I'm Heartily Ashamed Of Myself

Those workers are not allowed to enter them till the next day. I am sure it would take all of 5 secs to enter it as accepted but it allow boils down to provable inventory and the taxes they have to pay on them. It's more of a corporate thing than the employees

Sugar and bulls@#t are both excellent tactics to catch flies, vinegar never works well.

As with what Guyjax said, put yourself into her shoes.

My hats off to you Old School for making it happen. But what most people don't understand and it has been highlighted here, you can't put a load into a system till it is actually suppose to be in the system.

It is no different than the Qualcomm. Say you have two loads in line to take as soon as you are ready. You are on a load at the moment and you have some down time. Say your 30 minutes. You start looking at your next trip. You are not sure where you are going. Some place new. You get on your Qualcomm to ask for directions. But you can't get them because you haven't been dispatched on that load.

From the top. When the load order is placed, someone somewhere puts that order into a computer. With a delivery date. The date can be changed, but someone has to request for it to be changed. When someone shows up with a load that is early, it can't go into the system because the system is told not to accept it till such and such a time. Don't blame the receiver. It is the system. It is called inventory.

A computer can't think on it's own. Stuff in, stuff out. And usually the receiving agent can't change anything on the computer. All they know is what they see. If the load is short, they can't just go in and change it. They have to file more paperwork. Paperwork on top of paperwork.

It is great you "got away with it". But what about the next time. Maybe the next trucker is 2 hours early and they could get to him/her, but the clerk is not happy about what happened with another trucker the day before. So guess what. That trucker has to set and wait. Maybe wait for 4 hours because the clerk "has lost the paperwork she needs".

Nothing wrong with being creative and a go-getter. As long as it doesn't bite someone in the arse.

Keep it safe out here, the life you save might be your own. Joe S.

Just like the driver was creative the clerk can also be creative. She may need to call a supervisor or a main office or whatever. It's not impossible to change the date. She won't do it though because she gets paid by the hour and has no incentive to be creative. The driver does not get paid for sitting (usually) so he has to be creative.

I am not disagreeing with what Old School did. I am not above that either. I have done stuff that I will not mention aloud.

I was only playing devils advocate because I did not want it looking like she was not helping and being a butt about it.

That's really neat.

This last week I got a DOT officer to tromp out into the cold through about a foot deep snow to let me know when it was safe for me to go. Let's just say I have a strange effect on older gentlemen. I don't understand it but by smiling and telling a joke or two at my own expense, I can get most of them to do what I need.

Got us out of a ticket for not having the New Mexico permit because I asked the old man to explain it to me. He patiently explained everything about permits I could ever want to know. Then he showed me an error that the company had made on my registration and helped me get it fixed. It wouldn't have seem so strange but I had just watched him ticket two other drivers for small easily fixable things (license plate light was hanging and the other one I think was a mudflap not bolted on both bolts)

As far as always being on time, I am. As long as weather permits. I will not risk my life for a load. If the truck feels like it is trying to control me instead of the other way around, it's time to pull over.

Oh, and when they tell you a light trailer doesn't get as much traction, they aren't joking! It's a HUGE difference. I thought for sure I was going to kiss my trailer a couple of times on the 84. I pulled over until the sun came out again. It wasn't even bad for people with heavy loads. They were just zipping right on by. I was doing good to get to 30mph without slipping around.

I have found that the best persons to take care of paperwork are those that have some degree of obsessive compulsive disorder, they are so organized that they know where, when and how much was done while they were working. AND if something is out of kilter the least little bit they have a fit. Couple that with a little authority and you may find trouble. Not a sermon, just a heads up. Know your audience!!!

The things with these big box stores is that can receive it early but can not enter it into the computer until the day it's supposed to arrive and the lady did not want to kept up with everything till the next day.

Wow, I mean is this a "modern American worker" problem or what? What a bunch of soft, lazy crybabies people are anymore. Oh, you mean she has to set a piece of paper on the "to be entered" pile instead of the "entered" pile? OMG someone call the paramedics. Nobody could ever survive such a traumatic ordeal.

