If you had your radio on, you…
Posted on Jul 21, 2010 - 10:21pm by Marshall J. Gruskin in Business, Economy, Health, Lifestyle, News, Trucking
“No driver, I don’t think so. You are a moron and you don’t belong behind the wheel of a big rig. You need to find a job where you can use that vast brainpower you seem to believe you have. I suggest an assembly job, in, MEXICO! Now move that truck out of my way or I’ll surely do it for you.”
“Take I264 go thru tunnel, cross drawbridge, rd will bear rt around curve, do not go straight, bear rt as rd straightens out, go 1/4 mile to XT10 right to Tidewater Drive, merge, go to Cromwell Rd, go left and follow and turns into Ingleside, stay left get in left hand lane on lhs brown bldg.”
“The load is ready at 3pm.”
I’ve now been back in trucking, hum, let’s see, about three whole days – 36 hours. I left the house on the bus – the Greyhound bus – Sunday. I survived the trip, barely, with no sleep. Spent all day at the terminal on Monday listening to whiny drivers moan, groan and complain about everything. Got the new truck. Company, meanwhile, was confused on whether the DOT physical I spend $80 on was good “enough” for them to let me drive. I did a piss test at some really creepy clinic in downtown Birmingham. APU on new truck breaks down – spent two hours getting loose wires repaired at Thermo King dealer. Tuesday, they’re still confused about my driving. I could have stayed home. They finally ask me to go pick up and shuttle some MT trailers. No problem. Good opportunity to test drive the new truck with a different transmission than I ‘m used to. New high tech talking QUALCOM has no instruction manual. It talks to you, and I can’t shut off the annoying female voice.
About Noon, I get a trip to pick-up pipe at 3pm downtown again. I need to get back home to get all my stuff to do the job safely, but I’m headed instead to Norfolk, VA. Is that near Tampa? I don’t think so. It’s 700 miles from Birmingham- Northeast, not South. I arrive 2:45pm. Five trucks are waiting at the gate. No one knows why the guard shack is locked. We cannot check in. Wait and wait and wait. It’s 103 degrees. An hour later someone shows up. I’m told to go to Bay B. When I get there, I wait and wait and wait. Then I pull in and wait and wait and wait. Sound familiar? Some pipe and angle is put on the trailer. I’m told to pull out and go to the yard to finish the load. I do and wait and wait and wait. I leave the plant at 11 freak’n pm! I had to cover the load with plastic, then tarp it. Almost 9 hours! They’re crazy. In the photo are all the incomplete loads on trailers, waiting – completeness.
There is no waiting time or detention paid. That’s the way the shipper works. It’s just like calling a plumber when you think there is going to be a leak. He gets there and waits. Hours later, there is a leak. He fixes it. And you pay for the time that he arrived until the time he leaves plus the parts to fix it. But not in trucking. How many times have I talked about this? This is my first load since being off for two months and this is what happens. And I’m beyond angry about it. Something has to be done about this BS and soon. This is just what the FMCSA Administrator was talking about in her speech a few weeks ago. And it happens because the chicken $%^& trucking companies don’t complain about it. Why should they? They’re under NO obligation, legally or otherwise, to pay drivers for being on the job waiting for the shipper to complete the order. When they say have the truck here at 3 pm – the load is not even off the manufacturing line yet! JIT my tush. I’m afraid to ask how much per mile they’re paying to deliver the stuff.
Today, I had to deal with trying to fuel at one of the crown jewels of the Pilot travel center universe, their location at I-85 in Braselton GA. Trucks are backed out onto the highway. Parking is limited and extremely tight, dangerous in fact. Why are there are so many trucks trying to park at 1pm? It’s weird – get out on the road and drive for goodness sakes! I “interfaced” with the manager – and he is truly clueless. He doesn’t even know how to do a cash advance. Pawned it off to the only poor clerk that showed up for work today.
Pilot still can’t manage to get their system to show which truck number has a cash advance. You have to tell the clerk which fuel island you were on or they get really really frustrated. Like a child trying to put a square block into a round hole. T/A seems to have figured out how to do it years ago, but not Pilot. Because they’re morons. They were short handed – understaffed – so the poor woman clerk dealt with everything by mumbling trash talk under her breath. I said: “What did you just say?” She said, mumble, mumble, mumble.” I was in a foul mood. “When is the last time you actually used shampoo to wash your hair?” “Mumble, mumble, mumble.” The manager just stood there, as I said, clueless. I signed for and got my $100 cash advance and two strips of register receipts almost a foot long that I don’t need and threw away. Waste of a tree. I got out of there fast.
