Comments By ATXJEHU

I hooked the wrong trailer once (numbers were the same and in almost the same order); had everything ready to go, but caught my mistake when double-checking the trailer number. It was a bit of a wake up call to always, always double check everything. A fellow driver once picked up the wrong set of paperwork and drove 250 miles to destination; consignee refused the load; he had to pull the load all the way back. One whole day wasted, not to mention the embarrassment.

Congrats to a spunky lady professional truck driving phenom!

Yeah, you can't take it personally. Just be your pleasant, non-complaining self and be on your way. Try to see their side as they do have to deal with many truckers who are downright difficult hombres (not us of course!).

Ooops! didn't notice the dates either. Oh well, still a good read!

Well, after ten weeks out I just finished five days on home time and I'll be hitting the road in the morning. I've been trying to think of a way to contribute something positive here on the forum and I've decided to document in this thread my travels for at least the next week, and maybe a little longer if it seems to be going over well.

We have so many great training journals in our training diaries forum that I thought some of the new folks coming in here might enjoy seeing a little slice of an actual drivers life while he is on the road. I hope folks will feel free to jump in with comments and questions as it goes along. I will try to be detailed, and will be more than happy to answer any questions along the way.

10 weeks out!!! Old School, you're an animal! looking forward to your posts and thanks!

A driver is relieved from work and all responsibility for performing work, time spent traveling from a driver’s home to his/her terminal (normal work reporting location), or from a driver’s terminal to his/her home, may be considered off-duty time. ***Similarly, time spent traveling short distances from a driver’s en route lodgings (such as en route terminals or motels) to restaurants in the vicinity of such lodgings may be considered off-duty time.*** The type of conveyance used from the terminal to the driver’s home, from the driver’s home to the terminal, or to restaurants in the vicinity of en route lodgings would not alter the situation ***unless the vehicle is laden***. A driver may not operate a laden CMV as a personal conveyance. The driver who uses a motor carrier’s Commercial Motor Vehicle (CMV) for transportation home, and is subsequently called by the employing carrier and is then dispatched from home, would be on-duty from the time the driver leaves home.

A driver placed out of service for exceeding the requirements of the hours of service regulations may not drive a Commercial Motor Vehicle (CMV) to any location to obtain rest.

Basically as long as he wasn't pulling a loaded trailer he was legal.

Way it reads to me....

.02

My company allows off-duty driving only if bob-tailing (up to 15 miles and/or 45 minutes). The above quote, "unless the vehicle is laden***a driver may not operate a laden CMV as a personal conveyance," may be construed to mean that a tractor is considered as "laden" due to it pulling a trailer, even though the trailer is MT.

Roehl is an excellent company. They treated me well during my 15 months with them. No major complaints. Roehl is not huge (approx. 2200 trucks), but large enough to be somewhat compartmentalized. In other words, you deal almost exclusively with your Fleet Manager. They do micromanage things, which is understandable with them having so many new drivers to manage. Last I knew, the Phoenix terminal was only flatbed, but that may have changed. Good luck. You should do well with them.

Good info; thanks for sharing; sounds like Dupre has a good model working for them

Thanks for the update, David. It's always nice to have options! Good luck to ya.

Interesting discussion; FYI Walmart was advertising on Dallas radio stations about a hiring event this past wed/thur. One statement that caught my ear was that first year Walmart drivers are paid an average of $82,000.00 annually. I see quite a few US Express trucks already pulling Walmart trailers in this area. They must be in an expansion mode or they are losing lots of veteran drivers to retirement (why would anyone leave that job as long as they wanted to drive trucks for a living?). There is no indication of doing away with their private fleet any time soon, but it remains a distinct possibility if court cases continue to go against them, IMHO. I readily agree that Walmart drivers, in the total picture, are highly compensated compared to what's typical for an OTR driver. It seems to me that all Walmart needs to do is just re-arrange the internal details of the pay structure as to which activities pay a given amount of compensation, but not cause an over-all increase in what their drivers are paid.

Having said this, I acknowledge feeling resentment for uncompensated work while on duty or off duty. For instance, my current job pays $.40 a mile and requires me to complete a 488 mile round trip each day M-F. I am paid Practical Miles of 480 miles. However, my required fuel stop is out of route by 16 miles, so my hub mileage each day is 504 which usually takes me 9.5 hours to complete. So, my 9.5 hours of drive time earns me $192.00 a day, five days a week or $20.21 for each hour driven. It's dry van, almost all drop and hook with no appointment times and I can start whenever I choose as long as one round trip a day is completed. Not a bad gig, I know, especially when compared to what I had to deal with when starting out going on three years ago. But, all of you drivers know, this is not all that I do each day. My actual work day, start to finish is about 12 hours long. So, then, my hourly pay for all time on duty is $16.00, figured as all straight time pay, not so great after all. My work day routinely includes pre-trip, re-fueling, turn around time at the shipper/receiver, post-trip and then there is the 10% of time when live unload/live load pops up and no detention paid until after waiting for two hours (why is this???) and then at only $10.00 an hour. Oh yes, sometimes (not often) I have waited as long as four hours after I arrived at the terminal before getting my dispatch for the day.

Then, what about that idea of being compensated when you are off-duty? Well, the rules state that when a driver is off-duty, that means he/she is free from all job responsibilities and is free to go and come as he/she sees fit without having any obligations for the equipment or load. Yet, no company I have worked for sees it totally this way. You may be off duty for 10 hours while under dispatch, but they certainly did not want me to go off and leave their equipment unattended. I may have been off duty, but certainly not free to forget about my equipment or load. So, from this viewpoint, I think the Calif. Court decision is on pretty solid ground.

Nevertheless, these are just my thoughts; not claiming to be right or wrong; just opinions and statements where I think drivers are indeed getting short-changed; taken advantage of. If these things were remedied all at once across the board, it would not place one carrier at a competitive dis-advantage compared to others. It would, of course, affect the price of freight that would simply get passed on to the consumer. But the actual amount that these changes would cost the buying public would be minimal, I think. Getting average driver pay up around that $65,000 figure that Brett mentioned, as the inflation adjusted figure compared to what he was being paid in the mid-nineties, would go a long ways toward reducing the so-called driver shortage. Probably, the only way this will ever happen is when the Courts say it has to happen, that is, drivers being compensated for all time on duty or even off duty, if indeed, they are not, in every sense of the word, off duty.