USIT Talk

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Running 70 is super for company drivers but the real enemy is tardy shippers and receivers and the companies purposely sending you to pick-ups that have just been cancelled before they assigned it to your truck.

Company gets industry standard of dispatched truck turn away of $150. Driver gets nothing but the deadhead miles. The company will claim it was too late to call off the truck and get compensated for that driver/truck showing up and there being no load for them.

Company drivers are happy to get $15 or so an hour detention when if they knew the truth the shipper had to pay the trucking company 3 to 5 x that amount. Companies profit from you sitting or moving, period. At USA, no detention typically at all is paid.

Drivers are set up up to take abuse from everyone;

Their own employer being paid shorted miles and having fees earned off of them w/o passing any of the collected monies to the driver.

The shippers make sure their warehouse works steady as we wait on them rather than them ever waiting on us.

Then, states like TN & CA with their 55 mph truck limit to gum up the interstate forcing cars to weave in and out of our maze of slowed trucks. That slow down in those states take HOS time off a driver keeping them from earning at their potential.

If a driver really could drive 11 hours a day at 70mph we could make decent money. The dead dispatches and delays at shp/rec ends and the slowed highway pace in some states all stand in the way of a professional driver making a good living for their families.

This Friday afternoon if someone came over the speakers in cublicleville and told everyone to stay put with nothing to do for 4 to 6 hours then they can go on home (with no extra pay at all for the delay) I wonder how patient and 'professional' the staffers would behave. Oh yea, on your way home how about pulling this trailer in for service and babysit it wasting your time uncompensated too? C'mon deskjockeys, take one for the team, take it straight up ur Qualcomming bunghole.

Having bytched all that stuff--I love driving. I just wish all parties came to the table with respect and an honest share of the pie. Without drivers the boardroom has nothing at all. BTW, the reason I am expressing this within the USA discussion is that USA is guilty of all those practices I have described. If they are taken over, sobeit.

We as drivers have to find the very best of the best companies and flock to them in droves and be in a position where the sweatshop fleets will have to change their sinful ways or go straight to Haiti.

 

I seriously doubt that USA charges these places detention anyways. They are probably too scared of losing a customer contract. Oh btw, I did have a warehouse tell me one time that drivers misunderstood detention pay. They said that the contractual agreement stated that the 5 hour window only began once you bumped the dock. Not when you come in the gate or check in with shipping/receiving. So there is always a loophole to be exploited and you could theoretically be held indefinitely "waiting for a dock.". For this reason I won't give up the lumper pay until the work is done. Pisses them off a bit, but it seems to get faster results.

 

Hey, I regularly get detention pay from USA. All you have to do is ask and turn in the times. Don't always accept no as an answer, Sometimes it comes on my check as layover, sometimes as distress pay. Now, I'm not saying I get it 100% of the time, but my travel agent does take care of me in this area. Also, I'm not so sure I'd want the rush rush pace of 70 mph, I've gotten so used to being laid back, in no hurry and always having plenty of following distance between me and the truck in front of me, I don't know if the higher speed would do much. Taking the time to call the shipper/receiver and checking to see if you can pu/deliver early really helps me to plan my day. And if they tell me the load has been cancelled, it saves me wasting my time.

 

Well it's not the company that I'm worried about, I always got it with my old FM, sometimes without asking. Sadly, he quit last week so I'm in a new fleet. Still trying to figure this one out yet. Haven't been disappointed yet so we shall see.

The speed thing is not about getting there quicker. For me it's about handling traffic better. At 63 you are stuck in the granny lane and have to constantly slow down to deal with merging traffic. It gets to be a pain in the arse. Then you are too slow to run the middle lane (if one is available) and you don't dare take up the hammer. Then there are those times when you come up on that truck that is set between 60-62. You are faced with two options: slow down and go his pace, or hope that you can get enough of a gap to pass him without pissing off the other traffic.

A lot of the safety aspect is defeated when you are driving significantly slower than traffic. Law enforcement and road engineers use a concept called the 85th percentile. It is that speed that 85% of traffic is moving. Above or below that speed zone your risk increases. Take the OK turnpike for instance. The speed limit is 75 but arguably most traffic is running 80. So at 62-63 you are running 22% slower than the 85%. Now you might say that's irrelevant but I have had several near miss incidents where a wolf pack (that is cars or trucks running same speed in both lanes) came upon me over a hill and the lead had to slam brakes.

Bottom line is, at or near the 85th is the safe zone for smooth traffic flow. When you are flowing smoothly with traffic, you are more comfortable and less stressed. The bean counters will never see it that way though. They are still stuck on stupid with the fuel economy thing. Sadly, the savings in fuel economy plateau after 60 anyways and are not really significant again until the high 60s and upwards.

 

I know what you mean. I have no basic issues with having a truck set at a slow speed like 60 or 64. It's just that the computer should allow you say 4 or 5 minutes of faster speed 2 or 3 times an hour so you can escape bad situations. I know you can always slow down, but sometimes slowing down in these bad situations is not really a good safe option. 4 wheelers for the most part don't understand that most trucks have speed limitations. This has got many truckers in trouble.

 

All I know is that I know 3 USA ICs that have left within the past month based on not getting detention pay they requested and because of the shorter and shorter 'short miles' they're being paid and not getting deadhead miles to places they were dispatched to and the load was cancelled at the shipper.

You add up 8-9% of unpaid miles and that kills an O/O. He not only pays for the fuel on those extra miles, he doesn't get paid on them and they eat into his HOS daily too. It's a lose-lose situation for an O/O. A company driver not moving is bad enough...an O/O not moving is slowly digging a grave because his costs continue tick-tock, tick-tock.

The guys told me they were recruited on drop and hooks and all that typical jazz and end up with all heavy loads and rarely D&H.

One of those guys I know from PA had actually worked for them in the past and they called him and told him things had improved...he fell for it and told me it was worse than ever.

Those guys call ahead too--problem is many times you can never get a live person at these large companies.

Not sure what good FM has quit but any good one that has left makes it worse because a fair dispatcher is truly a rare find.

IDK personally because I don't work there but I do know that there are a lot of unhappy O/Os and a few company drivers I CBed with said the same.

It is almost customary for companies to treat their employee drivers poorly but when a company treats ICs badly that is just stupid business practice because they can take their truck and go elsewhere right quick like.

I think USA is like many other large companies in that they value the almighty shippers so much that they don't even attempt to stand up for their drivers when it matters. These companies trip me out with the weekly circus of guys hauled in every Monday and Wednesday by Greyhound just to steal taxpayer dollars for 'training and job offers' to good guys that deserve respect.

Going off to a distant place to do a new job and be locked in a tuna can with some jerk you don't know for months on end for a job that pays $500 to $600 a week when you're done is truly a torturous experience. I am so glad to have my own truck and atleast control a bit of my own situation now.

To you guys going through heck right now, chin-up and stick it out. Once you've been driving a year you can get a better situation for yourself and your family.

 

Must be some truth to this. A few weeks ago in Roanoke I ran into a trainer who's been with USA for around 25 years (you get a star on your ID badge for every 5 years with USA Truck - and this guy had five on his) . Everything he told me was just about the same as what you posted, word for word. I also got pretty much the same story from a couple of other trainers I spoke with not long after that.

 

It only makes sense. We used to pass Schneider and Werner but now they are passing us. When I went through school 8 months ago, my classmates that went to PAM were told their trucks ran 64. Well I talked to one recently and he told me that they were now on a variable policy with some trucks all the way up to 68 dependent on fuel economy. I guess these companies realized that fuel prices are not going back down and that to stay competitive, they have to be capable of moving freight at a good pace.