So the NWS is predicting our worst winter storm in the last 20 years. 10-16 inches of snow with locally heavier ammounts upwards of 2 feet. Following close on it's heals arearctic temps and winds steady at ~35mph with gusts as high as 50mph. This drops us squarely into blizzard category.
SO I work for a beer distributor. We have a bunch of sales guys and drivers walking around with their chests puffed out talking about how everyone is a pussy because of the weather.
The NWS is one of the more conservative government organizations when it comes to how they present their news to the population. The above informtion is from the NWS. Along with postings on their website about the potential to easily reach 8 to 12 foot snow drifts.
To me, this presents a dangerous situation to our drvers and being one of the members of our severe weather monitoring team, it falls on me to keep those in the field up to date on changing weather patterns as it is warranted.
So I call a driver on one of our rural routes. I inform him that he is done for the day and that he needs to head back for the shop. He tells me to stop being a pussy and that he is going to push on through that he has only had "a couple of close calls". So iI pass this o to the operations manager who says that I need to tell him to get his ass backhere. SO I call him back and he doesn't answer his phone. I then have another driver who is in my office call him on his phone and he answers after the first ring. I take the phone and told him if he didn't get him and his truck back ASAP that I was writing him up and recommending a suspension. He calls me a make the beast with two backsing pussy and then hangs up on me.
So I have decided that the worst danger to our drivers out on the street isn't the weather or the other drivers...it is their own misplaced stupid ass sense of bravado. Glad I am not the one who has to call the boss when he wrecks his truck.
i hope the beer makes it ok.
[laugh]
Quote...he has only had "a couple of close calls".
That's really scary to me. I would hate for myself or anyone I know to get steamrolled by some asshat false-bravado truck driver. Why don't people realize it's much cooler, and you earn more respect inthe long run from using your head?
[beer]
ROFLMAO
SO I call another driver and tell him that he is done for the day. Call his remaining stops and head for home. He says OK and we hang up. 5 minutes later, I get a call from one of the owners (they are both working from home today LOL) asking why I am pulling routes in if the weather doesn't warrant it. I explain to him that the driver that called him was in fact in an area that the Iowa DOT has listed all state and local highways as "Travel Not Advised" which is the point when we call it for the whole company. He says Oh...the driver says it's not bad at all out there. I say who are you going to believe, the DOT or an hourly paid driver who will be working until at least 10 tonight trying to finish the day. He says good point, tell him to get back to the shop.
This is why I hate having our drivers now hourly. They milk the clock every chance they get and don't car about anything else. They also pulled the safety incentives and they seem to care less about their trucks anymore.
Ah so they won't get paid if its madated to head back early.. that's why they are being hardpressed to stop for the day..
if there are any tip-overs, let me know and i will assist with the 'cleanup' ;D
[drink]
Unless you were going to pay me to sit on the lot for the remaining of the day, I wouldn't turn around.
Quote from: wbeck257 on December 08, 2009, 10:45:11 AM
Unless you were going to pay me to sit on the lot for the remaining of the day, I wouldn't turn around.
hate to say, but i'm with you.
i would turn around, but take the rest of the day to get back. i'd say i got stuck in snow.
I'd rather lose a couple hours pay than live with the guilt of having creamed someone's family.
this is a tough situation - on one hand, your responsible for ensuring the safety of the drivers (and precious cargo!) but on the other hand, the driver is depending on a certain paycheck.
my dad has been a truck driver since shortly after I was born and has taken some pretty stupid risks to get paid for a load (Million Dollar Highway in full snowstorm at night before the road was widened to include pullovers kind of stupid) but he was living paycheck to paycheck and things like me eating or getting a Christmas present were contingent on that load getting delivered.
It isn't just a false sense of bravado. People get defensive when they are being told how to do their job. The guy probably hung up on you thinking "who is this asshole to tell me when I can drive? I'm the trucker, I know the roads and I know my limits." Of course, everyone does know their own limits and their capabilities differ.
I would try to talk to the guy about the situation so you understand each others' p.o.v's and not have the issue create future conflict.
There seems to be a misunderstanding here...
The drivers WILL get the hours. Any deliveries not made today will be rescheduled. They may have to work this Saturday playing catchup but they will still have to work the hours they lose today and tomorrow.
They are playing for overtime. Our drivers are on a mandatory 50 hour work week. When they hit 50 hours, they are done for the week (of course this rarely happens as most of them complete their weeks in 40-45 hours). But some of these guys think if they get stuck today or take forever getting back to the shop then they will be allowed to work way more overtime. But it doesn't work that way. That is when the relief drivers take over their routes and finish them up. We have some bulk route drivers that work 4 day work weeks and the relief drivers run their routes on Fridays.
Honestly, if I was hourly, I would find any way I could to milk the clock too.
