After stopping at HQ and going to lunch with Matt (on USA's dime: He and the driver are covered if they go together--pretty cool), I backed off on my demands for longer runs or else. First, I had interrogated other drivers and found similar patterns in their own runs. With more info, it felt less like persecution and more like a broad logistical trend.
So when I went to see Matt, it wasn't to confront him. I just wanted to find out more about how this stuff works. And he was glad to tell me. There's often an adversarial relationship between dispatchers and load planners. Load planners feel as if dispatchers only care about their own drivers, and not the company--so some of them resist all appeals.
Matt had actually worked in that dept. for about six months. As a dispatcher, he will have two drivers, one of which needs to go home, and both of whom are in the same area. One load goes to driver a's home. The other takes him away. He gets the one that takes him away.
BAD load planner! (The planners know about this. Requests are in the system and they see them). Matt says "could you please switch these two loads so this guy can get home?"
Some planners will see how much sense this makes and do so. Others will refuse. Go ahead, ask me why. Matt didn't know either. So Matt has to let them both pick up their loads and then find a neutral point for a swap. The drivers have to find someplace to park, unhook, find eachother, switch paperwork and trailers...one is always ahead of another, and the other might wait so many hours... Then the drivers look at eachother and ask why the hell this happened? "Why couldn't I have just picked up your load in the first place? Now I've only got six hours left to run." etc.
Matt has fights with them a lot, and his first priority has to be getting most of his sixty drivers HOME.
And, since that meeting, I've been running ok. This load took me 1500 miles. I got here last night (saturday) for a monday delivery, and will get 34 hours off and zero out my hours.
I needed to. I have a balloon payment coming up on my eight-day hours. Also, this is my longest run yet, and I felt the need to prove something. I want that planner to see that on monday morning this driver delivered as the reciever opened and now has zero hours.
This is the driver who said he could produce 5-800 more miles/week with longer runs. And is proving it. (Truckers are mostly all mouth. I have to overcome a prejudice.)
Anyway, things are better. USA actually even takes better care of it's trailers these days. The tandems slide, and I haven't had to replace many light bulbs. I'm getting 500 miles more/week than I did at my previous company, and the short load pattern appears to have been cooincidence...I THINK.
Hey Juan. I'm really glad you kept plugging and got that certification (or whatchacallit). Now you can get something going and make up for lost time, like I did. It's a good feeling.
Well, Christine is behaving lately. I had one of my eight drive tires all tore up. Bald in patches, all around. Same tire as all it's mates, which wore evenly. It was probably a bad shock, I hope. I replaced two of the four shocks and two tires. (Tough to match them once they have wear on them. You have to get used ones. I had to get to Little Rock, and two were sent from Central Maintenance on the Cal-Ark yard--long story.)
I still have a constant check-engine light. The Electronic Control Module (ECM=BRAIN) thinks, I guess, that my coolant, oil, and fuel are always low. That I have low oil pressure, am hot, and have everything else wrong which could be wrong. The truck still rolls. I just have to pay more attention to my guages and levels because Christine is now Chicken Little.
Ya know, owner-operators work harder. The other day I was losing voltage, and experience told me that I was going to get stranded. Thought my brand new alternator was bad, or else the recently load-tested batteries were suddenly going. But I pulled into the 80 mega-truckstop in Iowa and took a look. Loose belt!!!
My alternator and belts are a lot bigger than yours, though, and it's not so easy to tighten belts. This is why a company driver will always just take it to a shop. But I had paid attention, and knew how to do it. So I walked into the parts place I'd parked in front of and paid eight bucks for a giant wrench.
...I used my adjustable to determine the size. That didn't work. So I bought one, found out it was too small. Then traded it for another. And another. Finally, I had the right tool and got the thing fixed in three minutes.
The shop would have charged me fifty bucks or so, and taken awhile. But I got it done in about 90 minutes for eight bucks, and now have the proper tool to take care of it whenever it happens again.
That was a good feeling. Here and there, I can fix my own rig like that. Too bad Eman is boycotting all my blogsites. He remembers me as the helpless guy who was damn near wrecking his life calling for road service--usually on simple stuff.
