Profile For Slowpoke

As for Swift, you might need to talk to Safety about the necessary move.

Not just Swift, all persons need to consult with their Motor Carriers before making any Personal Conveyance move and you must ensure you are relieved of duty by the Motor Carrier before attempting to apply the Personal Conveyance. Please find below a copy/paste from 2nd sentence of the FMCSA guidance link as supplied by Turtle;

"A driver may record time operating a CMV for personal conveyance as off-duty only when the driver is relieved from work and all responsibility for performing work by the motor carrier".

I am being somewhat direct about this as I have spent my day speaking with the "Truck Stop Lawyers division" of our Fleet who seemed to have skipped over that important point and I am fairly confident they are not the only ones who missed it. Further to this there seems to be tone in the Guidance provided (although not clearly stated as such) that the Motor Carrier is to be the one making the choice of where that first safe location is and direct the driver to that location. I have already queried the great minds at FMCSA on the last comment and will try to remember to update here when/if I get a response.....

Regards, Slowpoke

I am sure there will be those that continue to try "beating the system" even when the Drug and Alcohol Clearing House is a requirement for carriers doing a pre-employment screen. There will always be at least one who thinks they are smarter than the system or that the system should not apply to them for whatever wild and crazy reason their mind recently concocted. Obviously there are things, such as a previous positive test that will preclude any carrier from hiring you until you have completed the Substance Abuse Program, but in many cases being honest and transparent will save heartache for everyone in the long run and may even net you consideration points with a potential employer because of your candor and understanding that you know this (whatever this negative is) is not a good thing in the transportation industry.

Slowpoke

Interesting thread, Merchandise, while a great idea, is a much trickier thing than many realize for a non profit such as this. 1st, you have to have a logo and unless you are a graphic designer or know someone who is, creating the logo can be an expensive undertaking. 2nd, most merchandise suppliers do not do one offs of items and will want a minimum order of 50, 100 or 250 units as a guaranteed purchase, and this in and of itself creates a myriad of problems, putting the money up for the initial product purchase, then keeping stock, then reselling which creates the need to keep an inventory list and then of course we can never forget the government that wants their tax dollars from the sale whereby you almost need to create a company to keep it separate from personal income. Again, a great idea that I wouldn't wish on anyone and having done it for two charity organizations in the past, have the records of it being a losing proposition even for those that started it out with the best intentions of it being a fund raiser.

Slowpoke

.But to be successful you MUST find your FIT (what works for you) in order to be successful at it

Great post. This right here says it all.

Indeed it does Daniel, I have often said not every driver is for every company and not every company is for every driver. It is the very reason that you will hear some say fantastic things about the company they work for while others have nothing but disdain for that very same company. Company 1 needs triangle shaped drivers to fit in their triangle shaped openings Company 2 needs square shaped drivers to fit in their square shaped openings, and Company 3 needs round shaped drivers to fit in their round shaped openings. With that said, their are those rare drivers who will be able to fit themselves into any shaped opening their carrier may need. On the other hand there are those who continuously try changing the shape of the opening that the carrier provided and find themselves frustrated that the carrier doesn't want to change the shape of that hole. Those that fit the opening provided by the carrier or those that fit themselves into an opening are usually fairly happy about their job or career choice, while those that continually beat and berate the hole shape they find themselves in are usually very upset with their job or career choice. If you do enough reading here, you will quickly see that most of the regular contributors find themselves as those that fit, or that fit themselves into the opening provided by the carrier, by contrast, in looking through other websites that have become little more than crying towel places, it is easy to see the other faction that never found the right place to fit.

Regards as always, Slowpoke

To answer your question as simply as possible, YES every accident is preventable! However before I go any further I want to take a moment as to the difference between being involved in a preventable accident and being at fault for an accident and I guess we may as well go a step further and explain the being charged or issued a citation as a result of an accident. All three of these things are completely different terms in regards to an accident, unfortunately these terms seem to get used interchangeably and loosely as opposed to being hinged to solid definition. So let's first give some definition to them and then discuss how and why they are often misused with regards to the preventability of an accident.

1. Charged/Issued a Citation - Is only an indicator that at least one of the parties to the accident were in violation of a traffic law prior to, during or after the accident. This violation "MAY" have contributed to the accident, but is not necessarily a primary contributing factor. Law enforcement is at the scene of an accident for many reasons, but none of those reasons have to do with determining if an accident was preventable or not, they already know the answer to that question is yes. They are there to investigate and gather facts, and where that investigation or those facts reveal a violation of the law lay charges or issue citations as deemed appropriate. This is the reason that most defense lawyers will tell you to give only the required information at the scene of any accident, name, contact information, drivers licence, vehicle registration, insurance information. (Note I did not say statement or description of what happened, remember anything you offer voluntarily to a law enforcement officer is not covered by Miranda or Constitutional Rights, but this is a topic for a different thread)

2. At Fault/Not at Fault - This is an insurance term and must not be confused or interchanged for the words preventable or non-preventable (unfortunately this is often the case and why people seem to revolt about having been deemed to be in a preventable accident, but as you will see with the definition of preventable below this should not be the case). Fault is simply a determination of the percentage of responsibility an individual bears towards a situation. As an aside here, if you are deemed to be 50.01% responsible for an accident 100% of the fault, and therefore financial responsibility will rest with your insurer. Fault determination rules are different from state to state, but yes it is possible to be 49.99% responsible for an accident and be deemed by insurance as Not at Fault.

