Told To Drive When It's Obvious You're Too Tired.

I totally agree with the boot camp analogy. I showed up at Parris Island in 1977 weighing in at 117 lbs. soaking wet. I k ew exactly what was going to happen, and it happened. Full Metal jacket is one of my favorite movies by the way, be a use it is exactly like my boot camp experience. I expected what I got, and like Persian Conversion , (Oorah by the way) it was a psychological experience that I had prepared myself for. I approached this career the same way. TT helped with those expectations. As well as growing up in a time when we worked for what we got, for a boss man, and I have always tried to step up to their expectations not the other way around. Love the whole Modern Worker analogy too. So true.

Great analogy!

I have a letter my son wrote from Parris Island: "Everything is going great. The DIs are constantly yelling at us, which is their job. We're constantly being yelled at, which is our job. Tomorrow, we get to shoot the big stuff! This is cool!"

I'm nowhere near USMC material, nor am I a truck driver yet, but my mind is pretty set on taking WHATEVER is dished out and at the end of the day, I will STILL be getting to drive the big truck. Thanks for helping keep my expectations on target. I know when I think I've hit the end of my rope, these posts will help me remember "This is cool!"

I totally agree with the boot camp analogy. I showed up at Parris Island in 1977 weighing in at 117 lbs. soaking wet. I k ew exactly what was going to happen, and it happened. Full Metal jacket is one of my favorite movies by the way, be a use it is exactly like my boot camp experience. I expected what I got, and like Persian Conversion , (Oorah by the way) it was a psychological experience that I had prepared myself for. I approached this career the same way. TT helped with those expectations. As well as growing up in a time when we worked for what we got, for a boss man, and I have always tried to step up to their expectations not the other way around. Love the whole Modern Worker analogy too. So true.

Unfortunately I can't return the "oorah" because I went to NAVY boot camp...

I was linked: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/8hg092/trucking_company_commands_trucker_to_drive_160/ by someone recently as something to think about trucking.

I remember watching this video when I was first gathering information about trucking, and at first I just thought "Yeah, there's good and bad **** out there like anything else." About a week ago, I read this thread and was reminded of the video and all of Brett's posts made a lot of good sense to me. I think it's more topical to bump this 2 year old thread right now. A lot of those comments seem to also be full of ignorance, as reddit does.

Omg it's Abe again. The Abe nightmare never ends!

I remember watching this video a couple months ago when I started looking into trucking. Even though I haven't gotten my feet wet yet I can tell this guy is milking it. :P

Side note: I am in the medical field, I've been awake for over 24 hours. I worked this weekend day to evening shift and then worked an overnight last night. I couldn't sleep yesterday after I woke up in the morning, did I call in? Nope, I took my butt to work. Another thing is if I show up to work and clock in, I can't just up and leave without getting fired and possibly loosing my medical certifications. I have to get relief if I need to leave and if I can't, well tough luck. Just food for thought!

I found this video before i found TT. first i thought..."omg! that dispatcher is a slave driver!" after being on the road i thought "Omg! that driver is a whiny POS, PITA complaining bum."

i take naps all the time. no one cares cause i deliver early . no one ever called the cops on me. he sucks.

Well since this was bumped to the top, I said well I guess I will watch the video. Starts out 3 mins long and then i look and know its 15... ( guess it was loading more) I am like well I am already halfway thru the video, so do I stop it, or do I trudge on....

Not sure who to blame (haha myself) for 15 mins I will never get back.

Only comment, I bet his company didnt know he was recording the conversation, to later post of the treat him so badly.

Apologies for raising yet another old thread, but I could not resist this one.

I am confused by something though, everyone keeps mentioning 160 miles. I'm not sure where that came from, but I did have trouble understanding some of the recorded conversation. I did see people post that he drove 2 hours before saying he was falling asleep, so maybe that is where the 160 miles comes from. Livonia to Oak Creek is 5.5 hours according to Google.

