How can one State, and one Terminal cause me so much heart burn.
Yes you guessed it, Texas.
Our last trip was to Amarillo.
We were scheduled to pick up a load weighing 35000 lbs, going to Laredo. When we arrive, we check in, drop the empty, continue to shipping department to sign in, go find and hook to our preloaded trailer, stop at shipping on the way out to sign our paperwork only to find out the actual weight is 45000. Too heavy for us. We told the shipping clerk and he shook his head and says happens all the time; a lot of Swift drivers come in expecting a lower weight. He said all the shipments weigh this amount. So we had to do all that in reverse.
We (I) contacted Swift telling (yelling) our frustration and deciding to take our 34 off in Amarillo.
We ate at the ‘World Famous’ Big Texan Steak house.
They offer a FREE STEAK DINNER all you have to do is eat the 72oz steak in 1-hour. You pay for it first, $75, then if you finish you get your money back.
While we were there, a man was attempting this feat.
There is a live camera where you can watch too. It is at bigtexan.com He did not finish, but received a round of applause from the restaurant goers for his effort.
They also have a shooting gallery where you can wait for your table. I shot a rifle and Will picked a pistol and he shot better than me. He must have cheated. Will had a 12oz steak and I had 8oz steak. Not a lot of chicken choices.
They also offer free Cadillac ride from your hotel to the restaurant, we did not know this and had to drive the semi.
The next day after resetting our hours and receiving only one short mile load, we tell dispatch that since there are no team loads here we will relocate ourselves to Oklahoma City.
A Funny thing happened on the way to Oklahoma. After complaining about only receiving solo loads we were told we were not listed as a team in the system and to get with our Driver Manager on Monday to correct it. Well of course I was furious. My fingers could not keep up with my range. I sent a message on the qualcom…..i posted on swift’s facebook page asking how after 3 years we are suddenly not a team. (has it only been 3 years seems like a life time)
On Monday our dm fixes the problem. But that doesn’t fix my anger.
I sent an e-mail to the Lancaster Texas terminal manager, asking how this happened. His reply was the 11 solo hours his load planner saw was correct and suggested we make sure we are on the correct driving line on our logs. We have electronic logs so it is hard not to be on the correct line. Every morning we send in a driver status report. That shows our eta to the next stop and our pta, projected time available. We reported that on July 7 our pta would be 22hrs. They want teams to have a minimum of 22 hrs available. On July 8, after not driving, we still had a pta of 22hrs.
So I sent a second email. Since I did not understand his replay and my question to Lancaster was how can the system show we only had 11 solo hrs available when I reported 22 team hrs available.
His second email included (selected) screen shots, that proved his point. There is a program running in the back ground that projects our pta. He called it a virtual pta
(not sure why he have to put in a reality pta then) The screen shots were interesting in what they showed and didn’t show. He showed a screen shot of our driver status on July 8 that showed he had 22 hrs. and a screen shot of July 6 that showed we had 11 hrs. Which is true, that’s why we took our 34 off at that time. So I still do not understand if a screen shot on July 8 that shows 22 hrs available, why on July 8 a loadplanner believed us to only have 11 hrs.
I think it is a losing argument. Of course they will provide me with their side of the documentation to uphold their side.
No matter what, we all know what happened. The loadplanner got pissed off and got an attitude,
first when we refused that load in Amarillo that was too heavy and second when they sent us a low miles load that was also hazmat. That put them in a spot. In reality the miles made it a team load because it was 650 miles but not in time. It did not deliver for 2 ½ days. A solo hazmat could have taken it. The problem is there are not that many hazmat drivers. So we believe the load planner changed our available hours, or choose to only look at the incorrect pta. That later statement was added only as a remote possibility. The response from face book was expected, everyone believes that is exactly what happened. Everyone had a different story of how a loadplanner got back at them for refusing a load.
Our dm said it doesn’t benefit them to make us appear to be solo. I said the only benefit would be to the loadplanners satisfaction of punishing us. She did not say that the hours were changed on purpose but did not say it is impossible and the system will not allow it. Too her benefit, she did not try to make excuses for what happened, in fact she said she cant change what happened, lets just move on.
I cant not believe how mad I am over this. As you can probably tell because im rambling on and on.
Anyway the reason I have time to ramble on and on is because we are sitting in Edwardsville, (Kansas City) without a load.
There are a lot of trucks here so that tells us there are not a lot of loads. So it does not appear anyone is picking on us….not this time.
Gee I feel better,
thanks
Love and Miss you all ......very very much.
