They are Listening....

Here is a note we received from one of our professional drivers who listened to our first version of the Driver Hotline:

 

Just wanted to respond to the message you left for us about freight. 1st quarter this year was pretty good. Length of haul was up. I had 544, 729, 562. Miles per day 386, 382, 450. Then April what happened?  311 miles per day. This week I'm on my 7th load for the week and will get about 2640 if I can get this Sunday delivery on Saturday. 

You said in your message you want to maximize our productivity safely and legal. 

I have the ability to run 3000 miles a week but I need cooperation from your end of things to make it happen. Length of haul is key as well as flexible delivery times and a high Drop & Hook rate. These 3 or 4 hundred mile trips to deliver the next day doesn't make a paycheck. 3 to 5 trips and 3000 miles in a week is doable.

You guys are shooting us in the foot in a couple of ways too. With the pay period ending on Saturday is a real problem. In the past with a Monday cut off our fleet manager could set us up for the week end. Now they set us up with a Saturday delivery to get the last trip for the week. Then we are left to the mercy of the night & weekend crew that doles out 100 or 200 mile loads to start the next week off and the your fleet manager is playing catch up for the rest of the week.

 

Second, this decision to not preplan in advance hurts us all. I know you're trying to cut down the dead head miles & reduce costs. But in reality what happens is when you wait till the last minute to plan, what load you have available doesn't fit the hours of service of the driver then it's a fight to get a reschedule. That hurts a drivers productivity and it hurts our service cause the customer doesn't get the freight when they need it. So it's costing you a dollar to save a dime.

 

If I wanted to run local freight, I can go home and do that. I choose to be an OTR driver. It was my understanding that we were reestablishing the OTR fleet. I sure hope that to be true. I'm asking for your help to bring about some positive change to make this happen. 

 

This is excellent feedback and our fellow employee makes some excellent points that we should review as soon as possible.