Well, I've got to dig up the electrician's tape to fix that engine light. Okbye.
So when I went to see Matt, it wasn't to confront him. I just wanted to find out more about how this stuff works. And he was glad to tell me. There's often an adversarial relationship between dispatchers and load planners. Load planners feel as if dispatchers only care about their own drivers, and not the company--so some of them resist all appeals.
Matt had actually worked in that dept. for about six months. As a dispatcher, he will have two drivers, one of which needs to go home, and both of whom are in the same area. One load goes to driver a's home. The other takes him away. He gets the one that takes him away.
BAD load planner! (The planners know about this. Requests are in the system and they see them). Matt says "could you please switch these two loads so this guy can get home?"
Some planners will see how much sense this makes and do so. Others will refuse. Go ahead, ask me why. Matt didn't know either. So Matt has to let them both pick up their loads and then find a neutral point for a swap. The drivers have to find someplace to park, unhook, find eachother, switch paperwork and trailers...one is always ahead of another, and the other might wait so many hours... Then the drivers look at eachother and ask why the hell this happened? "Why couldn't I have just picked up your load in the first place? Now I've only got six hours left to run." etc.
Matt has fights with them a lot, and his first priority has to be getting most of his sixty drivers HOME.
And, since that meeting, I've been running ok. This load took me 1500 miles. I got here last night (saturday) for a monday delivery, and will get 34 hours off and zero out my hours.
I needed to. I have a balloon payment coming up on my eight-day hours. Also, this is my longest run yet, and I felt the need to prove something. I want that planner to see that on monday morning this driver delivered as the reciever opened and now has zero hours.
This is the driver who said he could produce 5-800 more miles/week with longer runs. And is proving it. (Truckers are mostly all mouth. I have to overcome a prejudice.)
Anyway, things are better. USA actually even takes better care of it's trailers these days. The tandems slide, and I haven't had to replace many light bulbs. I'm getting 500 miles more/week than I did at my previous company, and the short load pattern appears to have been cooincidence...I THINK.
Hey Juan. I'm really glad you kept plugging and got that certification (or whatchacallit). Now you can get something going and make up for lost time, like I did. It's a good feeling.
Well, Christine is behaving lately. I had one of my eight drive tires all tore up. Bald in patches, all around. Same tire as all it's mates, which wore evenly. It was probably a bad shock, I hope. I replaced two of the four shocks and two tires. (Tough to match them once they have wear on them. You have to get used ones. I had to get to Little Rock, and two were sent from Central Maintenance on the Cal-Ark yard--long story.)
I still have a constant check-engine light. The Electronic Control Module (ECM=BRAIN) thinks, I guess, that my coolant, oil, and fuel are always low. That I have low oil pressure, am hot, and have everything else wrong which could be wrong. The truck still rolls. I just have to pay more attention to my guages and levels because Christine is now Chicken Little.
Ya know, owner-operators work harder. The other day I was losing voltage, and experience told me that I was going to get stranded. Thought my brand new alternator was bad, or else the recently load-tested batteries were suddenly going. But I pulled into the 80 mega-truckstop in Iowa and took a look. Loose belt!!!
My alternator and belts are a lot bigger than yours, though, and it's not so easy to tighten belts. This is why a company driver will always just take it to a shop. But I had paid attention, and knew how to do it. So I walked into the parts place I'd parked in front of and paid eight bucks for a giant wrench.
...I used my adjustable to determine the size. That didn't work. So I bought one, found out it was too small. Then traded it for another. And another. Finally, I had the right tool and got the thing fixed in three minutes.
The shop would have charged me fifty bucks or so, and taken awhile. But I got it done in about 90 minutes for eight bucks, and now have the proper tool to take care of it whenever it happens again.
That was a good feeling. Here and there, I can fix my own rig like that. Too bad Eman is boycotting all my blogsites. He remembers me as the helpless guy who was damn near wrecking his life calling for road service--usually on simple stuff.
Well, I've got to dig up the electrician's tape to fix that engine light. Okbye.
