Extended time off

As I am sure all have noticed I have been gone a long time. Well I took my vacation but even before that started on my last week of work I managed to injure myself. Go figure. That in turn extended my time off for 3 months. After I was cleared to go back to work the company I was working for underwent a management change and all new rules went into effect that made working for that company no longer something I wanted to do so, I hit the want ad's.

I started out looking for a local truck job but they are very few and hard to come by these days with the economy sucking as bad as it is. I even applied for one job 3 days before it was posted in the papers and my app got shuffled under 100 more drivers who applied for the same job.
So I went back to what I know best, hauling food all over the country.

I would still like to work a local job and be able to be home every night but until things get better I will stick to what makes me the cash I need to support my family. That is the reason most OTR (over the road) Drivers are out here.

I am running for a much smaller company then I am used to now and it seems to be a bit better and by smaller I mean about 300 trucks in the fleet.

I have been in company's with thousands and to them you are just a number they push around their computer screens. I didn't mind being a number tho because if you didn't call attention to your self they would leave you alone. Of course you would have to learn how to play the big company games. With big company's came the big list of rules because nothing was on a personal level and the rules had to fit every possible situation they could think of.

First, you learn the rules and who has control of who. With most big truck company's the safety department has control over everyone else, and this is a plus for the driver if they know how to use it.

Second, you make sure you have a perfect "on-time" record. This is a bit tricky depending on how close the company wants to cut the time you have to run their loads and how much control they give away to the customers they haul for. Some company's give way too much control to their customers and naturally they want the load delivered yesterday even if it is 2500 miles away. Most of the big company's have computers in their trucks and when you get a load the first thing you do is calculate the time it will take you to get it picked up and delivered.( There are several ways and formulas to do this by. I will try and explain them at a later date but for now lets stick to just saying that's what you do.). If the load is too close you send a computer message stating that you can not deliver this load on time safely and legally. Once it is in a company computer message it is permanent record and cant be disputed that you warned them and by most big company rules you are no longer responsible for the load being late. It does take a good bit of time in the trucking industry to get this bit of knowledge down to a working system but it is what it is and it works.

The third Part comes after they notice your record for "on-time" and safety and legal log keeping. There will come the phone call where they ask for a "favor" and it wont be from your normal dispatcher, it will be from his boss or a load planer. This phone call will be about a HOT load they need done and can't find any one to run it or it could be a rescue load from a broke down or a driver who got into trouble. Jump on this chance to help. EVERY company keeps a file on each driver and things like this are kept in there believe it or not it counts for or against you depending on how you answer this call. So if you can in any way run this load for them legally DO IT. They will state "they owe you one" and that means they put it in your file with their name on it and having the bosses name with a good remark or a I.O.U. goes a LONG way in getting you what you want in the way of runs or time off not to mention if your make a load planner happy you tend to get some real gravy runs out of them.

I am not saying this all works every time but for me it has been a great way to run in a large company.

So now I have to see if I can run in this smaller company the same way or maybe I might have to make a few changes. I am not too worried tho I do know the basics that you need for every job, Cover Your Ass at all times. Its hard to sit and drive with no ass.

Til next time, keep safe.

Tsu