Sunday-night

I was ready to quit today. At least, that was what I had prepared myself for. I have lost sleep over this issue and I'm simply ready to end it. The issue is an endless stream of new drivers who don't care about appointment times and will show up at your appointment time - or more notably: for your appointment time - effectively bumping you out of first load and into second load position and costing a lot of time.

Management knows all about this, they say they think it's bad but - what do they do about it? It took 2-1/2 hours to unload the other day and that doesn't include waiting for this dude who showed up in Gurdon, yes, before me even tho he should have been hours after me.  After all I"ve seen from this dude, I had no reason to believe that anything would be different today, albeit I had gotten up at 4:30 am and was traveling through Gurdon around 7:45 am.  

My thoughts were these.  If this guy was already there, I would call dispatch and inform them of such.  If their reply was "I'm sorry" notwithstanding the fact that they really aren't and doing nothing else, I would give them a list of options. Option 1: force the driver to unhook the trailer and move out of my way.  Option 2: pay me a flat fee of $200 extra beyond regular pay for the wait time. Option 3 if everything else failed? Drive the truck back to my rv park, still loaded and they can send a driver to take it up there and I would be permanently washing my hands of this miserable company.

The fact of the matter is, they can see every driver's truck, where it's at, whether it's parked or driving, if driving what speed it's going, the direction it's going in and the highway it's on - etc,, a lot of stuff they put into trucks to give them info about what we're doing.  Even that old thing I drive has all of that installed into it. They should be monitoring outlier people who don't care, watch what they're doing and give them a call if they're doing something they shouldn't be, ie: attempting to arrive in time to beat another driver there.

Why aren't they doing that? I was fully prepared with all kinds of info and arguments as to why they are wrong and this dude is worse than that. 

I was almost shocked when the dude I called to come up and weigh me in - the plant is "closed" on Sundays, logging trucks don't ever run on Sundays at all - told me there are no other trucks in there. I can honestly say that I didn't believe him. I figured the dude must have come in there with someone else showing up to weigh him in.  But, when I drove to the other side of the plant? No truck parked in front of the delivery shack.

So, I didn't quit, I didn't say anything at all.  I just spent the extraordinary time it's  taking to offload in this cold weather - the product is like molasses, maybe not THAT thick but you get the idea - and just doesn't want to flow well.  2-1/2 hours a few days ago, 1 hour and 50 minutes today.  That was a big reason I wouldn't wait behind him if he had shown up early - I wasn't going to wait for free when I shouldn't be waiting at all.  

I don't want to quit the place, not at all. ALL trucking companies have issues. They may be different issues, but you'll have to contend with them regardless. This place has more issues than most, but the pros are the schedule - often getting done early - and the hours - not working more than 8 hours a day and usually less than that.  

Anyway, day 5 of working tomorrow morning and after contacting dispatch earlier, they assured me they would have the guy show up at 10:30, well after I should be there and either gone or almost done loading.

Ugh, other things I wanted to go into but.....it's bedtime.