What Would You Do if this was your OTR job?

just remember,live loading/unloading is a hassle, much easier working for a carrier that hires college grads to keep track of 10k trailers lol

 

You have the best negotiating position BEFORE you get hired. Talk to other drivers working where the new company says you will be placed. If you don't like the situation they describe, keep looking.

When someone tells you to just randomly pick a company "because you have to start somewhere" they are setting you up for failure.

 

It's so much easier to have a driver drag a vehicle across town in city traffic to answer a question than for some busy dispatcher to make ONE extra phone call. I didn't do yard checks until I got confirmation I was getting paid drop pay and mileage. The mileage doesn't mean much and the drop pay is no cure for wasting hours, but companies don't track frustration, they track dollars. Lincoln freed the slaves, don't work for free.

 

Ive had many employers. Most of them were in their own time or season. For the most part it was fun. Other times something crazy comes up and we go our separate ways.

I had a load at the City dock on Philly downtown off the ship transferred into my trailer. Grapes and so on two or three kinds into a older reefer.

Due to the wonders of telephone communications and dispatchers too busy to care or otherwise distracted I was given very clear orders to take it to Kennetts Square. What? You listen driver, K E N N E T T S S Q U A R E got it?

*Gulp, yes. See here I was 21 don't know a #### thing about this Kennetts square. No computer, no cell, no internet no nothing.

Combine that with harried shipper sitting around huge pillars of bills of all sorts of grapes off the ship behind him with 50 forklifts roaring to tend to a dozen of us. He does not have time for a particular expansion or communicating about KS. Here I am with a big load stuffed in a howling reefer and looking about at the gate for this Kennetts Square.

Due to a fantastic lack of taking a moment to communicate just where this precious Wizard of Oz is to this idiot newbie I happened to look down the street and saw this KS. Checked the bills that were just written KS. No physical address worth a ####. Evaluated the large warehouse at that KS about half a mile away and found cold storage trucks docked to it. Ergo. There is my destination KS.

Unloaded.

On phone at truckstop far away. Dispatcher says WOT? Then the yelling started.

A Confucius was a trucker who had bosses that did not have time for him, but Confucius screw up something many bosses all the time focused on his woes.

Fast forward to today, it was a semi bad afternoon when the yelling started. Made me soul search why I am such a idiot among dummies and imbeciles. The real kennetts square was about a hour west on US Route One. When that was hammered into my mind I was sent back there to fetch more grapes and get it there down US 1 or by (Insert a variety of damnation and hellfire)

To this day I have never bought much if any grapes for the snack bowl. Im over it now. But it is one thing to be dealing with problems easily solved by today's Google searching and quite another when the entire company you are driving for has no time for you.

Talk about customer service....

 

In pre-GPS and pre-cellphone days I got a dispatch to "4K warehouse in Old Hickory, TN." MAN it sure would have helped if they told me they meant "warehouse 4K at DuPont in Old Hickory." If they want it on time they would have told me the IMPORTANT details.." Not my problem. I have a bed 12 inches behind me. I can nap until they become more reasonable.

 

I can sign off on this. Never looked back. I saw the light, hallelujah!

 

Being a company driver sucks. I got into trucking knowing that I was going to be an O/O with my own authority and equipment within 5 years, or I would quit and find something else to do. I spent 3 years as a company driver and hated every minute of it, but I learned the ropes and had to do it. I'm in my 4th month of being an O/O and it's an entirely different world. It has its own kind of problems, but they're all up to me to deal with and control and now I enjoy my work. Everybody has their own levels of BS they can put up with from their employers. My level is very low since I spent 30 years working for myself. I don't take BS well, and that's all trucking companies have to offer drivers. This is why the driver shortage is a myth, and there is a 100% turnover in the trucking industry every year. Company drivers are like cattle to the trucking companies. Get as many loads out of them for the lowest possible pay until they quit and some new driver comes along.

 

I don’t know the particulars of the OP’s situation, but in one word I would leave if this kind of disorganization is commonplace.

I have zero tolerance for an organization to be run like that where the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

As someone else mentioned, take your time, line something else up and tell them “nice doing business with you “

 

Not saying that you are wrong, but the thing that would make me walk is his travel agent’s disregards for his scheduled home time. Yeah, the trailer stuff sux, but as far as the left hand right hand communication, his dispatcher knows when he’s supposed to be at home.

If he’s been away from the house for the scheduled time, and he has scheduled time at home, his travel agent should have sent him home. I refuse to believe a big mega carrier didn’t have another driver in the area. If I held up my end of the agreement, they would hold theirs too.
There would be no renegotiations after I paid my dues.

 

This made me laugh!

Maybe this is a term used in industry or on the CB, but my being new I don’t know it other than it’s original usage.