3. Preventable Accident - Is one in which the driver failed to exercise every reasonable precaution to prevent the accident. This is irrespective of whether or not there is property damage or personal injury, the extent of the loss of injury, to whom it occurred and the location of the accident. In order for a person to avoid being involved in a preventable accident, each driver should understand and practice the concept of defensive driving. “Defensive driving” is driving so as to prevent accidents in spite of the incorrect actions of others and adverse driving conditions; such as light, weather, road, traffic, vehicle condition and your physical and mental state.

So is every accident preventable? Yes. Is every accident preventable by your actions? The answer to that is only determined by the effort you put into being a defensive driver. Are you at fault for every preventable accident you may be involved in? No. Will you be charged or receive a traffic citation for every preventable accident you will be involved in? No.

Regards, Slowpoke

Chris, Again the membership of TT hits the nail on the head and gives you some very good advice, and I sincerely hope you have already closed that door and are waiting for the next door to open. I am certainly not against smaller carriers simply because they are small, and note that Chris absolutely did the right thing by asking questions and getting answers. Never be afraid to ask a company questions that help you in knowing that they establish a proper employee employer relationship. Be very wary of any company that does not wish to establish a proper employee employer relationship and ask yourself, if they are willing to play with fire when it comes to the IRS, how much more willing will they be to play with fire when it comes to other regulatory relationships? Further to that, how committed will they be to seeing you actually get paid for the work you do when they find themselves in cash flow problems? The answer is simple they wont care a bit, they will have closed the doors on the office in the name of ABC Logistics at 91b First Avenue and opened up their new office in the name of XYZ logistics at 91c First Ave. Oh and this will take place within minutes, however none of it will help you when you need fuel in Georgia to get your load to Ohio. No one will be answering phones because your company no longer exists and the former owners are way too busy calling the trade rags to place an advertisement for drivers at $0.60 per mile for the new XYZ logisics company....... Yep they really do this.......Beware. On a very sad note, I know far more people in this industry that have been burned by this type of operation than those people who actually considered themselves winners because of it. As a matter of fact I do not know anyone in the trucking industry who would say they came out better off for working in one of these "quasi-legal/illegal" plans.

Slowpoke

It was stated before, and alluded to in a couple other posts here such as the most recent by G-Town;

Honesty - You cannot begin to fix a problem and improve yourself until you own that problem "Yep, I screwed up"

We live in a world where we are taught by those that lead us "it is always okay to blame the other guy", it is often times very hard to accept responsibility for our own actions. Okay so you hit a concrete block because you pulled ahead too far to straighten up in order to back into that parking spot, dock, etc....Please stop blaming the contractor who put it there 3 months ago for placing it three one hundredths of an inch to far to the west, please stop blaming the truck parked beside you for being parked a little crooked and forcing you to make a difficult maneuver, please stop telling me how many other drivers have hit it and how many thousands of them came up to you after you hit the concrete block and told you it shouldn't have been there. Just be honest and say "I Screwed Up." It really is the start of making yourself a better person, even if it does dent the pride a bit for the moment.

Sorry I haven't been around much lately, will try to get back on track. Slowpoke

Great article G-Town, You made an interesting point in finding a place on the web with integrity. All a person needs to do is spend a little time reading and absorbing some of the excellent information here to know that you wont find a lot of, if any, BS from the regular contributors here. You may not hear what you want to hear or in this case read what you were hoping to read, but it will indeed be the Trucking Truth!

Slowpoke

The good news for all those drivers worried about being replaced by a robot is they won't be able to replace the driver with a robot until they replace the shippers and receivers and all other drivers with robots. In my 30 plus years in this industry I have yet to meet the shipper or receiver who came out to meet me in the driveway or staging yard to see why I was there. Quite the opposite actually, pick ups and deliveries often times took some investigation to; 1) determine which of the unmarked doors on the building I needed to go into to find one that would open and possibly yield the result of finding a live individual who could tell me the business I was looking for had moved across town (yeah I really want to see the first video of a robot encountering that, I am fairly confident it will be comedic gold), or 2) find a person who is intentionally playing hide and seek with me, because they want to leave the job of loading or unloading me for the next shift or after lunch, or 3) find the person who parked their car right in the middle of where I need to be backing into to get them to move it out of harms way,

I really could go on forever , but I assure anyone who is reading this, your job is safe until they first solve the above 3 (and I am sure at least 1000 more) issues that would currently befuddle the most well programmed computer/robot in the world. However, probably more pertinent than any of the above all I really need to do is recognize that at least once a month either my work computer or home computer will take a hissy fit and decide it really does not want to open the program I have selected, or better yet, decides it needs to reboot ........ Just Because......... Yep, there is the automated vehicle, car or truck, I want to be sharing the road with, you know the one travelling at 65 MPH while its processor is having trouble processing the information from the program into a proper command to whatever mechanism it is sending a command to, or its programming is telling it to shut down and restart..........., again while it is doing, yeah, 65 MPH on the highway, YIKES!!!!

Slowpoke

Lowry, Of course some nervous anticipation is normal. Your life is changing and you do not know at this point if it will be a positive or negative change because you have nothing to compare it to. The only piece of advice I can offer is there are hundreds of thousands out there just like you that have made it a positive change and are doing just fine. Yes there will be a period of adjustment and I will not begin to tell you life from this point on is going to be all roses, but I can tell you it will be what you make it. As with everything in life if you focus on the positive you will find there is a lot of positive to be had.

Sure wish you the best in all your adventures, Slowpoke