But regardless, Bear in mind I am not a trucker, and driving a truck is surely different than my van, but I could have driven 5.5 hours after sitting awake for 10 hours. And I tend to get sleepy when driving, and that may be my downfall in this career. BUT, I did hear the dispatcher ask him if he wanted to sleep for an hour, which no one has mentioned. If I drove 2 hours dead tired, napped for an hour, I could have driven at least another 2 hours, then maybe I would need to get out an go to the bathroom, get a cup of coffee, walk around, and go another 2 hours. And so on. I recently drove 650 miles with no problem. I got a room about 30 miles from my destination, simply because I had promised my wife I would not drive the entire way, that I would get a room somewhere. I take promises seriously, so I stopped, though I could have easily made it the whole way.

My take is that he wanted to make this video to get hits. Everyone wants to be a YouTube star these days, and young people have no work ethic.

Frankly, the guarantee is probably helping create guys like him. In my unexperienced opinion, he is gaming the system and collect his guarantee while doing as little as possible.

I used to sell cars, then became manager. I would hire and train guys for a sales job where you could make $50K by simply showing up and talking to people all day. It was long hours (12 hours a day M, T, and Th, and 9 hours a day W or Fri (one of those is a day off), and Sat. I hired and trained a kid and in his first week, he was late twice, always with some excuse. I pulled him aside, and warned him if he couldn't be on time, I would have to let him go. A few days later, he was late again. I pulled him aside again, and told him next time he was going to be late, to not bother calling, to just turn around and go home, because he would no longer have a job. The next day, I get a call saying he was going to be late. I told him go home, you don't have a job. He asked for another chance, and I told him I gave him another chance, and he blew it.

At the time, I was working 2 hours a day longer than the sales people, then going home and working on a side business (graphic design and database work) all night, napping on the couch while the database ran calculations, wake up, do some more work, start more calculations, and nap again, and if I was lucky, drag myself to bed for 2 hours of actual sleep. And yet, I was at work, on time, every day.

If he were my employee, and I had to route a truck for him under those circumstances, after offering him an hour nap, I would have fired him. And if there weren't a driver shortage, I bet they would have as well, and there would also be no guarantee.

Brett said:

This driver is my personal example of what is wrong with our society in general and the trucking industry specifically. An utter lack of pride, integrity, work ethic, and loyalty. This guy is everything I hope none of you will turn out to be.

And this:

Look, this dude knew exactly what he was doing by refusing to drive. You know that. Why didn't he just yank a wire out of the engine or slash a steer tire and say the truck is broke down? Why didn't he say he was sick and throwing up all over the place? Why didn't he do any of a million things he could have done to get out working without being questioned? He's been around long enough to know the tricks. He didn't want to use those tricks. He had an agenda.

He purposely refused to drive, knowing that was unacceptable under the circumstances and would get a big rise out of dispatch. Then he'd take advantage of any slip-ups they might make by setting up the video camera, getting "the goods" on his company, get out of working, and get a bunch of attention for his YouTube channel all at the same time. If they tried to fire him he figured he had the video to protect him. If things didn't go his way he knew the "poor me" act would draw a TON of attention to his YouTube channel. One way or another he figured he had it covered. He wouldn't have to work and he wouldn't lose his job if he played his cards right.

And then there's the 2500 miles per week guarantee his company pays, were you aware of that? What if he could LEGITIMATELY get out of working and yet remain eligible for the guarantee? He would do less work, make more money, get tons of attention for his YouTube channel, and have the goods on his company if everything went well. Even if it didn't he figured he'd come out alright in the end.

.... Abe clearly had an agenda. And a video camera.

He may have been too tired to hold the steering wheel but thank God he wasn't too tired to contrive his plan, setup the camera, and blackmail his company or we would have missed out on a lot of good debating now wouldn't we???? :-) 

Could not agree more. The whole thing was planned. My radar went off at the microsleep comment as well.