Need Help With A Situation

I understood what i was getting into once i took the contract but things became more difficult at home since then. What should i do?

A-Ro, I don't want to rain on your parade, but I have got to disagree with the advice given thus far.

Trucking is an unforgiving profession with some harsh realities to it, and you are up against one of them. I don't think you are going to get any special preference by talking about your situation with them. You are in a contract, and if they decide that just because your situation changed and got tougher then they should let you out, then what about every other driver's contract? Everybody has problems and issues, and everybody thinks things would have worked out better when they get into this crazy lifestyle. I hope you don't have to look back and realize that what I'm saying is right one day soon, but I think your best option in this case is to communicate with your wife and son and let them know that their future well being depends on you, and them, figuring out how to make it through this difficult time. If you leave CRST you are going to have a very difficult time landing another trucking job. People can talk all they want about how that makes them a "bad company," but the truth of this whole situation is that they did what they said they would, and you are now wanting to get out of your part of the contract.

I taught my children to never let the "tyranny of the urgent" run their lives and force them into bad decisions. Your situation is the very kind of thing that I wanted them to be aware of. Yes, I agree with the truth that your family is the most important commitment you have, but the tyranny of what seems to you a critical problem can cause you to lose sight of the "big picture" of how this career may be the very thing that your family can benefit from in the long run. Don't be short sighted. Weigh all your options carefully, but realize that there will be ramifications, serious ones, if you decide that CRST is a bad company for not letting you out of this agreement. My advice is that the folks you need to be communicating with are your family members. I know you knew all about the custody battle situation long before you got into this, and maybe you just didn't realize how difficult things would be with you being gone, and now you've got compounded problems, but in my opinion your best option here is to finish what you've started and then work on getting something local if that will help. I see no benefit from quitting CRST and breaking your word to them - your word is in a signed contract, and that thing will hold up in court no matter how difficult your situation gets. Character is often times proven under the most difficult circumstances.

Old School I have great respect for you and what you say, but if you have a wife full with your unborn child at home and she is having pregnancy complications and telling you she needs you at home, 1000 miles away under load is the last place you want to be when something bad happens...

I agree that every effort should be made to fulfill your contract if possible, but damn it man sometimes extenuating circumstances arise and some things are just more important than the job when it comes right down to it. Family well being would be one of those more important things, to me anyway.

Of course, this is all just our opinions and you know how those can be. This is really a deeply personal decision for the OP, no one else can say for sure what he should decide in his situation.

Im currently under contract with CRST but do to custody battle and wife pregnant with complications I need to be home more hell need a job close to home because im out a month at a time and home 5 days then back out. Its beginning to be hard on my son with my mom having him with no help until i finish contract. I want to finish because i dnt a bad rep over my name but my family needs me to be there more. I understood what i was getting into once i took the contract but things became more difficult at home since then. What should i do? U think CRST would let me go without putting anything bad over my head to keep other companies from hiring me?

If I were in your shoes I'd do as others have suggested... If I couldn't get anywhere with the DM , I'd go up the chain. If it was a brick wall all the way, then I'd continue to work while searching for a job that got me home. (Actually I'd be searching right now.) When I found what I needed, I'd give crst notice and ask how much I owe them to buy out the remainder of the contract (I'm assuming they would allow that)... And I'd pay it right then or make arrangements to pay it off as quickly as possible. This would be an honorable resolution.

Lets say none of what u guys are recommending me to do wrk should i look elsewhere?

A-Ro, two of the four people who answered here actually used the word "talk". Justin added " Go up the chain of command". Add me to that number. Do not think quitting your job will help. But you do need to talk to your boss and explain the situation.

You already have a job, so don't waste your time looking for another one, just talk to your boss now.

Tend to agree with talking to the bosses, as far up as needed. I worked for Waste Management trash company in the 80s-90s . Me and the soon-to-be-ex were having major issues, and we had 2 very young kids. She'd get freaked out, couldn't handle them & call me home from work, more times than I can count!

I kept my supervisor up on all the drama I was dealing with her, so i wouldn't lose my job! It worked out for the best, having him on my side, and cutting me breaks during that hard time, pre-divorce

Thank y'all i called my DM and she gave me a number to the dedicated part of the company now just waiting to hear from him. I also been calling other jobs as well and explained my situation if they cant do anythang as far as getting me close to hm. Im not trying to quit because i dnt hve long to fulfill my contract but if i can get on dedicated runs to where my hometime is more frequent I'll stay. Im just asking for them to wrk with me thats all but if they cnt then i hve to do what i hve to do. Thank yall again for your advices helped me a whole lot.

As always I agree with Old School on this one.

I taught my children to never let the "tyranny of the urgent" run their lives and force them into bad decisions

That should be read 1000 times over and committed to memory. It's 100% true. People get caught up in moments and make drastic decisions based on emotion. In fact, we're in the middle of another conversation right now titled My short Journey with Schneider is over -- I am the fool because a fella was handed a tough assignment he wasn't expecting and quit his job, instantly regretting it.

