While I've been sick and out of it - still am, getting better I can say finally, but far from ready to go back to work, a new development has happened at work. 

Our manager said a while back that they are going to get rid of detention pay, which I thought a joke at the time, but apparently, that joke has become reality.  

He sent out an email several days ago saying that payroll will no longer pay for detention time that isn't done while in on-duty status.  

This is a huge blow to detention pay.  Up until now - the entire time I've worked there - we have been able to go off duty while on detention, we aren't working, we aren't responsible for any trailers, at least not in Brownsville which is the vast majority of our detention pay, but we do get some at the loading plant as well.  

Basically, the company is stealing our pay - they get paid whether we do or not for detention and they certainly don't have to go "off duty" to get it, they just bill the customer.  

It has caused a considerable uproar with all the drivers.  I estimate it's a minimum $15,000 per year of our pay, probably a lot more actually.  

Here's the Brownsville scenario before this new "initiative" it was labeled as was implemented.

You get to Brownsville, drop the loaded trailer. If there isn't an empty, you show it on your tour trip sheet and then you go off duty.  You don't go back on duty until an empty trailer shows up, which could be any amount of time later, usually no longer than a day, occasionally 2 days.  

Now, with the new "initiative", you will have to either stay on duty once you arrive for however long you can - up to 14 hours so maybe another hour and a half, but then, you have to go off duty for 10 hours.  So, if I show up down there at 9:00 pm, I might stay on duty until 10:30 pm, then have to take a 10 hour off duty break - of which we will no longer get paid for.  So, in this scenario, I go back on duty at 8:30 am and then stay on duty until an empty trailer arrives.  

So, on a typical day down there, it shows up at 3:30 pm.  I was on duty after arriving the night before for 1:30 hours, plus the 7 hours the next day, I will get 8 and a half hours of detention pay instead of the normal 14 I would have received.  See how that works? I just took a 5 and a half hour pay cut.  

But the problems have only just begun for the company.  Because while they are attempting to shaft us, they are giving themselves a huge headache as well.  If we want the detention pay at the loading plant, we will have to stay on-duty the entire time.  So, if I'm there 3 hours, that means I will definitely not be making Brownsville the same day.  Now you've turned a 2 day trip into 3 days.  What's the problem with that? Well, they won't have that empty trailer back up the next day to load it.  So now, the customer gets screwed and pissed - the Mexico company coordinator has a short fuse.  

Hire more drivers? Sure, where are the trucks? We are already driving old junk.  And you'd have to increase the number of trailers as well. At $350,000 a piece, that probably isn't going to happen.  

So, drivers are forcing their hand. I'm out of the game at the moment but I'd definitely be a part of that scenario. They want to take away pay for not more reason that corporate greed, they are going to pay as well.  Actually, several drivers are out looking for new jobs, saying they can drive a regular tractor-trailer rig (not hazmat tanker stuff) for the same money as we will now be making and not have to deal with all of the hassle.  

There is definitely some hassle involved with hazmat and cryogenics and tanker trailers.  

We're definitely looking at a pay cut and a substantial one with this new and improved driver rip-off scam.  And yes, there are plenty of regular dry van jobs that pay well, but in my case, I don't want to be out that much.  Most of that requires you to be out a minimum week at a time and most of them are longer than that. No thanks.  But, I would start seriously looking into local jobs.  

I have no idea when this RVpark is going to come to fruition or if it's going to haul in some decent revenue, as I have said several times, there is risk involved with any business venture and I will have a decent amount of money put into this project.  I'm confident I can make something work eventually if my initial business plan doesn't generate the revenue I need it to.  

This isn't exactly a situation I wanted to have to deal with right now, what with everything else that's going on and I am nowhere near making any kind of decision about what to do next.  I want to wait a bit and see what effect all of us spending extra days on runs is going to do for the motivation of the company to want to keep current, very lucrative contracts.  Or, as this company is want, they don't care who leaves and will just eat it.  

The company seems to take pleasure getting rid of people and any senior employee in the company that is open about it will tell you there is literally no job security.  You get what you can out of it while you can and the....move on.  For me, moving on was hopefully full time RV business, not another trucking company.  

Oh, and I also want to see, speaking of waiting to see what happens, what kind of paychecks I will get without any or very little detention pay on them.  You see, if they could just keep us moving on the Brownsville run - versus sitting around waiting alot - we can make as much money.  Of course, I love sitting around getting paid but I've done plenty of Brownsville runs without any detention pay at all and the paychecks came out well.  The problem, of course, is the Mexican company and their flare for getting empty trailers up whenever they please to do so.  It's a really weird thing. Because then, if they don't get them up in time, they start crying about not having enough product - be we can't haul product without trailers.  

They have fully 7 of our trailers on lease plus they have 6 of their own trailers.  Yes, they have 13 trailers of this stuff and the bulk of those trailers sit down in Alta Mira, Mexico, loaded and waiting to be used.  

Anyway, it is what it is and I'll have to somehow deal with it.  It's really kind of crappy this company is doing this to us, tho.  The dispatchers must be having a lot of added stress on them, this deal is coming from corporate, higher ups.  I don't know that they understand the headaches they are now creating for themselves with drivers being out longer than ever before getting back on any given trip.  

Coughing is subsiding even more.  I'm still having rather violent episodes but at least there are fewer of them.