Lazy, Selfish American crybabies. That's all we produce anymore.

Let's look at it from her view. It's like you going down the road and have a flat tire but instead of sending someone to change the tire they send someone with the tools to do it and give them to you and say Now you have an extra duty to. Change your own tire or wait till tomorrow.

No it isn't. Not at all. Setting a piece of paper on one pile instead of another is not at all like getting out the tools to change your own tire. It's 10,000 times easier and takes no thought or effort whatsoever.

Lazy, Selfish American crybabies. Drives me insane. I came from a long line of steel workers, auto workers, farmers, mechanics, and brick layers and I've had a long list of hard labor jobs myself. The idea of telling someone to go away for a full 24 hours and give up a full day's pay so that you don't have to set a piece of paper on one pile instead of another is the saddest thing imaginable. I guess we've finally reached the point that setting a piece of paper on a pile requires more fortitude than the American Worker can muster.

China, take the wheel. We quit. We don't even have the drive and character to be pencil pushers anymore. We'll just collect unemployment and live in our parent's basement.

I have to say I love it! Gotta try that sometime. If I ever get enough time on a load to want to bring it in early! And since your not flatbed anymore its lowes schmoes:) unless you go back to flatbed of course.

"Lazy, Selfish American crybabies. Drives me insane. I came from a long line of steel workers, auto workers, farmers, mechanics, and brick layers and I've had a long list of hard labor jobs myself. The idea of telling someone to go away for a full 24 hours and give up a full day's pay so that you don't have to set a piece of paper on one pile instead of another is the saddest thing imaginable. I guess we've finally reached the point that setting a piece of paper on a pile requires more fortitude than the American Worker can muster."

I think the real culprit here is the old saying about "power". The clerk, as you say, could certainly (and probably has) create a second pile of delayed entry paperwork. But she doesn't "have to" if she doesn't "want to." I'll give you an example maybe anyone who has driven into California can relate to. I think we are the only state (I could be wrong) with "Agricultural Inspection Stations" at the border. Well, all trucks have to pull over and show paperwork. Autos, by contrast, simply drive past inspectors who may or may not stop the car and ask questions which can lead to an inspection worthy of the American/Mexican border. Just yesterday at the "Bug Station" (that's what we call our Inspection station here in Truckee), the one you encounter after leaving Reno headed for Sacramento, there were (typically) only two lanes open. The one on the left where I was had no inspector so you simply slowed down to 5 MPH and then proceeded on your own. Well, the one on the right had a guy standing out there and - as luck would have it - a driver was confused by the whole process and did not wait for the "nod" to proceed. The agent yelled very loudly, "HEY!!" and the driver stopped about 30 feet past the guy and proceeded to back up. That mean EVERYONE behind this driver is forced to wait or change lanes over to my lane (in which NO ONE had to wait for a nod since it was unmanned). I watched my mirror as I proceeded down the road and the poor driver was still stopped, receiving a tongue lashing (and probably an inspection) as the Bug Station faded into the distance. Had that driver used the left lane instead of the right lane, he/she would have flown right by without having to deal with that agent's ego and misplaced sense of power. THAT'S the problem - give a little power and watch it corrupt the otherwise sensible actions of otherwise sensible people.

Stephen E. Birch

I'll play devil's advocate on this one because right now I work for one of those big box stores. One reason they don't want stuff coming early is they often don't have the space to put it due to the other deliveries arriving on time. There isn't a lot of space in our receiving area and if we get three trucks at the same time and one of them is early then he'll have to wait. What comes off the truck has to be put on the shelves and that takes time. These big stores have ten's of thousands of items in their inventory and it's a lot to juggle. If you put yourself on the receiving side of the equation you'll see what I mean. Oh yeah, these people are underpaid and work damn hard for it. It's good to step back and try to look at the big picture.