No one is questioning the idea that family comes first. But that doesn't mean you should drop everything anytime there's a challenge in front of you and expect the world to accommodate you. I'm amazed at the attitude people have toward their employers and toward commitments they make. The idea that a company should be expected to change the way they do business and accommodate everyone's changing feelings and circumstances is something I'd expect a sixteen year old to think, but not people who have been in the working world for quite some time. Yes, you should talk to the bosses to see if there's some way they can accommodate you but I would expect them to say no and I would prepare to work through the last few months of the contract or pay it off entirely before leaving.

One big problem you face is that CRST is almost certainly not going to let you quit on the contract and go work somewhere else. Nor should they. They have a history of going after employers that hire their drivers while still under contract. If you have the cash to pay off the contract then do that and find local work. If not, you should expect to fulfill the rest of the contract and then find something local. I mean, we're talking a few months, not a hundred years.

Being that Veterans Day just passed, think about what it's like for our soldiers. Many of them have families they're leaving behind for much, much longer periods of time and much greater distances. They don't get to quit and go home every time something becomes difficult back home. I'm sure you and your wife have family and friends you can look to for help and moral support for a few months. Maybe they can even loan you the money to pay off the contract?

if you have a wife full with your unborn child at home and she is having pregnancy complications and telling you she needs you at home, 1000 miles away under load is the last place you want to be when something bad happens...

In an emergency you can always park the truck at a truck stop and fly home. But you can't just quit living your life or make sweeping, radical changes every time you find yourself in a circumstance where something could possibly go wrong. That's always going to be the case.

I think you should expect to work off the contract or pay it off. In fact, you may not have much of a choice if you want to continue with a career in trucking because I don't think anyone else is going to be able to hire you otherwise.

A-Ro, let me encourage you to finish your contract. It's only four more months. Hopefully they can get you on a dedicated account that gets you home more often, but if not, I would still encourage you to finish OTR if you have to.

I understand the family pressure. As Old School and Brett said, everyone has problems that sometimes seem insurmountable, but finishing this will help you out a lot in the long term. Next year this time you will have new problems (hopefully, and not the same old problems), but if you finish the contract, you will have a lot more options.

And for what it's worth, let me give you some perspective on what it's like for your DM and her boss and her boss's boss. I had a job where I managed four operations managers, who managed 30 supervisors, who managed 450-500 people who took calls in a call center. One of my jobs was to make sure we had enough staff on the phones to handle all the calls coming in at any given time. It was a 24/7/365 operation.

We hired people to second shift. You had to earn your way to first shift, which usually took at least three months and was based on performance.

Guess what? Nearly every day, and certainly at least every week, someone's request to go to first shift bubbled up to me. I heard all kinds of reasons for needing to change shifts from people who had been working there only a couple of weeks or a month, fresh out of training sometimes. Some were for very serious family or health issues.

I had the same conversation every time:

Did recruiting tell you that you were being hired to second shift and that it would be at least three months before you could have a shot at first shift? (Generally the answer was yes, although one recruiter was fired eventually because we found out she was telling them they could change sooner.)

Have we done for you what we said we would do when we hired you? (Generally yes, and if not, I got the happy job of fixing it.)

What can you do on your side to make this work?

And this is where I would get a blank stare so often that I became numb to it. Like, what do you mean, what can I do? I just told you everything and this is why I have to change shifts!

A lot of drivers have the same mentality, so even if your situation is unique (but I doubt it really is, no offense), don't expect your DM or her boss or especially her boss's boss to get teary-eyed over it. They've heard something similar before, and if they've been doing it long enough, they've caught people lying about some dramatic situation to try to force a change in their work conditions.

I personally fired six people my last year at the old job for submitting fake obituaries. We made them bring an original obituary from the service because we had a very liberal bereavement policy and found out people abused it. I saw bad cut and paste photocopies of obits more than once (come on, at least try to match the original font!). There was one guy who got weepy in my office before his dad's funeral who became weepy for a different reason a few days later when I asked him if they dug dear old dad up so he could have another funeral as I showed him the obituary online that suggested dad had been buried three years earlier. (OK, I'm not that heartless, I only wanted to ask him if they dug up his dead dad - but I did show him the obit online and watched him turn red before I fired him.)

That's just fake deaths to get out of work. There were lots of other things that went on, like seeing an employee working their second job at night after they cried because they had some sick relative to care for in the evenings or because their car was broke down and the bus didn't run late enough for them to get home.

I'm not at all suggesting that you are telling a tale, A-Ro. I'm simply trying to help you understand why going to the top sometimes means you'll get someone who is less sympathetic and more suspicious and much more likely to say no.

I hope it works out for you and your family. Trucking is not the kind of job that lends itself to lots of hands-on, TV dad type parenting and husbanding. I hope you can make it work.