big buck for someone else not me. So for me now its deliver in the morning and reload for tomorrow. Take time for a shower and do what you need to do. You are only going to make what they allow you to make. Being here over 4 years I have learned drive the load. Don't allow the load to drive you. The ELD can be your best friend at times.(if you use it to your advantage). Be safe.

 

It has also been my experience that the earlier you get home on the weekend, the earlier on sunday you must leave for you Monday delivery.

 

Buc, You speak the truth in what you say! And I have loaded out of Jim C Hamer. I was only over weight by about 3000 on my gross just before the 4th of july weekend with the load going to IN. By the time I scaled the load I called my fm and told him I was not going back! ( I hate WV) had to dodge every scale on the way. Talk about OOR.