To Ease Your Mind About Winter Driving...

Potential and new drivers are often nervous about bad weather driving. Will they be forced to drive in it? Will they look wimpy and incompetent as a trucker if they slow or shut down? Will the dispatcher get mad if they stop?

Youtubers often tell you their dispatcher tried to force them to drive which i don't believe. They just want attention, or abuse the trust the company places in them by shutting down constantly. There is a difference between legitmate shut downs and cry baby laziness who shutdown every week.

I post this to show you the answer is an emphatic NO! You are not incompetent or wimpy. This is not just my company but all of the reputable companies out here. Some companies like Moderator Susan's will call for a mandatory fleet shutdown.

I would love to see others post messages from their company to prove this to newbies.

Rainy

Looks as if Matt takes care of you guys. /and that is great. I never talk to the dispatcher my mentor uses he always does. And she seems to know what she is doing. I needed to come home and pay my rent in person. My landlord is funny that way. So they routed us to Lathrop (about 64 miles south of Sacramento). So I'm home doing laundry also.

But getting back to your original post of shutting down because of weather, she routed us through Southern California first then to Northern California. Donner Summit had 26" of snow. Now I have driven for 3 years in England and tours in Korea. There you will see some snow. But as it is I'm in states now so different surroundings, I have not driven through North or South Dakota or Michigan or the east coast. But Wyoming and Montana I have. No matter where we drive in this winter or any winter for that matter we need to trust our gut feeling on when to drive and when to shut down. If you don't feel safe driving in that slop then tell your DM and park out of the way safely and make sure you have plenty of food and water and warm clothes. I do not believe any DM would force a person to drive in unsafe weather. I know we all want to make money at our jobs, but it is not worth the lives of families on the road or ourselves to die because we thought it to be macho to drive in the unsafe conditions. Ok I'm done preaching. Just want to hear about anyone on TT that risked driving when they could be safe hold up some place warm and safe.

thanks Rainy for bringing this to the forum. As usual, you articles and wisdom are a breath of fresh air. Again thanks.

Raptor

We get the same kinds of messages. My student and I had a light load from Eastern Pennsylvania to Washington. Heading West into a winter storm heading East. Bad roads and weather all the way. I kept dispatch in the loop the whole time. The weekend dispatchers thought, when I sent a message that we were shutting down early for the day and that the weather was continuing to slow our progress, we were shutting down longer than our 10 hour break. They sent a response for us to send the form for weather shutdown. I told them we would be rolling in the morning. I waited until Monday when my fleet manager was in and had him change our status from out of service back to active. The point is that their only concern was that we were safe. CFI, like most companies, takes "captain of the ship" very seriously.

Never be afraid to drive very slow with your flashers on to get to safety. No load is worth your life. Don't become a statistic. We are dying out here in record numbers.

I have a habit of deleting non-essential company messages from my phone so I don't have this one there,but I still have the message received earlier on my QC.

I'm currently sitting in Elkhart, IN on my 10. Only I'm going to stretch this break out to maybe 16hrs or so in hopes of letting the storm pass before I roll on to Denver.

Although I may push myself sometimes, its never because of pressure from dispatch. They let me call all the shots. Safety always comes first, second, and third.

Knight also sends these messages out, for high wind, any storms they hear about too.

I am free to shutdown when I feel it's necessary....

Linehaul is a little different, as it is difficult for us to just shut down somewhere for weather. So I called my dispatcher and asked if we where running, they said my route hasn't officially been closed yet but it is being dispatched on driver discretion.

Since the storm will be chasing me all the way to Indy with 40 mph winds, I called off for weather and said I will run Sunday instead.

Potential and new drivers are often nervous about bad weather driving. Will they be forced to drive in it? Will they look wimpy and incompetent as a trucker if they slow or shut down? Will the dispatcher get mad if they stop?

Youtubers often tell you their dispatcher tried to force them to drive which i don't believe. They just want attention, or abuse the trust the company places in them by shutting down constantly. There is a difference between legitmate shut downs and cry baby laziness who shutdown every week.

I post this to show you the answer is an emphatic NO! You are not incompetent or wimpy. This is not just my company but all of the reputable companies out here. Some companies like Moderator Susan's will call for a mandatory fleet shutdown.

I would love to see others post messages from their company to prove this to newbies.

Thank you for this. Though I have told my wife this many times, I'm not sure she didn't think deep down that I was just saying it to make her feel better.

She felt much better after I showed it to her and explained what it was.

Be mindful of the self imposed pressure to get miles and make money. With Jim Palmer I've never been pressured to roll in bad weather. If anything, I've been encouraged to shut down if I don't feel safe. Company policy is if you need to put chains on it's time to park. Chains are to be used to get out of a spot like an icy dock.

Also, kudos to Prime for sending out fleet messages to the advanced fleet about weather and road closures!

I got a message ahead of the storm warning us about the type of weather I'll be in, and of course safety is first and always. Schneider encourages you to use your stop work authority if the weather gets to bad or you don't feel safe driving in it, etc.