Comments By Skar Hed

The talk here about $300 to keep students in school, or any policy that rips a driver off for work done, is just truck stop BS from dissatisfied drivers. If you haven't noticed on TT, the real pros - moderators and others - are happy with their work

Good example of the attitude I was talking about. Any information that does not paint the tireless, noble, hard pressed trucking company executives, their underlings or their policies in a favorable light....it's ''truck stop BS''. Negative information about your fellow drivers...the lazy, lying whiners...that's very believable though. It's a wonder those heroes in the corner office put up with us at all.

I'd say they are doing their job, and that job includes withholding portions of employee pay and returning it only if the driver discovers the ''error'' and can correctly state his case for the money. Like I said, it happens too often, at least 3 of 5 checks, and is always in favor of the company. It could only be the result of purposeful action.

Madness. Popeyes is too spicy, they charge too much and most importantly, no pot pies. I'm all about the pot pies.

I have to disagree with this. Sure you might get shorted some of the time, but overall I think it would tend to balance out. If you go to a drop that is 10 miles past the zip code mileage, but your next pick up keeps you going in the same direction, you will gain those 10 miles back.

No, because your mileage for the next trip would start at the far end of the zip code. So you're gonna drive another , say, ten free miles in that direction. Drivers lose EVERY time with these mileage arrangements. That's their purpose.

Ugh. Just in case anyone reads it, only the first sentence in the post above is a quote from someone else's post...the rest is my response to it. Can't seem to find an edit option here....

Well you guys are spouting the typical "truckers against trucking management" and "business owners versus employers" stuff which, as usual, holds very little water.

I have noticed that any such comments along these lines hold close to NO water with a sizeable contingent here, almost regardless of the details. It's all just whining to some.

But there are rather common business practices in the trucking industry that would be almost unheard of and unanimously condemned anywhere else. For example. I would say 60 to 80 percent of my paychecks are in error, and that error is ALWAYS in favor of the company. I'm talking about expenses for which proper forms have been sent not being reimbursed, empty miles for a run simply not paid, dispatcher approved layover time not paid, 4 days spent filling in on a dedicated run, paperwork scanned immediately and three paychecks later I have yet to see a penny from it, trailer spots and pickups not paid, sent to a shipper on a Saturday, a shipper that is closed all weekend, and paid nothing for the time spent waiting to find a drop location nor for the miles to take it there, miles sent to a Hazmat pickup despite not having Hazmat not paid. Detention pay...forget about it. I know drivers with 7 years in the company who have never received it. I have sent in mac14s as one of the steps in qualifying for detention pay...almost invariably the company simply denied receiving them. Layover pay....50 bucks ? For being on call and available for dispatch, while securing/guarding a few hundred grand in company equipment and customer freight for 24 hours ? Breakdown pay....fifty bucks for twenty four hours spent at a company location at least nominally overseeing necessary work done to company equipment, and maintaining availability for dispatch ?

And on and on. I am told that these and other variations on the theme are very likely to be found at my next company too. And the one after. Most of these issues are eventually resolved but only after sometimes lengthy calls to dispatch and payroll, pleading my case for money that I rightfully earned, and that after getting through the almost always lengthy hold times. And usually on the first call to each, action is simply avoided by payroll saying talk to your fleet manager @ that, and the fleet manager saying get with payroll on that.

This is not accidental, these are for by far the most part not 'mistakes'...if they were I'd have had at least one in my favor in 100 weeks. They are deliberately shorting drivers on pay and hoping they don't have the intelligence to decipher their paycheck and spot the 'errors' , the assertiveness to speak up about them, the tenacity to stick with the tedious process of having them corrected, and the composure to clearly, politely and succinctly state ones' case while doing so. ( I actually prep for these phone calls...write a little script of sorts...because I (a truck driver) have to be every bit as on top of these numbers and policies as the (accountant or bookkeeper) in payroll is, or I'm gonna get snarkily dismissed.

A driver is lacking in any of the above, and the petty theft is successful. If that's not business owners against employees, I don't know what is.

Oh God, don't get me started. The steady proliferation of health insurance is exactly what has enabled the medical industrial complex to suck up one out of every six dollars in the economy. And yet everybody still thinks more insurance is somehow going to bring the costs down.

The cheapest policy my company offers is 55 bucks a week. I really don't see why this should be called a benefit any more than my lunch or my pack of Pall Malls, which I also pay for myself, but that's beside the point. What it covers or doesn't cover, how much are the deductibles, I didn't even bother looking because I wasn't the least bit interested.

55 bucks a week for 52 weeks is 2860 dollars. That's about 15 doctor visits...one every 3 weeks or so. I haven't gone to the doctor 15 times since 1980 for f***s sake.

OK...oh, what if you get pancreatic cancer or something, Skar Hed? Well, if I get pancreatic cancer, I really don't think I'm gonna be on my hospital or deathbed saying...thank God...at least I can pay for this. At least Healthsouth is gonna get their twenty dollars per aspirin tablet and two thousand dollar a night for the ''semi-private'' room. No. In fact I would feel better knowing they were gonna get stiffed on the obscene bill. So I go without health insurance, as I have done my entire somewhat long life. Have yet to ever say I wished I had it.

You pick up a preloaded trailer , no extra stops, final is a drop and hook. Load is somewhere between 15,000 and 30,000 lbs. Very little driving off the interstate at either end. Distribution centers rather than retail locations or factories. Outside of the Northeast or California. About 1400 miles, with sixty hours or so between PU and delivery, but you can bring it in early. No rude hostile obese middle aged women at either the shipping office or the receiver. A KFC chicken pot pie and a Dairy Queen available every 250 miles along the route.

I favor taking them whenever I do laundry, that is to say upon each change of season.

I'm running teams at Celadon to fulfill my contract. I'll assess how I feel about it and decide what to do after the contact is done. If I go by the average miles Celadon uses, it's only about 75-80 bucks more a week. I'll have to really enjoy teaming to stay for that much.

Must be nice to scoff at a free/extra $4k/year.

Having had a little experience with teaming I find it easy to scoff at a lot more money than that.

I would need about 6 times that before I even considered teaming with someone I didn't know, like and trust very well. That's a pretty small group of people, none of which has a CDL.