Comments By Harvey C.

Michael drove a couple of different FLs during the 7 months he worked at CR England. Since coming to Marten in March 2021 he's driven a 2018 KW T680 and he said right away he liked much better but he did have troubles backing with it in the beginning but that may have been related to transmission problems that were later fixed. On his first drive with it he commented how much better of a ride it was than the FLs he drove and gave an example of a stretch over the Yolo Bypass causeway that would make him feel somewhat seasick driving over it in a FL but it was smooth in the KW.

He does sometimes drive a day cab if he's at the terminal and has a long wait before his next load and gets assigned to make a local delivery. He doesn't like the day cabs and has said that all of those day cab drivers work way too hard and are like zombies when he sees them walking around at the terminal. He doesn't think he ever wants to be a local driver.

The video is:

Idiot driver gets instant karma at the TA travel center in Dallas, TX

Author says: Rock Bell

https://YouTube.be/65Rrqg2bQtw

This is the correct URL (I hope): https://youtu.be/65RrqgZbQtw

Thanks, Harvey. Maybe somebody can add a link to just click on. I tried to do that, but have yet to learn how.

Usually I don't have success with clickable links with YouTube here but it looks like this may work this time.

YouTube video

Prayers for you and your family Moe. Glad to hear your faith is strong as it really helps a lot to get through such challenging times. God bless.

The video is:

Idiot driver gets instant karma at the TA travel center in Dallas, TX

Author says: Rock Bell

https://YouTube.be/65Rrqg2bQtw

This is the correct URL (I hope): https://youtu.be/65RrqgZbQtw

Harvey, one thing Michael might need to keep in mind is that while unloading off duty and he has an incident which led to an injury, the insurance company could possibly reject that claim. I know that's not the case at every company but it is the case at many and that could be an absolute disaster.

His 4 months of working the Dollar General fleet for CR England ended in March 2021 and he's glad those days are long gone. Lots of times parking at a DG for the night meant being in a pretty sketchy neighborhood as well, sometimes with homeless people in the alley, etc. I'm surprised Papa Pig stayed so long in a DG fleet. Oh, Michael's job also involved a lot of hand unloading of frozen product down side stairs, potentially risky. How would your knees like that?!

Michael does regularly go into sleeper berth mode when at a shipper. I'm not sure if that was the case for the entire time at Americold yesterday since he sat waiting to get to a door for four hours and I don't know if he was on the property or out on the street. The point of that example is that he was unable to plan where he would be ending up at the end of his shift. I don't know if he could have found parking at that hour of the night but that depends on where his next assignment would have been because, as Rob pointed out, he could have driven until the next morning though I suspect he may not have been very well rested.

Like Papa Pig, Michael was even in sleeper berth when unloading at Dollar General stores. Park at the store the night before and not going on duty until after the load was unloaded the next morning. Something about Dollar General that doesn't get talked about much but pushing drivers to stay off duty while working is bad, IMO. However, it did train Michael into always going into sleeper berth mode and sometimes that works into splits for him. I honestly don't think he fully understands how they work but his Qualcomm unit gives him hours back and he goes with that, I believe.

He had a 11am appointment at Americold, got there at 10am. Got a door at a little after 2:00pm and they didn't get him unloaded until after 8:30pm. There would have likely been no parking anywhere available at that time and no way to have planned for over 9.5 hours of unloading after appointment time. As a rule, he reserves spots when needed and gets reimbursed for that

would've had a fresh clock had he logged off duty/sleeper. At a minimum he'd have been able to do a split

In which instance are you referring? In the first instance, he was logged off duty while unloading but then slow traffic resulted in him running out of time. In the second instance, the example shows that he wouldn't have been able to plan where he might be parking that night since it took much longer than normal, even for Americold. Finding parking about 8:30pm is tough anywhere and if he would have reserved a spot it wouldn't have been near where he wound up for the night.

I've had that scenario happen many times. Usually I'm able to split my sb if it's two hours there. If not, and you run out of hours in the dock, which I've had happen as well, I called into dispatch, got approval to use PC to get to the closest safe legal parking.

I've had that happen in Miami, got out of the reciever late and they let us park outside their building, but the city didn't. Came out and rousted us out of bed. I found a pay for parking place nearby, submitted the receipt and got reimbursed.

The couple times I came close to using a ramp was simply poor choices on my part. I would have had to shut down a couple hours earlier to get parking. Chose not to, gambled and almost lost. If we park illegally, we'll get dinged on safety scores for it, face punative action and are responsible for the tickets and or tow bill at my company.

Michael was close to running out of hours once and left San Jose in bad traffic and running empty headed to his drop yard. But he ran out of hours and there was no place to park between San Jose and Tracy and safety would not put him on PC so he parked on a ramp. Last night would have been tough for him if it weren't for the fact he was going on home time. He had a 11am appointment at Americold, got there at 10am. Got a door at a little after 2:00pm and they didn't get him unloaded until after 8:30pm. There would have likely been no parking anywhere available at that time and no way to have planned for over 9.5 hours of unloading after appointment time. As a rule, he reserves spots when needed and gets reimbursed for that.

That gave me a better laugh than any of the funny photos posted in a long time.

I think this might also be unsafe and unprofessional and a result of poor planning.

You are obviously passionate about the subject but also being vague about how your dog qualifies as a service animal. I suggest you read up other support or therapy animals or see if your animal and your needs qualifies under the section above.