No Loads For You….

I’m curious how some of you might handle this situation. It’s happened to me numerous times that the company I work for. I work OTR. I drive hard. I drive every load they give me. I’ll get back to the yard on a Saturday morning or afternoon with plenty of hours still drive for the day. And for the week for that matter. I go in to dispatch and tell them I’m ready for a new load. They tell me they don’t have anything until Monday morning. They tell me I’m welcome to go home. The only problem is home is five hours each way for me. Aren’t they obligated to pay me to sit there from Saturday morning until Monday morning? They tell me if I go home I should be back Monday morning. Which is ridiculous for a 10 hour round-trip drive. I tell them no, if I go home I’m going home for a minimum of four days. Your choice. Find me a load or pay me to sit here or I go home for four days. Was I fair with these options? How would you handle this?

No, they are obligated to pay you for sitting out the weekend. It's quite common for some shippers to only ship mon-fri.

I see a few options right off the bat.

1- Do what a gazillion other OTR drivers do, and bust out as many miles as you can during the week, using up as much of your 70 as you can. Then when you roll in on Saturday, you can squeeze in a natural 34 and be ready to roll Monday morning with a fresh clock.

Or

2- Space your loads out enough so that you run on recaps 7 days a week, negating the need to sit at the terminal for a reset.

Or

3- You can try to give them a heads up on your availability for a load long before you roll in on Saturday. With enough warning, they may be able to find you a load before you get there. If not, refer back to options 1 or 2.

Or option 4... Ask them to look for a load that delivers fairly close to your home so that you can get to the house easier and be ready to roll Monday morning. As Turtle said, no they don't have to pay you for the weekend to sit away from home.

Laura

Small carrier is my guess? Sometimes the small fish have less of a bite in the large freight pond. Maybe there are no loads indeed. Do they broker the loads, or is this handled in-house?

If there are loads that you are not being assigned, do a self-analysis on yourself and make double sure your are worthy of dispatch keeping your wheels turning more. How's your relationship with dispatch? How long have you been with the company? How long have you been driving?

Lastly, once you're sure it really is "them, not me", be the squeaky wheel and get into a pattern of bugging dispatchers twice a day about that next load, well ahead of time. Always keep them updated with an accurate PTA, even if it changes during a day.

William, I love the answers you are getting here.

I'll throw in my two cents...

One of the biggest things that helped me in my trucking career was to make a big effort at learning how the trucking business works, and more in particular, how my specific company works. One of the first things I figured out was that weekends are terrible times to get loads. Once I knew that I had to figure out how to handle it so I could have a load on the weekend. Here was my solution, and it has always worked well for me. I empty out just as early as I can on Friday morning and I make sure my dispatcher knows that is how it is going to happen. I want him to know that my PTA (projected time of availability) will be 0700 Friday morning. That way he can hook me up with a nice long load for the weekend. He always comes through, but he comes through because I have communicated with him early enough for him to take care of it, and I always make sure that I do exactly what I tell him I am going to do.

It sounds like this has been an ongoing problem for you. So you know already what is going to happen if you show up on Saturday morning. Why keep repeating this self-defeating behavior? Make some changes to how you do things. Run a little harder so you can be MT on Friday morning instead of showing up Saturday expecting them to have a load for you. It is not going to happen. You are the captain of your ship. That means you run that ship in such a way that makes sense and is efficient. A big part of your efficiency is understanding how to do things with your truck so that they mesh with the way the company distributes loads.

You have to be the student and the teacher in this situation. You learn how things work, and then you take the steps to put yourself into the flow of work from your company. Trying to demand they pay you for sitting around will get you no results. You will frustrate yourself and anger the people who could be helping you be successful. You have got to put yourself into the right mindset, and put yourself into the right place at the right time. That's part of becoming a professional driver.

I wish you the best with this situation. Try to figure out how you can reconcile it yourself. There is definitely a way to make this work better for you.

