Is All Load Planning Not Planned Very Well Or Just My Company?

*like !!! Spot-on advice!

What its all about Davey, keeping your cool even in the worst situations. NEVER let THEM, know they may have pizzzd u off, because someone dropped the ball behind the scenes....I'm a relaxed kinda guy in my older age hahaha, didn't used to be, now I let most things roll off my back, and go with the flow to a certain extent. Always been nice to the office people as well as shippers or recievers , because once that certain load is done, everything's before hand, is but a memory, and the next day/load should be alright...Most was just common sense, but a LOT I also gleened off the forums here......

It’s my biggest complaint with Schneider.

Sometimes you just have to say no. If I had done what the planner wanted today for instance I would have sat in the shop half the day while a loaded relay trailer was repaired and only drove 158 miles for the delivery. The trailer had open work orders, was oos and was still assigned to me and of coarse they wanted me to sit at the shop with it until it was repaired. Instead I red tagged it, dropped it back in the yard, called in and spoke with my DBLs office and even though I did have to argue a bit I got the assignment removed and received a new one for just about 1100 miles.

I’m not recommending to anyone to refuse work or be insubordinate but definitely to stick up for yourself… these planners do not seem to have any respect for the drivers or their time.

The worst assignment I have received was to take a relay from one of our drop lots a total of 13 miles away for a live unload with an average unload time of 180 minutes… yeah that was a hard pass too. They have daily rate regional drivers they can give that **** to 👍🏻

Klutch wrote:

...these planners do not seem to have any respect for the drivers or their time

I don’t think thats necessarily true. They don’t typically understand our jobs and how their decisions can adversely effect their drivers. It’s not for lack of respect or care. Their primary mission is to get the freight moved, thus customer service. Without customers, we don’t have jobs. Different perspective.

Do you know your planners on a first name basis? Do you have a relationship with them? If possible you might want to work on that. It’s give and take... pick your spots.

Always hated those local trailer moves a couple miles, with their zip code-to-zip code BS lol Moved some Fed Ex trailers once in Texas, was actually 6 miles between spots only paid 3 miles talked with my DM bout it, he made it up to me in extra pay aside from mileage...

Funniest load we did @ CRST, was, we were in San Antonio, TX. Got sent a load to take an empty, from there all the way down to Miami, Fl 1,200 miles empty?? I had to call our DM to verify this ! He said YES ! Customer, has some special thing they're doing and will pay for this move. Then we bobtailed all the way back, to San Antonio, from Miami 1,200 miles again !! Ok fine ! Miles means money we're all over it boss! lol

We delivered that empty, yet to find there was 7 or 8 empties already sitting in this drop lot ! Whateverrrrr

Klutch wrote:

...these planners do not seem to have any respect for the drivers or their time

I don’t think thats necessarily true. They don’t typically understand our jobs and how their decisions can adversely effect their drivers. It’s not for lack of respect or care. Their primary mission is to get the freight moved, thus customer service. Without customers, we don’t have jobs. Different perspective.

Do you know your planners on a first name basis? Do you have a relationship with them? If possible you might want to work on that. It’s give and take... pick your spots.

I agree with that. Our company is structured so that we don't interface with the planners at all, it's done through our driver manager though, so we don't have the opportunity to develop a relationship with the planners.

I just got off the phone with my DM regarding my next load. He said that the account manager for it had very unrealistic expectations, she's basically the sales lady for the account. She literally couldn't understand why all the drivers couldn't and wouldn't run her loads last week and weekend and was this very upset that her loads were going to be late.

He had to explain to her that big trucks can get blown over in high winds and or blown into the next lane. He said that it just doesn't make sense to her, she's incapable of understanding it. He said without me explaining the physics of it to him, he wouldn't have ever thought about it before either.

