Comments By William J.

Not me, but a buddy who drives....3 year driver, no accidents, no tickets, no incidents, no late loads, no writes up etc.

Driving on “backwoods road” GPS went out and he was trying to fix it. GPS is on his phone. Phone is in holder, not in his hand. He comes around corner, car is stopped in middle of road, collision warning goes off, he slams on breaks. It was a sort of close but he stopped plenty in time. He is worried that hard break, camera showing he is messing with phone, even though it’s in holder combined with hard break might get him fired. ?

I told him they’ll likely give him a write up and stern warning due to clean history, but not be fired... maybe suspended a week...He asked me if I ever touch my phone in the holder. I said yea, most drivers do. Even my trainers back in the day did it to change music etc while driving. But I told him I’ve also never almost smacked into something while doing it. Big difference.

Anyhow, got me thinking about what constitutes “hands free device” I mean we have to press buttons and mess with the QUALCOMM while driving, there’s the radio, there’s turning your lights on and off and different switches, if you’re not holding the phone in your hand is it still a hands-free device? And most every truck or you pass has their phone sitting in a holder on the dash. Don’t tell me none of you touch it. LOL.

During regular, normal times which is 99.9% of tracking history I would agree with you. But this is unprecedented. Nobody’s job is secure anywhere! 35% unemployment coming. Trucking companies are getting hundreds of applicants right now as we speak for any open position. And it’s only gonna get worse. They own is drivers for the near term future. The days of picking thousands of jobs are done for now. We are still in the very beginning phase of this mess. Wait until the realization that 50% of restaurants and 60% of bars will never reopened. And that’s just one industry.

Everyone knows in trucking if they want to fire you, there’s a way.

Really?

That is exactly the kind of warped and myopic thinking we advise against. Swift hasn't fired me in 7 years...and "we all know" how bad they are. Right?

My advice to your brother...suggest he become a member of this forum and fend for himself;... firsthand.

No company will "fire" a top performer. Period.

They approached him to tell him they couldn’t fulfill the bonus. Not the other way around. He did receive other sign on bonus. $2200 paid out over the first six months in increments. The $6000 was a lump sum bonus to be paid at 1 year. I don’t know why he chose this company over others. They are likely looking at laying off drivers soon, as are many companies.

I’m surprised they didn’t just fire him actually. Everyone knows in trucking if they want to fire you, there’s a way.

Is this a sign-on bonus? If so, he should have some documentation of the agreement. This whole scenario sounds really suspicious. What I'm saying is that something is amiss in the details.

He should have been receiving payments at certain points of progress. This sounds like some small independent outfit. Is that so? He may just be out of luck if it's not a well established national carrier.

I find it very difficult to reconcile the following quotes...

My brother has driven hard and good for this company. 142,000 miles, no tickets, no fender benders nothing.

He’s worried if he presses the issue, due to the situation out there, they’ll just fire him.

There's no way a reputable trucking company will fire a guy like that for standing up and expecting them to keep their word from a written contract.

You say the year is up in two weeks. Why is your brother all bent out of shape at this point? He hasn't even completed his part of the bargain and he's worried about the other party. Something sounds very suspicious here to me.

Can you provide more details?

If this brother of yours is as good as you make him sound, and the company is in that bad of shape, your brother will have no problem landing another job at a stable trucking operation. He would probably be better off.

This statement caught me off guard...

Now the company is not on the verge of bankruptcy or anything like that.

How would you know that? They must be very close to closing the doors if they can't keep a contract with their productive employees. I don't understand how you would know things really aren't that bad.

This argument you suggest makes no sense to me...

Now here’s the thing that I told him to tell the office people denying him his $6000 bonus. When he first came out of school he had dozens of companies offering him anywhere from $.45-$.47 a mile to start. This particular company started him at $.40 per mile for the first year.

At .47/mile your brother would have made $9,940 more dollars turning 142,000 miles. Why did he choose the lower paying job to begin with? See, that tells me there's something else going on here. There's something missing from the story.

