Bad Weather

Awhile back I was on a long term assignment doing outside work. I had severe weather alerts enabled from weather.com. This being South Florida, lightning storms will pop up out of nowhere in the Summer. I would get an alert and sure enough about 10 minutes later it would be a downpour with lightning. That was a few phones ago. I wonder if the alerts would work in a moving truck. Stay tuned.

They sure do!! Even when your trying to sleep.

Layover pay was mentioned in this thread. Obviously only applies to company drivers: When is Layover Pay triggered? And if for weather, who makes the decision of layover pay, after driver decided to park for safety concerns?

When is Layover Pay triggered? And if for weather, who makes the decision of layover pay, after driver decided to park for safety concerns?

That's a great question CajunWon - I'm glad you asked it!

I'm just going to share my experience with layover pay with you and hopefully give you a little insight into how it works in the real world.

The first thing is that most companies have a procedure you must follow to get layover pay. Here's an example from my driving experiences at Knight. When we got to a customer and it appeared there was going to be a considerable delay we had a "macro" (a pre-typed message we could access with one key stroke) on our tablet that simply stated something like, "Delay seems likely - Requesting layover."

That was all we had to do to "trigger" layover pay for our delay. A lot of drivers couldn't seem to understand this little detail and would whine and opine about how sorry the company was because they got "cheated" out of their layover pay. The company sucked, waaa, waaa, waaa! On and on some of them would go. All they had to do was take the necessary step (proper communications) to get their layover pay, but they wouldn't bother to learn how these things are supposed to be done.

As a flat bed driver, I seldom had lengthy delays to deal with, but there was a certain plant that I visited frequently which would sometimes throw you a curve and have you waiting anywhere from 8 - 10 hours. Every time I got dispatched to that location I'd send in my arrival call (macro) and then immediately send in my layover request (macro). I never had any problems getting layover pay at that location. I communicated my situation properly and it was basically automatically calculated in the company's system. A big part of this job is communicating properly with your support team at the office. This whole practice of communicating effectively with your driver manager is a critical piece of the complex puzzle that a lot of drivers can never seem to put together. In the scenario I gave it didn't really matter if I sent in the macro and still got loaded quickly. The system was set up to see how much time I spent there waiting. If I got in and out quickly then it didn't kick in, but if my logs showed a lengthy delay I would get compensated for it.

The second thing you need to know about layover pay is that your performance as a driver will quite often dictate how you end up getting extra pay like layover. I believe it was Steve L. who mentioned getting layover pay for a weather related delay. I don't know the procedures at the company he was employed with, but I do know that if you are a good solid driver who is consistently accomplishing a good deal of work for your driver manager then they will be a lot more liberal with you concerning extra pay. Steve has been a solid driver for years, and the fact that his driver manager probably authorized the layover pay for him is a testament to that. Driver managers have a lot of leeway in matters like this, and they will always treat their best drivers with generosity. I've experienced this a lot of times. There have been plenty of times that I got extra pay just thrown my way for being a driver that could always be counted on, or just for being willing to help out in ways that others refused. In the industry we call things like layover or breakdown pay "X-pay." You'll find the guys and gals who are Top Tier Drivers enjoy perks that not everyone gets to experience. One of those things is to have your driver manager regularly throwing a little X-pay your way.

The third thing I want you to know about layover pay is that it's not something you want to make an effort to get. The truth is that you want to avoid it if at all possible. It's always better to earn your keep by keeping those wheels turning. You are always going to make more money while moving freight. The top tier drivers out here figure out how to be efficient and keep those wheels turning. Their driver managers recognize that and that's why they will come up with excuses to reward them with some X-pay for some minor delays when they wouldn't do the same for a lesser performing driver. You always want to concentrate on being productive. Believe it or not there are a few drivers who would love to sit around all day and get layover pay for doing nothing. That never turns out well for them. Always try to be productive. When you hit a snag your driver manager will recognize it and he can authorize some X=pay for you if he thinks it is warranted.

I would add to Old School's comment as far as both communication and productivity that the way loads seem to be assigned is a factor as well.

I keep my fleet manager updated as far as my status and always get him a ETA of when I will send my departure. And nine times out of ten almost immediately I get another load so that means he has me queued up and he just hits send whenever he gets my departure.

The one time when I had a significant delay at the receiver my fleet manager continued to send me messages asking the status of my delivery. I assume that the reason why he was anxious about my expected delivery is that the queued up pre-load was in Jeopardy of being pulled from me. That they need to assign loads to drivers that are ready to roll and drivers with unpredictable schedules are not going to have pre-loads waiting for them.

Layover pay was mentioned in this thread. Obviously only applies to company drivers: When is Layover Pay triggered? And if for weather, who makes the decision of layover pay, after driver decided to park for safety concerns?

On another note, since I work for FedEx Freight LTL - woke up this morning to loads of snow and ice. Can't get the car out of the driveway let alone drive to work.

Called my boss - "Sorry, can't make it in due to weather." Boss - "Ok, no problem. See you Friday!!"

:)