Would You Refuse This Load?

Rubber Duck, in the long run you will almost always get back what you give in your relationships within your company. These companies have a ton of freight to move. They count on their best drivers to handle the bulk of the workload and to take care of their most important customers.

Why would a business stab their most important workers in the back when those workers are so rare and valuable? Top tier drivers are very rare indeed, and desperately needed. Maybe the top 10% - 20% of the drivers out there make up this top tier. Those are the drivers that are getting treated the best.

If you're being stabbed in the back then it's a near certainty any top tier driver would be able to figure out why that is rather quickly and easily by watching how you operate as a driver and how you handle your relationships within your company. That is, if you're being stabbed in the back. Often times drivers have rather unrealistic expectations of what their job duties should be, or made up fantasies about what's actually happening in the offices.

Trust is everything in relationships. If they can trust you to work really hard and move freight safely and reliably then they're going to treat you like gold. The less valuable you are as a driver the fewer miles you're going to get and the fewer favors you're going to get. If you're not that good then you're pretty much expendable. They're not going to risk losing their best drivers, but they might risk losing some of their lower tier drivers. Heck, they might be happy to push a few of them out. It certainly happens, I can promise you that.

The moderators and experienced drivers that have been around here for years never, ever claim to be mistreated or stabbed in the back. Why do you suppose that's happening to you?

For me, I would have to say it depends. I would sit down with my FM/DM and see why they want me to do it. My last manager saw that I would take some of the harder and longer runs that some of the others wouldn't take or he felt like they couldn't do it well because of the other drivers time management skills (or lack of). For example, he gave me a run from southern VT to PA near Allentown. I got to the shipper , and they were late as usual, so I figured I would be getting to the last stop just about the time they closed for the day. Made all my stops, and when I got to the last one about 1545hrs, I checked in with the office, and they told me receiving had just left for the day because my FM had called them and said I wasn't expected to get there before 1630 (which is understandable, since they leave at 1600 anyway). They told me what door to back into so I could get unloaded as soon as they got there at 0730, and gave me permission to drop my trailer so I could go to the local mini truck stop. I then called my boss to let him know I was there and what was going on, and where I would be spending the night. He told me he was surprised because he honestly thought I wouldn't get there that day, and he was impressed. He then surprised me with an extra little bonus in my trip pay and got me home a day early for the weekend, with "layover pay" of the same amount as an "Atta Boy". He then started asking me to do other similarly hard trips, and always made it worth my extra effort.

My DM also knew that if I went to him with a concern on if I could do a trip or not based on my HOS , I knew what I was talking about, and only once or twice sat down and did the math and saw that I was either right, or explained to me how I could do it if he adjusted the delivery times by a few hours either way.

I guess it is how comfortable you are with talking to your FM/DM, and how understanding they are. I guess I was very lucky by having one who drove for more than 20 years, and could tell the drivers who knew what they were doing and the ones who still needed to learn...

. I guess I was very lucky by having one who drove for more than 20 years, and could tell the drivers who knew what they were doing and the ones who still needed to learn...

You are fortunate to be in that position. Many of the DL's and Planners that I deal with have never spent 5 minutes on the road. On the other hand, I spoke with a Planner at our Lancaster, TX Terminal yesterday. Not sure if she was ever a driver, but we both spoke the same language, HOS , Recaps etc. She found me the perfect load for my available recap hours. 1200 miles from Beaumont, TX to Logan, OH. Very refreshing to have someone on the other end of the phone with that knowledge. I wish my DL had the same knowledge. He is a real nice guy, but brand new, 26 years old, never been a driver. It makes a big difference!

I've never had a driver manager who had driving experience, but I've always had excellent driver managers. Now having someone who is inexperienced or new to the business can be trying, but just as with any job they should get better at it with experience. My current driver manager started out twenty something years ago loading trucks at an LTL company, and somehow worked his way into being the operations manager for our dedicated account.

Many of these driver manager positions get performance based pay similar to yours. So it gives them an incentive to help you be more productive. If you've got a greenhorn manager you can really help them with dead on accurate information concerning your arrival times, ETA's, and PTA's. Those times are a huge help to them, but you've got to make sure you have a track record that inspires complete trust. That one facet of this business, (Trust) is completely misunderstand by most of us. It's highly valuable to your success, and only you can make sure it's working for your advantage.