It may not even be an issue of wages, so much as they just don't feel they're taking a risk in finishing their routes. I'm a service tech with a company van that puts on around 40k miles a year and my company leaves it up to the techs to determine whether or not it's safe to run calls. In three years, the only reason I've missed going out is due to 4 inches of ice OVERNIGHT that simply baracaded my van into its spot. Plus it was Sunday, so I didn't really want to go out :).
My point is that different people have different ideas of "difficult" driving situations. I've grown up in snow and ice, plus driving for a living, riding motorcycles and doing all sorts of stupid fast (and overall stupid) stuff in cars as a youth, I've become a pretty good driver whereas I've driven with people in one inch of snow that couldn't keep the rear tires from spinning in the driveway.
Might I add, I'm not condoning the guy's response. Depending on the job and the relationships you have with your coworkers, calling someone a pussy and disobeying a direct order is grounds for at least a written warning, if not some sort of disiplinary action. I've had bosses before that I was very formal around, and I've had bosses that I've suplexed in the backyard after one too many Jager bombs, so YMMV. Just my $.02
This is last year when we formed this committee...
"Ryan, once the committee decides that a route needs to be shut down for the day, it will be your job to contact those drivers and bring them in. This decision will be the responsibility of the committe which includes the operations manager, weather monitoring team and the discretion of the the owners."
The decision was made not by me but it was my job to pass that decision on.
It plays out with me standing in an owners office trying to explain that I did indeed tell the driver that he needed to bring his $120,000 tractor and his $85,000 trailer along with the remainder of his now ruined product back to the shop but he disregarded my call. The owner jumps down my throat because I "wasn't adamant enough about it" and then the driver gets his ass chewing.
I have seen it happen too much before and it wasn't like I volunteered for this. HR and one of the owners told me that I would be doing this. I could give a make the beast with two backs less if some shit for brains driver ends up dying in a fiery crash because he chose not to listen to the warnings about the drifting snow (side note, the drift on my deck is up to 6.5 feet).
I assume you were documenting when you made the calls to each driver as a CYA.
Oh yeah. Plus our phone system logs all of the calls as well. My A is C'd.
Quote from: ZLTFUL on December 08, 2009, 05:45:41 PM
My A is C'd.
Yes, Depends tends to handle that rather well.
Quote from: ZLTFUL on December 08, 2009, 05:23:17 PM
I have seen it happen too much before and it wasn't like I volunteered for this. HR and one of the owners told me that I would be doing this. I could give a make the beast with two backs less if some shit for brains driver ends up dying in a fiery crash because he chose not to listen to the warnings about the drifting snow (side note, the drift on my deck is up to 6.5 feet).
I could definitely see that if we had box trucks, but our company is supplied with 09 Caravans or big Ford Econolines. Makes a difference.....
Did they all make it back?
2 drivers ended up stuck in rural areas. 1 was taken in by a local bar owner and 1 holed up in a hotel. 4 of them that got back late Tuesday were stuck at the office until late yesterday.
The owners tried to send out 4 trucks yesterday and after having 3 of the 4 stuck by the time they reached the end of our block, decided to cancel routes for the day.
The HR director called her half of the call tree and informed them that they should use their discretion in coming in yesterday and that the day had not been "officially" called a snow day. She even told our graphics department that this would be a good opportunity for them to come in and get caught up.
The Ops Manager called his half of the call tree and told them that they were calling it and that unless you ABSOLUTELY had to be here, not to come in and that the day was a paid emergency day off.
This morning, HR has had a steady stream of people flooding her office going WTF?
Is the HR director the same person you had problems with in the past?
Yeah.
Of course, the IT manager manges to piss me off pretty regularly as well. Double standards and all that.
One of the things that was a glaring standout in our employee surveys we did a few months ago..."Policy and Procedure changes are too frequent and often don't fit as a solution to the problem that is trying to be fixed."
Of the 119 people that completed the survery, 101 either agreed or strongly agreed with the above statement.
I used to be a school bus driver and although I never had to turn around due to snow, I was friends with a senior driver (20+ years) that thought they could handle it when the weather turned south.
Coming down from one of the mountain camps after dropping her kids, empty bus, she lost it in a curve (black ice we think), ass end of the bus swung out and the only thing that kept her from going down the side was the 6ft diameter pine tree that destroyed the back end body panels.
Doesn't matter how experienced you are or if you think you can 'handle it.'
*shrugs* I still would of stayed out..
But then again, where I work, when you are telling your drivers to come on home, we are one our way out into it...
And we drive bigger things than a box truck full of beer...
Actually, we have 1 box truck and it's used for special events.
Everything else is tractor/trailer and most of them are 53ft reefers. The only routes we run that still use side loaders are bar routes. All of our convenience store routes rural routes and grocery routes run end loaders.
I drove a truck for a construction company (box trucks, roll off trucks, tractor/trailers in fact still have my CDL lol) for several years and I know that driving a truck in snow and ice with 30,000 lbs of beer in it is alot easier than driving the same truck empty.