Prime Fleet Mgr Issues

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.

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!

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.

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?

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

That's what the rest of us were thinking. In order to make that trip in 11 hours you would have to drive 70 miles per hour. No DM would expect you to drive that fast for so far.