IL-OH

Yesterday had to be the strangest day I have had with Tri-State dispatch since I started with them.

Dispatch calls at 1630 with a load that they want me to transfer in Toledo. It was going from Mt.Zion, IL to Carlisle,PA for a 1300 delivery. I said why can't I take it the whole way. I can split log and make it legally. Nope, won't let me do it. So I get to the shipper and the clerk has no idea what I'm there for. After several calls, he finds the guy that knows. He loads it, some strange metal box that looks like an apartment dumpster, and I take off.

Still don't know where in Toledo I'm supposed to go. I'm about an hour into the drive when the QC beeps and then the phone rings. Seems that the driver in Toledo refused the load and I now have to take it to Garfield Heights, OH which is near Cleveland. No sweat, it pays me more that way.

I get to the transfer point at the arranged time of 0715. No transfer driver present. QC'd dispatch, answer: He's off on another load. We'll try and find another driver. Finally get the transfer completed at 0930, and I'm in violation of my 14 by a quarter hour. I shoot down here to the truck stop which was only 10 miles away and park.

I go into the Wendy's and get some biscuits and gravy and come back to the truck and start to eat. QC beeps and phone rings. It's dispatch with a load. Before she can say anything else I said that I have no hours to run anything until 2030. She goes off saying that I should have sent a message saying I was on break, that she is a dispatcher not a mind reader, and I was the fourth driver she had called so far. I returned the favor telling her that if I'm the fourth driver she called then she has a crap load that nobody wants and I would have turned it down as well. I'm not driving this truck to lose money for her or anyone else, and if she would take the time to read my dispatch screen she would have known that I just completed a load and was out of hours. I mentioned that it was a dispatcher's job to know the DOT regs and she would be breaking the law right along with me if I took the load. I also said that the break message was only required if you wanted to be unavailable for a period of time and had nothing to do with them knowing I was on a DOT required break. Hung up on her.

Finished breakfast and went to bed. Woke up about 1430. Sat here for a minute and got something to drink. Fired the engine to charge the batts since I wasn't running the generator as I didn't need it. The QC beeps. I read the message offering another really good paying load to Yorktown VA. that could be picked up after my break. Next message stated that I had been put on 8 hr. refusal because I had not replied within 10 minutes. I went off. I asked them why they didn't call. They said that they did and I didn't answer so they left a voicemail. I told them that the phone didn't ring and I had not gotten any voicemail, and even so they had always called again. She said that it wasn't her job to make more than one call. B O O M. Told her to get her supervisor NOW.

I'm reading the riot act to the supervisor that how can I respond if I don't know about the offer. The QC did not activate like it has in the past, and given the often time unreliability of cell phones why is a second call unrealistic? In the space of a few hours, they try and pass off a load that would have been illegal for me to run, and then don't make a decent attempt to contact me on a good load, and both times I get attitude from the dispatcher involved. I had also looked at the load more closely and it was too heavy for the truck. I pointed that out to her and asked why her dispatchers were not looking at my dispatch screen that has all the needed information on it in regards to HOS times, load capacity and dimensions of the truck on it. I told her to please have her dispatchers do their jobs so I can do mine.

She put me on hold and came back a few minutes later and apologized for the mixup. I said that since the one load was too heavy I couldn't have taken it anyway, but if it would not have been I would be very upset at the loss of revenue and am still upset about the constant attitude I get from the dispatchers and left it at that.

I figure that with the high cost of fuel, they are getting quite a bit more refusals than they are used to for runs that have low revenue due to contract deals that were made before and are taking it out on the drivers. Too bad. I'm not running this truck if it loses money. If they can't understand that, then they need to find another type of work.

Just another day in the life of an O/O.