Help us out!

I've not seen too many rookie drivers turn 142,000 dispatched miles during their first year. Your brother is a Beast! - he shouldn't have any problems getting a better company to take him on.

Now I get it, every company is struggling and soon, you’ll be doing better than most just to have a job. I talked my down and out brother to going into trucking a year ago. He completed school and went to a new company that trained him and offered him a big bonus after he finished a year.

That year is up in two weeks. Well the company just called him in and said due to the financial crisis and things changing they wouldn’t be able to pay him his bonus. Now the company is not on the verge of bankruptcy or anything like that. They just said things have changed etc. My brother has driven hard and good for this company. 142,000 miles, no tickets, no fender benders nothing.

Now here’s the thing that I told him to tell the office people denying him his $6000 bonus. When he first came out of school he had dozens of companies offering him anywhere from $.45-$.47 a mile to start. This particular company started him at $.40 per mile for the first year. With the promise of a big bonus. I told him to tell them that and that essentially because of the lower pay than what he could’ve got he already earned that bonus. It’s already his. Because he worked for an entire year at a lower rate. It all comes out the same in the end. I also told him when it comes to bonuses there is no free money. Trucking companies just finagle the numbers throughout the year to make it come out the same as it would have. So I said basically, in a sense, they’re stealing it from you. You already earned that money.

Any thoughts on how he might approach this? Or is it just tough luck? He does like his job overall, but he’s kinda mad. He worked hard to do everything perfect, only taking half the amount of days off he was eligible for, never turning down a load and running hard. They also haven’t said anything about his raise he’s supposed to get to .44 cents.

He’s worried if he presses the issue, due to the situation out there, they’ll just fire him.

In my opinion you did what you needed to do. You informed all parties this load could not be legally done. I am assuming you are forced dispatch. I would just run it the best I could safely and legally and the rest is on them. You did your part.

Best answer yet! And what I plan to do. But I HATE being late for anything! Just irks me. Even when it’s out of my control. Other drivers have told me when it hits the system as being “late” the dispatchers will just note the load with something blaming the driver, “over slept” didn’t properly trip plan” etc.

I two years into driving and the biggest issue I have overall with OTR, driving is how EVERYTHING is the drivers fault.

loads at 0800 tonight and delivers at 0600 tomorrow

Can you be a little more specific/accurate with your times, so we can better understand your dispatch? 0800 is morning.

My mistake. That’s 8pm tonight, delivers 6pm tomorrow. Same tine zone

I’ve been driving for about two years and I’ve encountered the occasional load that’s very tight and sometimes impossible of my dispatcher usually takes it off.

Given a load that loads at 0800 tonight and delivers at 0600 tomorrow. Figure best case scenario 1 hr loading time, deduct 30 minute break and 10 mandatory break that leaves 10.5 hours drive time. The route is 706 miles about 240 of which are back slower roads. Plus I’m governed at 65 mph. I.e., long story made short, I need about 90 minutes more of clock time to get this there on time.

I messaged my dispatcher and they told me to contact the broker. I contact the broker and they said they’ll call me back after I explain and they never did. I contact dispatch again and they just ignore me. Now what this company will do is just put the blame on the driver for being late. It’s a mandatory on time load. There’s like a $500 penalty if it’s late. I feel like the broker set this load up to be late on purpose so they can get out of paying a good portion of it.

Now I’m sitting here locked in to run this load which I do want the miles and I do run all the way to the end of my clock pretty much every day. The issue is it’s just not enough freaking time without a time machine to deliver this on time everyone is just ignoring me.

Now I know times are rough and they’re getting rougher for everyone and I don’t like to be a complainer but I’m not one of these drivers that just sits there and lets everybody pass the blame and buck on to me. If I see something wrong I freaking stand up for myself. You’re not gonna dump some impossible load on me so you can blame me for it being late.

How do I handle this? Just run it, be two hours late and save the Qualcomm messages?