Once I received today's assignment (pre-loaded rolls of paper), I was forced to recall my most recent paper load. Today, in a similar fashion to that last time, I sat around with my thumb up my ass for several hours only to be sent for a trailer that had been loaded since Saturday. I simply don't get it.
I was back on the board around 8:30am and I received my new assignment at 2:13pm. What is that, almost six hours? I was to head north into Kansas and make a drop/hook in Hutchinson, northwest of Wichita. I found that the road conditions had largely improved since last night and I was able to get out of Stillwater without any trouble. There was some misty rain as I got into Kansas, but traffic was light and I had no issues in reaching the shipper.
I walked into the warehouse and a gentleman quickly gave me my paperwork and sent me on my way. I merely needed to drop my empty trailer "somewhere out there" and hook to my loaded one. After making the drop/hook and setting the trailer's wheelbase to California's specifications, I pulled onto the customer's automated scale and found that everything was kosher. So I grabbed my Qualcomm unit and sent in my loaded call. This is when I saw that the trailer was loaded on January 30th.
If it's mildly annoying to sit around all day and then get sent to pick up a trailer that has been waiting all weekend, then what follows would be sure to aggravate even the most even-tempered individual. My dispatch came through as I pulled off the scale. The trip is taking me from Hutchinson, Kansas to City of Industry, California. The paid mileage is 1,344 and I'm due to deliver by 3:30pm on Wednesday. And yet they had to wait and make me get a late start this evening? What a bunch of horseshit. Yet again I have to wonder exactly what sort of planning goes into these loads.
Apparently it snows every damned day in this country now, plus I'll have to cross the mountains with a 45,000 pound load, plus the speed limit in California is 55mph. So the long and short of it is that I couldn't afford to stop this evening and leave two days of driving to reach the consignee. There could be no guarantee that two long shifts would be enough. Given the contingencies that I mentioned above, I would have to cover at least a few hundred miles today. Thus I was forced to drive late into the night along a route (US-54) with shit for parking. By the time I had driven far enough to leave myself within striking distance of California, the few little truck stops along the way were all overflowing. The little roadside turnouts in Texas are all inaccessible due to the piles of snow along the side of the road. I may have had enough hours available to reach Tucumcari, but I've had the misfortune of trying to find late night parking there once before. Never again.
I saw that the New Mexico scales outside Nara Visa were closed, so I pulled in and called it a night. Hopefully I won't get kicked out tomorrow, since my ten hour break will force me to sit here until 11:15am Eastern, so I guess 9:15am for these people. If they're going to open in the morning, I suspect that they'll do so before 9:15am.
The fruity little bald guy on weather.com says that I should have a good shot at covering some decent miles tomorrow. Assuming that they have their information right, the next storm won't get off the coast until Wednesday. We'll see how it goes.
I personally think my 9 year old son could plan better than these people. I can't count the amount of times i've sat for almost a day to be sent within 50 miles to pick up a loaded trailer thats been there anywhere from a day to a week.
ReplyDeleteIn related news, they ended up leaving me sit until monday morning, then was sent to Wichita to get my load. Go figure.
I'll concede that I've made more than my share of wisecracks concerning the people doing the planning up there, but I can't believe that it's all due to incompetence. There has to be more to the story.
ReplyDelete(With the caveat that I know nothing about the internal side of the business and I really don't care to know;)
It seems to me that the type of freight involved must have something to do with how the loads are assigned. As in - maybe there are a bunch of trailers full of stuff that can be picked up or delivered within a pretty liberal timeframe. Rolls of paper, to use the present example. Whenever we deliver these things, as you've surely noticed, we take them to a big ass warehouse stacked to the ceiling with rolls of paper as far as the eye can see. I doubt that it makes any difference if we show up tomorrow or a week from tomorrow.
So maybe they have more valuable freight that has to be handled first, and then whoever is still left without work gets sent to pick up the cheap stuff with the flexible schedules.
I really have no idea if this is close to reality or not. It would explain, to a small extent, the tendency to get those drop/hook loads well after they could have been assigned. If this is the case though, as far as the business end of the deal, I really don't think they have any idea how badly it screws us over on the driving side of things. Wasting a bunch of hours waiting around and then getting dispatched to deliver as soon as possible is just stupid.
The way I understand it there is only a handful of planners up there for 3500 +/- drivers. But, what you proposed there also makes sense. i don't know. I tend to think a ton of our time is wasted, in addition to misuse of our hours no matter the reason. I had to shut down 100 miles away from home on my to homehome because they made me sit 3.5 hours in the El Paso yard not too long ago waiting for a load when I had near full hours. The kickers was that this preloaded trailer could have been picked up 14 hours before I got there. I finally got out when I was #17 on the board so I don't necessarily believe the whole board thing is part of the problem either.
ReplyDeleteI've inquired about many other companies dispatch procedures and it appears there are plenty that have a ton of planners and the drivers tend to always have a pre-plan if there is indeed a load nearby. That makes me think the planners are constantly looking at drivers inbound times and current progress.. something thats not done here. Thats not to say they never sit, but it appears these other drivers are moving about 90% of the time. Thanks to the 48 hour layover thing I think there is no rush or incentive for them to keep us moving. If there were a 10 hour layover rule I can guarantee we'd ALWAYS be moving. I tend to think there isn't a care in the world about us despite the "Thanks for all that you do." Maybe i'm way off base here but thats just the way it feels.
And, as always, the views and opinions expressed herein...
Any time I've heard another driver rave about how great this or that company is, the next thing to follow has been, "Here's my truck number." Pretty lucrative deal to spew a few lines and then collect $500 or $1,000 as a recruiting bonus, I suppose. I afford those people about as much credibility as I do the ones who have an endless list of complaints. Real life is always somewhere in the middle.
ReplyDeleteI have friends who work here and there and it sounds like most companies are pretty much the same. Each one has a thing or two that it does better than others and a thing or two that it does worse, yet at the end of the year we all seem to make roughly the same amount of money. I guess the anticipatory planning around here would fall in the 'worse' category. Probably not going to improve any time soon as long as they're intent on creating all of these regional fleets either.
haha. You, my friend, got me on the recruiting comment. But your correct. I can't deny that we all make about the same.. at least that what it seemed with those I spoke to.
ReplyDeleteAll in all I can't argue. The company has been pretty good to me. I'm just not fond of how things are run on the load planning side... and benefits. They just purely suck. I guess this just gives me an outlet to bitch about something with someone who kinda feels the same way!