Can't Arrive Early

Damn, holy crap Brett haha. That's crazy. I was hoping you would come on here and tell your story. I remembered you saying something about this before.

Yeah, that story and a bunch of others are in my book Becoming A Truck Driver: The Raw Truth About Truck Driving (free online version)

Damn, holy crap Brett haha. That's crazy. I was hoping you would come on here and tell your story. I remembered you saying something about this before.

Yeah, that story and a bunch of others are in my book Becoming A Truck Driver: The Raw Truth About Truck Driving (free online version)

Just me personally I wouldn't go through all that I just would have found a different company myself. That is a lot of work and a lot of holding in my temper to do that.

Just me personally I wouldn't go through all that I just would have found a different company myself. That is a lot of work and a lot of holding in my temper to do that.

Yeah but I had like 5 years in at that company. I knew all of the people in operations, I had all the miles anyone could stand to drive, I had a brand new truck, I was at the top of the pay scale, and I was given special favors all the time. I had it great. I didn't want to start over again from the bottom at another company and have to claw my way up again. It's well worth a few hours of interviews and conducting yourself like a professional in the face of difficulties to maintain the position you've put yourself in after five years of hard work.

Obviously I could have had my choice of any company I wanted but I was already with a company I was happy with. That was an unfortunate situation but it was really a case of failed communication is all it was. I just had to prove that's what it was to the right people. The mandate to fire me and the dispatcher came from the owners of the company. No one at the bottom had the authority to override that decision. That's why I had to go through so many interviews.

The easy thing to do is rarely the best thing to do. Having the ability to recognize the difference and the discipline to make the right choice goes a long way in determining where you end up in life. I watch people make shortsighted decisions all the time and they never get anywhere because of it. You have to think long term and you have to have the discipline to make smart decisions.

Brett on sticking with the same company:

Yeah but I had like 5 years in at that company. I knew all of the people in operations, I had all the miles anyone could stand to drive, I had a brand new truck, I was at the top of the pay scale, and I was given special favors all the time. I had it great. I didn't want to start over again from the bottom at another company and have to claw my way up again. It's well worth a few hours of interviews and conducting yourself like a professional in the face of difficulties to maintain the position you've put yourself in after five years of hard work.

Brett talks about driver seniority. On this forum we always talk against changing companies, mostly after that first year. Here's a good reason to stick with it.

I bet some who read Brett's story thought, "Why is Brett putting up with this constant cross examination crap? I'd just bail. I know many other companies would beg for me to join up." If you leave your current job, remember this fact of life: you're going to the back of the line. Again.

On the other hand, do you really want to keep driving for a company that had such a short-sighted decision making process that allowed the best driver to get canned without due process?

Primes motto is "early is on time... On time is late". I'd would have been like... I thought they meant be on time... Which is early. Cause early early would be like six hours.... But early on time is one hour.

I took so much crap at the USPS.... But I gave it back too. We were union so it literally could take ten years to fire someone.

Idk what I would have done. Would have depended on my mode at the time.

On the other hand, do you really want to keep driving for a company that had such a short-sighted decision making process that allowed the best driver to get canned without due process?

Well they did give me due process and they did let me keep my job when they found out I wasn't informed of the situation properly. The mandate to fire the driver and dispatcher was given under the premise that the driver would have been made aware of the situation. So the assumption was that I knew not to go in there more than 15 minutes early but I did anyhow. When they found out that wasn't the case I kept my job.

I've gotta say, I'm always disappointed with the intolerance that drivers have toward any type of trouble they encounter with their companies. This idea that you're just going to quit your job whenever you're not happy about a situation is ridiculous, just as it would be ridiculous for the company to fire a driver anytime they're unhappy with something he or she does.

It's also ridiculous to think you're going to find a large corporation that doesn't have its share of problems. They all do. You're talking about thousands of people working together for one cause. You're going to have some bad apples in the bunch. You're going to have a few policies that weren't very well thought out. You're going to have some poor decisions made from time to time. You can't just solve every problem by giving someone the finger and walking away. You're never going to get anywhere doing that.

The approach to take is to first prove to the company that you're a top tier driver. Then stick around for a while and get to know the right people in operations and safety. Show them you're not just another run-of-the-mill driver that's going to be late for appointments, ding up the truck, or quit your job every time something doesn't go your way. Once you've demonstrated that you're a cut above the rest and you're going to be around for a while you'll be treated on a much higher level than the rest.

In this case I was fired by mandate from the owners of the company and yet within a few hours I was given my job back. If I wouldn't have had that much time in with the company and wouldn't have had such a great record I don't know if they would have even bothered to listen. If I didn't have the support of the people I knew well in operations and I hadn't handled myself like a professional I don't think they would have gotten the #5 guy on the totem pole in a company with about 8,000 employees to take the time to consider what I was saying. But that's exactly what they did. It was an extraordinary circumstance that they hadn't accounted for when they made the policy but they took the time to listen and changed their minds when they heard my story. They considered my record, they listened to my side of it, and they made the right decision.

If you leave your current job, remember this fact of life: you're going to the back of the line. Again.

That is the part that most drivers just don't get. Even drivers with experience somehow fail to realize that experience doesn't pay the bills, performance does. Until you've proven yourself to your company by performing at a high level consistently for quite a length of time you're simply not going to be given the miles or the great treatment that the top tier drivers get.

So drivers will up and quit their company at the drop of a hat and then go to the next company expecting to be treated like royalty from day one because they have experience. But it simply doesn't work that way.

Look at Tom Brady vs Peyton Manning. They are two of the greatest to ever play the game. If you offered each player to every team in the league not one team would be interested in Peyton Manning and yet every single team would kill to have Tom Brady. Both have Hall Of Fame credentials but only one of them can now perform at that level.

Trucking is also performance-based and drivers are looked upon the same way. If you can not or will not perform at a high level consistently then you have very little value to your company. It makes no difference how much experience you have.

So when you're new to a company you're simply going to be thrown into the pool with the rest of the drivers to see how well you can swim. And if your performance level drops off even after proving you have what it takes to be a top tier driver the perks and special favors and great miles you were getting when you were performing at a high level are going to disappear in a hurry.