I think we live in a different world. As drivers, most of us have a deeper understanding of the physical and mechanical world. I have a hunch that route planners and sales managers don't see a truck and physical roadways, and storms when they do their job, rather they see data, deadlines, numbers and paperwork. It's a foreign concept to them.

One of the best things that I've seen to help bridge the gap between office and drivers was that we were having office staff do occasional ride alongs with a driver. Id love to take a load planner along with. I'd bet it would give them a different perspective.

Klutch wrote:

...these planners do not seem to have any respect for the drivers or their time

I don’t think thats necessarily true. They don’t typically understand our jobs and how their decisions can adversely effect their drivers. It’s not for lack of respect or care. Their primary mission is to get the freight moved, thus customer service. Without customers, we don’t have jobs. Different perspective.

Do you know your planners on a first name basis? Do you have a relationship with them? If possible you might want to work on that. It’s give and take... pick your spots.

Schneider’s setup is not like the LTL industry that I had previous experience in. There is no building a relationship with dispatch or the planners, not in a traditional sense anyway.

There are multiple planners on each shift for each region. When your available for a new assignment, a planner for the current region your in works on it.

My contact is my DBL, or his office since he’s usually on another line… all the DBLs in my home OC take the calls. So when an issue does arise I have to call in to my DBLs team and they contact the planners and if needed customer service. I have no direct communication with the planners or customer service.

If it was like the LTL terminals I used to work at I would be much more focused on building up a good relationship with dispatch.

Being at a mega with thousands of drivers and having different planners all the time that I will never have any one on one communication with… it’s definitely a different situation.

I don’t doubt your right about some of the planners not intentionally disrespecting the drivers time, but whether the intention is there or not… they are. Regardless of job title, people are people and there’s going to be a mix of good and bad in every department.

I have worked dispatch for years, I have ran both inbound and outbound shifts as an ops manager and was a terminal manager for a regional LTL company. I know the office side of the business pretty well.

I don’t expect every assignment to be amazing and have done my fair share of short haul work but I will not take an assignment like the ones I described previously.

They know I’m not lazy, I run my ass off for them. I have no issue running out my hours every day. But ask me to sit for an extended period of time without pay and I just won’t do it. I’ll stay parked before I take one of those runs. When you figure out an hourly rate for some of the extreme assignments like I was referring to and it’s less than minimum wage, not happening.

Not once have I received any push back when refusing one of these assignments (discipline wise), I explain why and leave it in their hands. So far I have always had the assignment in question removed and replaced with something much better 🥳

My contract is up in like 3 months so hopefully they put up with me a bit longer.

Klutch and Davy it took me years to develop the relationship with Swift planners. It’s a marathon...

...top performance year after year is the catalyst for making it happen.

Klutch and Davy it took me years to develop the relationship with Swift planners. It’s a marathon...

Yeah it would definitely be something over the long term but I did not have plans on staying OVR. I took the paid training/contract with plans of getting back close to home when it was over. I still have good relationships at a couple of the LTL companies I worked for and that’s more what I was looking to do after getting some experience under my belt. Right now I’m out for 25, home for 5 and it’s a bit too much time away from the family.

I am very interested to see the details on Schneider’s pay changes however. For OVR drivers we are supposed to start getting paid for anything logged on-duty not driving starting in June. They did not release any numbers so no idea what the hourly rate will be and they did say it will replace some of the current accessorial pay. My immediate thought was detention pay. Right now we get detention pay even when logging off duty while we wait. That would force us to burn more of our 70 when sitting at docks but again, will just have to wait on the details.

Anyway I won’t derail further, I just never saw this as a long term position and therefore have put little to no thought into building a long term relationship with the people there. Unfortunately I live in a very remote area and OVR is all that Schneider has available.

...top performance year after year is the catalyst for making it happen.

How can I get that 'BANNER' that Brett used to have on here, for 'BEST ANSWER?'

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ THIS. IS. THAT. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

As a trucker's wife, rolling coins early on in his career, I concur.

~ Anne ~