But, before that, I tried to cut through the CAT scale to get around the gridlock. Yeah right. There is a USA driver parked on the damn scale! He’s waiting for his “partner” to grab both of them McDonald’s, get the weigh ticket and probably take a quick shower. And I wait and wait and wait. There are four trucks now waiting blocking the fuel islands to get weighed. I have 600 miles to drive today and I’m waiting (more waiting) to cross the scale to get around the interlocked lot. It is impossible to go the “regular” way because the parking lot is filled with rookies and amateurs trying to blind back and whatever else necessary to squeeze their 53 footers in the ridiculous little spaces.
Twenty minutes later, the USA fool pulls off the scale and then decides he needs to park and just stops and blocks traffic. I’m sorry, but if I had a shot gun, I would have used it. This driver is a menace. An idiot. Who hired this fool? USA, that’s who. I hit my new blazing air horns and swung around him. He gives me the bird. I went to exit and another truck stops at an angle and blocks all the exiting traffic. I’m cursed. I’m back in hell. Pilot hell. Trucking hell. I trapped. The “driver” applies his brakes, gets out and walks over and tells me “if” I had my radio on, I would know that he has “decided” to remain where he is so he can back up into a space. He doesn’t care that he’s blocking the exit – he wants a space and if he doesn’t remain where he is, he will never get one. He is a 350 lbs. little boy child with the brain of a lizard. Well, let’s just say that after my tirade, which included the statement to this driver that I did in fact have my “radio” on – my satellite radio – this useless piece of pond scum moved his truck and all of “us” departed back onto I-85.
Tomorrow morning, I deliver the plastic wrapped and tarped load to some steel place in Norfolk. I can only imagine what that experience is going to be like. At the top of the post are the directions I received over the new high tech QUALCOM. Why can’t they build these damn places right off the highway. I don’t think I’ve ever delivered or picked-up in Norfolk. Virginia is not one of my favorite places. Maybe I’ll get a load to Tampa, to, as I said, swing by the house to get my ladder, refrigerator, VCR/television combo and other stuff that would make LIFE ON THE ROAD easier for me. Darn, none of it would fit in the bus – the Greyhound bus. You think my carrier realizes why you might need an extra pillow, or microwave and all the other stuff to be OTR for 4-6 weeks? I don’t think so. We’ll see. They had trouble with whole $80 DOT physical thing after all. Pray for me. This trucking thing is hard, harder than I remember two months ago. What’s wrong with me? Am I – normal? LOL
More tomorrow on my NEW KW T-660. Not a bad ride. Please be safe out there and stay away from that Pilot. Head down the road to the T/A. FJ at some locations now takes Comdata – not the older ones that always did out West. And, if you’re headed to Birmingham, there is no food service at that FJ. The old buffet – which was actually pretty good – is shut down permanently awaiting a new Denny’s. ETA – about two months.
Who's to blame for the high cost of fuel?
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SSDD, eh?
stressed yet?
welcome back!!!
Welcome Back! Just like falling off a cliff, you never forget how.
I hear you on the annoying voice from qualcomm, she should have a volume control on your qc remote controller on dash. I turn mine all the all down and you don’t hear her, same with gps.
Good Luck and be safe.
What’s wrong with you? nothing in your head, anyway. this trucking thing really is damned hard work. and most of why it’s difficult comes from the wasting of your time. but, to be fair to shippers, carriers and the FMCSA, the monumental, relentless frustration drivers endure can only affect us if we let it. after all, our emotional lives (including frustration) is a personal matter and we are out of our minds if we think non-drivers aught to give a !@#$.
on the other hand, ms. ferro, has the authority to do a lot more than “ask” the industry to “…be more considerate of drivers’ time because we don’t get paid unless we’re rolling.” scuse me! i say she has no business trying to shame the industry into not abusing drivers. i say she has a duty and the power to forbid and punish abuse – and that includes arbitrary detention pay. after all, the safety of the motoring public is not in the least affected by shipper decisions except in as much as they molest our income and we get crazy trying to make up the stolen time.
i say she can magically eliminate a huge percentage of preventable accidents by re-enacting mandatory detention pay. never mind its effect on traffic mortality. just watch how fast the shippers/receivers replace illegal aliens with real american citizens and how fast our ridiculous mileage rates actually start catching up to the real wages we earned before they magically lost detention pay in 1986 when FMCSA took over jurisdiction of trucking safety.
no, marshall. you’re not crazy. you just haven’t gotten yourself back into the zombie zone that most successful drivers get into that benumbs them from your Pilot morons, clueless pilgrims, company compliance bullies and the occasional well-intentioned but naive cop. you can do this as you always have. you just have to find a new path to doing it WHILE taking care of your body. NO EXCUSES, marshall. try to be kind to everybody but you must be responsible to your family. we all know that we can’t be good for anybody else before we are good for ourselves. so, just carry on in the game you know so well.
can’t wait to hear how you like your new saddle.