Wake up Newbies.

I am starting this thread because I find myself angry at the condition of trucking. So, I am going to vent. Maybe they will take this thread down as it is likely to be considered hateful. It is not meant that way. It is meant as a wake up call.

Fact. If you want to work for a trucking company, you are the most important person working for that company. Understand that and grow a pair.

Drivers earn all the revenue that a company earns. 100% is earned by the driver. Everyone from the owner of the company to the janitor who empties the waste baskets gets their paychecks from taking a piece of the drivers blood, sweat, and tears. You should not let yourself be treated like you are the low man on the totem pole.

I would like to tell you about a Company call Pam Transport. I had occasion to talk to a woman who had worked for Pam for almost a year. She was working for .28 per mile. That is BS. No one should work in this industry for least then $60,000 per year. Walmart starts at $82,000 per year. Of course they require some experience first but the job is exactly the same. Pam hires people who have no experience and trains them to do a job. They also provide a job for the folks for a one year period. Now lets go back in time.......Mr. Peabody here. Adam Reitzell II born in 1730 in Germany. Adam decided to come to America. He need money to make passage to America as he was married with a young son. So Adam signed on to a ship as a top sailor. This meant he worked the very top of the ship, taking in sails and letting them out. His wife and child would receive passage as his pay. Then came a storm. He was in the top of the main mast trying to take in the sails when a wave swept him overboard. He drown. The ship owners of course did the right thing. Since he could not finish paying for the wife's passage, Margret and the son were sold into slavery for a period of 7 years. The price was 1 barrel of tobacco. Slavery was not limited to Africa's sons and daughters. Luckily we fought a war to preserve the Union and a side effect of that was to outlaw slavery in this nation. But what do you think driving for 28 cents a mile is? Tied to a truck for 24 hours a day 7 days a week for BS wages is the same as indentured servitude which is what lead to slavery.

When you go to work for a company DEMAND more. Swift and other mega companies destroy the market by undercutting other trucking companies. Brokers who add nothing take large cuts. This is only possible because the drivers doing the actual work allow themselves to become slaves to the crackers who run the companies. Rise up and refuse to drive cheap. Owner Operators refuse to haul cheap.

The country is getting ready to pour a trillion dollars into infrastructure. What good are smooth highways without drivers driving them. We keep America alive and working. We deserve better then Slaves wages.

 

You Sir are wrong.

If the sales department doesn't show up or dispatch does not show up, the driver can call a broker. Or if he or she is on a dedicated route they can do what they did last week. If however the driver does not show up, sales and dispatch are useless cogs.

Feel free to argue but again, you are wrong.

 

I have my own authority so of course I do everything myself. I do not split my pay with anyone. I do my own sells and my own dispatch. I bought my own truck with my own money. I bought my own trailer also with my own money. I have a second driver hired who starts in my second truck in February. That person will do her own dispatching on loads that I have sold previous as well as finding her own loads base on how I have set this up. She will occasionally have to find brokered loads from the various companies with whom I have started a relationship with. I will take a percentage because it is my money that will be used to buy her truck. The truck will be brand new as that is the most cost effective way for me to purchase the truck. If she wants insurance she will have to pay for it herself. She will also have to pay her own social security and with hold her own taxes. Now if she wants to hire someone to do her dispatching there are people who offer that service. Same for maintenance. Fuel discounts and such. But all things are sourced from the driver. Any Company that fails to understand that the Driver is the most important employee is a STUPID company. Sure some companies are good at team building. Some have dispatchers who understand that the driver is their boss and not the other way around. Some even have a sales force that works to find new leads and open up new lanes. But without the driver, nothing moves.

I personally plan my runs myself. I will leave Monday and head to Denver. From there I go to North Platte. From there a run over to Omaha. At which time I head back to Kansas City. Now if I had to wait for a dispatcher to get an assignment from a planner I would most likely spend a couple of days waiting by the qualcomm for someone to tell me what to do. That is if he or she remembers to let me know before they go home for the night.

So, in conclusion, I again must insist that the Driver is the most important person in a Trucking company.