Or option 4... Ask them to look for a load that delivers fairly close to your home so that you can get to the house easier and be ready to roll Monday morning. As Turtle said, no they don't have to pay you for the weekend to sit away from home.

Laura

OK but do you see my logic behind my original question, I drive back-and-forth to the yard. It’s five hours each way. So I’ve got 10 hours vested if I go home. Not to mention it’s about $200 round-trip in my truck plus gas. So let’s say I have them dispatch me from close to my home which I can do. I show up at the yard on a Saturday morning per the way they assigned me my loads. Say it’s 10 AM. I have eight hours left to drive on my clock. 35 hours left for the week. I go into the office and they tell me they don’t have a load. At that point in my opinion they have two choices. Send me a dispatch to go home in their truck, or pay me to sit on their yard. Otherwise I’m literally a prisoner stuck at that yard with no transportation, no way to make money, and I’m at their disposal. I don’t know where you all come from but where I come from that is not fair. Lol that’s like slavery type stuff.

Old School if I could only start my idea of a trucking company (its doable just need to figure out how to compete) I would hire you to manage the drivers as well as drive the best runs etc

William, I love the answers you are getting here.

I'll throw in my two cents...

One of the biggest things that helped me in my trucking career was to make a big effort at learning how the trucking business works, and more in particular, how my specific company works. One of the first things I figured out was that weekends are terrible times to get loads. Once I knew that I had to figure out how to handle it so I could have a load on the weekend. Here was my solution, and it has always worked well for me. I empty out just as early as I can on Friday morning and I make sure my dispatcher knows that is how it is going to happen. I want him to know that my PTA (projected time of availability) will be 0700 Friday morning. That way he can hook me up with a nice long load for the weekend. He always comes through, but he comes through because I have communicated with him early enough for him to take care of it, and I always make sure that I do exactly what I tell him I am going to do.

It sounds like this has been an ongoing problem for you. So you know already what is going to happen if you show up on Saturday morning. Why keep repeating this self-defeating behavior? Make some changes to how you do things. Run a little harder so you can be MT on Friday morning instead of showing up Saturday expecting them to have a load for you. It is not going to happen. You are the captain of your ship. That means you run that ship in such a way that makes sense and is efficient. A big part of your efficiency is understanding how to do things with your truck so that they mesh with the way the company distributes loads.

You have to be the student and the teacher in this situation. You learn how things work, and then you take the steps to put yourself into the flow of work from your company. Trying to demand they pay you for sitting around will get you no results. You will frustrate yourself and anger the people who could be helping you be successful. You have got to put yourself into the right mindset, and put yourself into the right place at the right time. That's part of becoming a professional driver.

I wish you the best with this situation. Try to figure out how you can reconcile it yourself. There is definitely a way to make this work better for you.

Really good stuff! I guess for the driver who enjoys unexpected time off this type of scenario of slipping through the cracks would be great. Lol what I will do in the future is contact dispatch when I know this scenario might come up, and be like, “hey you got me lined out to be back at the yard Saturday morning, I have (XYZ hours) can we get me assigned a next load”

Something like this might work. Part of the problem with this is the first to trucking companies I’ve worked for this kind of stuff didn’t happen. So I’m kind of subconsciously comparing I think. They would have a load ready for me at the yard. Lol it would usually hit my QUALCOMM a day or so before I even got back to the yard.

Hi William, Do you pick up, and deliver your load on time? I ask this because what your describing is generally how companies get rid of their bad drivers, they starve them out.

If you're doing everything right then it's a dispatcher problem and you should try getting a new dispatcher from the your company.

How would I handle it? Hm.. maybe start with being polite with the dispatch? Talk to them about it nicely and come up with the plan to run OTR over the weekend, so I'd not hit Sat and Sun companies being closed. Also, we can not avoid 70hr rule any way we'd try. Have to go recap or 34 reset.