USIT Talk

On a side note, I really am getting tired of all the radio "skipping" lately. I don't know if it's due to atmospheric conditions or if it's intentional but it's really getting irritating. The top two perpetrators that come to mind are Mr "No Doubt" out of SoCal who talks all day like he's a #### DJ and says "no doubt" about 30 times a paragraph, and Mr "Triple 3 of Las Vegas Nevada" who constantly tells about the weather and how big his radio is.

If they are intentional, I wish they would take it to the high power/SSB channels and quit flooding 19. Of course then they couldn't feel cool bothering everybody and talking about how big their radios are. Where are all those amateur radio enthusiasts with their signal meters when you need them. Find these guys and snitch them out to the FCC.

 

Meh, they hardly bother me anymore. The one I keep picking up is the "Mouth of the South/ aka Your Amigo with the Ego" out of Miami, Florida. Kind of reminds me: I had a chance about 2 months ago to pick up a Texas Star 300-watt linear for cheap, but I declined. I'm already running a nice setup (15-20 mile range). Sure, it's nice to be able to cut through all the clutter in places like Atlanta and W. Memphis (two places where it seems everybody has a big radio and nobody will ####); but what useful info could you possibly give me about the road ahead when you're in Los Angeles and I'm sitting in some pickle park in Virginia?

Besides, running that much power pretty much requires a direct connection to the battery (against USA company policy - will get you terminated), plus, you'd just end up going berserk from your stereo picking up interference from such a powerful CB operating so close to it.

 

Did anybody see where USA Truck declined a meeting with Celadon? They also announced some management changes.

http://finance.comcast.net/indices/news_body.html?ID_NOTATION=324977&ID_NEWS=209392893

 

Interesting. I just wish they'd get some form of quality control process to verify these loads. I deadheaded over 200 miles yesterday on two different loads and didn't carry either. The first was cancelled and the second had a pickup date three days later than what USA said. Tonight I have a delivery that is HOURS later than what USA said. Thankfully Dollar General has a detention area and they don't care if you sleep.

I know some of you guys are gonna say to call ahead on loads. Well, that doesn't always work out. I've had a FM tell me "Well I need you to just go ahead and go over there, we'll try to get you a different pickup number.". I just stopped trying to second guess dispatch. As long as I get paid the empty miles then I suppose I'm happy. I do feel sorry for the company though. That's wasted fuel, wear and tear on the truck, and lost productivity from the driver.

 

Sitting at the Roanoke terminal today and, while I was chatting with an experienced driver here, he mentioned how he investigated a related issue (namely, the drop in average miles we've all seen recently). He called his FM to ask him about this and was told the following: apparently there is a disruptive glitch in the new TMW system we're using. Somehow the load assignments are backing up while getting from the load coordinators to the dispatchers; as a result, there is a backlog of somewhere around 300+ loads. As the article states, this has cost the company in the form of lost loads and angry drivers (who are voting with their feet). The short miles are USA's attempt to try to salvage at least some revenue during the transition period (as you know, companies make bank on these short runs).

The takeaway from our discussion seems to be that this is probably going to be a temporary thing (God, I hope so!) I've already seen a couple of longer runs this week; however, it's also obvious that not all the bugs have been ironed out yet (for example, my last load had me picking up from the wrong address and with the wrong PO number. By the time anyone figured out what happened I had already lost 5 hours, making a load in which there was already barely enough time to legally complete late by about more than a half-day).

This story kind of jibes with some of the stuff I've been seeing so far. Whether it holds true or not, I suppose we will see.

 

tech your probably right.my miles have been good 3 out of the last 4 weeks after 2 months of dismal miles.seem to be getting some longer runs mixed in with the shorter ones which helps to have a decent week.My feelings is if the board of directors voted unanimously to decline a meeting with Celadon about a merger then they feel pretty good about the current state of the company and the future

 

Week before last I delivered a load tothe Autozone distro center in Terrell, TX. Well when I got there, in accordance with the load header, I thought I was right on time. Per the security guard, I was 2 days late. He wanted to know why I was late and I told him that I couldn't be blamed for when I got assigned the load, as I had picked it up in Houston the night before. So he kinda shrugged his shoulders and said "Well I understand. Your company can't seem to get stuff delivered any better than at least a day late. It's not your fault.".

Are we that bad?

 

NO, as a driver you are NOT the problem. I spoke with a USA Truck driver just last night. It seems this driver actually likes USA Truck has been with them for quite a while and is determined to ride this current problem out. However this driver has 0% confidence in the current USA Truck management and is hoping the board finally wakes up and does something about it.

 

I just had my truck serviced at VB. It was turned down 1MPH. Mine wasn't the only one. Another driver in Spartanburg was quitting because of the same. They are getting rid of the Spartanburg terminal. They are down to just two mechanics now.

 

How's your fue mileage been? I just talked to fuel economy this week. I called them because I am concerned that the mileage on my truck had dropped noticeably in October. Well long story short, Joe Lyons told me that anything below 6.1 consistently might get you a phone call, it takes 5.8 or less consistently to get you routed in to a terminal to get turned down. He also told me that they will do a counseling session with you and have techs check the truck to make sure it's not a mechanical problem. Also, fuel reviews are done quarterly so he needed one more month of data from my truck to see if there was a problem. I posted 6.2 for September and 6.1 in October. I've already identified 1 problem. I turned the jakes back on. I ran with them off all October because the safety class I went to in W Memphis, we were told that the company wants drivers to turn them off due to a belief that they are causing the problems with the autoshifts. Well I noticed and immediate drop in fuel mileage. Must just be that the engine is being forced to keep lower rpms with jakes on.