How about a different perspective? I work as a mechanic and I see every day the damage caused by laziness of those loading and unloading trailers. The e-track tie down straps,which by the way, are never supposed to leave the E-Track trailers, are used in other trailers and then tied in knots and ultimately cut with a knife to get them loose. Whatever happened to using rope like you were taught, to secure freight to the walls. The $13 for a strap is certainly more expensive than the 13 cents for an equivalent length piece of yellow rope. How about when you are done with the straps, you hang them on the side adjusting rails so that they don't hang down on the floor and get run over by forklifts and ruined? We have boxes of ruined straps in the shop that we are supposed to "fix". Most of which will be thrown away as unusable.
After reading many of your posts for the last few months, I agree with many of you that CGO has behaved irresponsibly over these last few years and that they are mainly to blame for the state of our company at this point. But I also agree with those of you who see the need to get back to working hard for the good of the "Company", which by the way, is YOU and ME! Having an attitude of not caring about the freight or the equipment, i.e. broken doors, holes in trailer roofs,holes in sidewalls, destroyed freight, misloads, etc, will only serve to dig a deeper hole for US to climb out of. I stress the word "us" in the prevoius sentence because we are the ones who ultimately will determine our fate, good or bad. We used to be the premier LTL company because of our positive attitude presented to our customers. So many times in the Monday communication meetings I heard about YRC and their crummy attitudes being the reason we got so much freight when the economy took a dump. No one wanted to deal with the negative drivers, they wanted the positive people at their docks. Sure we have a lot to gripe about, but is all the griping really doing us any good? Do OUR jobs. Get the "one more shipment". Load the trailer properly. STOP DAMAGING THE FREIGHT AND EQUIPMENT!!!
Don't get me wrong, I am not the perfect employee, I ***** about the poor judgement of those in charge, too. But everyday I try to get as many pieces of equipment repaired and back on the road as possible, and as cheaply as possible, while keeping your safety, and the public's safety foremost in mind. I turn off lights when no one is in the room, close the doors when the heat is on, try to fix parts instead of replacing them, etc. Maybe it doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things, but at least I feel like I am doing something to do my part to get the company back on it's feet. If every one would do their small part, maybe we could get back to the way things were when it was a good company to work for.
I know I sound like a corporate cheerleader, but if each of you stop for a minute and think about what small part YOU can do to help, just think what might happen. Just my 2 cents.