Accepted Home Time

Let me start out by saying, I love driving a semi-truck. I've have been out for three months by my own choice. I enjoy it regardless of how little the pay is for a new person paying his dues,However; I recently asked for home time, this is day 8 of me not being home afterwards. So, I've researched laws for days figuring out if what they're doing is right. Well, we have no employment laws protecting us on matters of home time, in fact no job does! If even a McDonalds manager calls his employee on his off day and Say's "hey you need to come in" and the employee says no he can be terminated with no liable law suit available to him, a company doesnt even have to follow it's own handbook infact, nore do they legally have to get you home on time or at all! Your boss can call you and tell you to get off the truck in thr middle of nowhere and give you no way home with no legal backlash as far as I know. What makes me laugh is when I bring this up and people say "get over it that's truck driving" the quest for me becomes.."does the make it acceptable?" Could you imagine if our founding fathers said"well thats marnarky for you" and just excused the conditions of being bullied around with no way to defend? I digress I feel laws need to be put in to place for this sorta thing and if anyone knows something I've missed feel free to tell me about it all comments and opinions are accepted

Ok, this kind of thing is common especially when you're new and especially when you have a propensity for staying out long periods of time.

First of all, are you asking for hometime over the Qualcomm and are you putting in the proper macros? Make sure you're following the proper procedures or the planners won't know you're trying to get home.

Second of all, what is your dispatcher saying when you said you wanted to go home but you weren't heading in that direction?

Finally, have you called to speak with someone in the offices that would be above your dispatcher like the operations manager or the terminal manager? If all else fails then make some phone calls.

Forget about the legal mumbo jumbo. That's not gonna get you anywhere and don't even bring it up. That's just going to annoy people and make things worse.

In trucking it takes time to learn how your company operates on the inside. It also takes time to learn who to call when you're having an issue like this. So this is all about learning how to solve problems in this industry and it's something that takes time.

1) Put in the proper hometime macros

2) Confirm over the Qualcomm with your dispatcher that your hometime was entered properly

3) If those two items fail to work then call the operations manager or the terminal manager and let them know the situation

Do not threaten anyone or yell at anyone or act unprofessional in any way. Trust me, that kind of behavior does not do any good when you're dealing with office personnel. It's only going to make things work. Remain calm and professional, follow the proper procedures, and call up the chain of command if all else fails.

This is common stuff. Just be patient and work through it. Once you understand how to get things done within your company this kind of stuff will almost never be a problem.

Oh I completely forgive them on the mannor,lifes to short to live with a chip on your shoulder. It just interested me to see the advanage company's can have over you in a legal battle. I applied for my home time in july reminded them of it two weeks in advance and they had a load to the area of my home time(to salt lake city), however it cancelled.that's not their fault and I didn't blame them for it the kept us on small loads to get a bit of income while we waited and then it happened. We relayed a load off and i was curious to where the end game was for it. It was organ I was highly upset but, settled down because they probably had a reason. I talked to them and they got upset that I was asking why we were taken off the load(may have had a small ton of aggervation but was staying relatively calm as I could) so the next day I requested to switch to alabama for home time, and decided id give them a couple days it's leading us to az now and hopefully home. Alls forgiven, just highly annoying that I lost the chance to propose to my girlfriend because of what ever miscommunication or error may have accrued

As for the law, that really need's to be fixed. There should be laws to protect employees from being dropped in the middle of no where..and can be quiet nerve racking to think they can strain you with no load anywhere they wish, and you don't have premission to drive it back to a terminal(hijacking) or leave the truck (abandonment) Nor do they have to get you home. It maybe bad buisness but completely thesisable and I'm sure it happens.

Jimmy, you are barking up the wrong tree. You distract yourself with legal concerns when that has nothing to do with your issues or problems. From the beginning when you first began posting in here, you've struggled with this whole truck driver lifestyle issue. There is more to this than your legal concerns, and you just sort of ignore the real problem.

I don't know a single driver who has a problem like yours with getting home. It's always more difficult for a team to take home time, especially if they live in different areas. Has your co-driver been on the road all that time also with no home time? Is that typical for them? That could be part of your issue, but I'm not sure.

I dont really get it when you complain that you didn't get to propose to your girlfriend in one sentence, and then in another you are requesting to change your home time to a different state. That action alone confuses the whole process. This whole scenario seems to me that you may be causing your own problems and not even realizing it. We've seen this a lot in here, new drivers who just don't understand how you get things accomplished within their company.

Forget the legal rabbit chase - it's completely unproductive. Focus on understanding how you need to go about getting things like this accomplished at CRST. For some reason your communications are ineffective, find out why and get that corrected.