Comments By Mark P.

Leaving the Kansas City area tonight for a Friday delivery in Cheyenne. Any best online resource for monitoring road conditions? Hearing that weather conditions in that area will be deteriorating during the day Friday. Thanks!

Thanks everyone for the tips!

Been considering purchasing one as I drive a lightweight truck with no room for a fridge. Just wondered if any of you use one of the powered coolers or had any bad experiences with a particular brand.

Thanks and stay safe!

Well for starters most dispatchers hate phone calls. They prefer to communicate over Qualcomm exclusively unless it's an emergency or something rare and complex. I have heard of dispatchers that prefer using the phone, but that's quite rare.

But this kind of stuff seems normal. You just have to work through it. I mean, we can't tell what's going on or who's fault anything is from a few sentences. But it normally takes a few months for a driver and dispatcher to get to know how the other one works. In this case if they give you an appointment time you can't make then you have procedures for that. Every company is a bit different. But normally you send in an ETA and shoot a message to dispatch letting them know the situation and that's all you can do. If you can't physically make an appointment time your truck's time and location is being tracked and your logbook hours are available. So if they try to give you a service failure and you contest it, management should be able to look things up in the computer and know within five minutes if you could have made that appointment time or not.

Thanks for the advice. This site has been a big help for this newbie!

So you're sitting 13 miles from your destination thought now (2pm) and you cannot make a 5:15 a.m. appointment tomorrow morning? Or did I miss something?

Possibly 05:15 today, Thursday. Mark has driven dispiritedly yesterday and today, and is now waiting for a new delivery time because it was not possible to make 05:15. I'm guessing, but Mark doesn't want to arrive at the DC just to be turned away because he doesn't have a delivery appointment.

Just found out a couple of unknowns that would have made me a lot less grumpy. The pickup location sets the delivery appts with the DC... Not Prime. And am told they are billing the pickup location for detention pay due to the delivery appt time being unrealistic. So at least I am not just sitting dead in the water.

Ok so my typing sucks today. I'll just say I'm glad I don't have a governed truck lol.

Wouls have been able to possibly make the appt if I had been able to run 5 over the speed limit!

Well for starters most dispatchers hate phone calls. They prefer to communicate over Qualcomm exclusively unless it's an emergency or something rare and complex. I have heard of dispatchers that prefer using the phone, but that's quite rare.

But this kind of stuff seems normal. You just have to work through it. I mean, we can't tell what's going on or who's fault anything is from a few sentences. But it normally takes a few months for a driver and dispatcher to get to know how the other one works. In this case if they give you an appointment time you can't make then you have procedures for that. Every company is a bit different. But normally you send in an ETA and shoot a message to dispatch letting them know the situation and that's all you can do. If you can't physically make an appointment time your truck's time and location is being tracked and your logbook hours are available. So if they try to give you a service failure and you contest it, management should be able to look things up in the computer and know within five minutes if you could have made that appointment time or not.

I try to communicate via QC as much as possible so there's a "paper trail". I only made the phone call at the suggestion of another Prime driver. Maybe I caught the guy on a bad day and I am overthinking things.

So you're sitting 13 miles from your destination thought now (2pm) and you cannot make a 5:15 a.m. appointment tomorrow morning? Or did I miss something?

The appointment was for THIS morning. Apologies if I was unclear.

So... Sitting in Punta Gorda FL about 13 miles from the Sam's Club DC. Left Clayton NC with a load for the DC yesterday morning at 6:30am. Approx 26 hrs travel time counting mandated breaks. I was told to provide an ETA when I was able to do so with some accuracy. Drove about 3 hrs to get an idea of average speed with my light load and as I pulled into a truck stop to send the msg I received a QC msg with a 5:15am appt time. Not possible. I sent a response reminding them an ETA had been requested. So far no new appt has been set. Called my FM to check and he would not speak to me. Once on another load with refused freight for Walmart in VA he had told me to "just show up and see if they'll take it". We all know how well that works with Walmart... I have not been told this is a service failure and it should not be. Prime's trucks will not run fast enough for me to make the appt time I was given. I just cannot handle petulance from someone like this. Anyone ever have a similar situation? Do I need to consider requesting a different FM?

For my permit exam at Prime I had to take 3 different written tests: Air brakes Combination vehicles Tanker The pretrip itself is during the actual CDL License exam.

And I tried to put each item on the permit test on a different line. Didn't know it would look like I forgot punctuation when I submitted the reply!