What's new

ABF | What say you?

L

Leavemealone

TB Lurker
Credits
0
Gave it to one of the dispatchers and almost beat his A*$ after months of him to talking to me in a manner I didn't appreciate.
Lately, dispatch would call me for a load and when I get to the window I am told that load won't be ready and proceed to offer me a different load. This happened 5 times in a 2 week span.

basically I want to know how far can these guys go to screw me .
 
In all my days I had one dispatcher in Rockport Indiana of all dispatchers in my life.... He was a hard dispatcher. A real bastard. There was a building FULL OF Good people in there. But the one in the corner? no love lost.

I put up with him for weeks. It was nothing but a string of constant deliver at sunrise, deadhead and wait half a day to load then race through the night 300 little miles to do it again at sunrise on no sleep.

One day I stopped in Frystown. A driver woke me up off the double door frames where I had fallen asleep. Coffee in one hand and papers in the other. After a meal I picked up that phone and had the Operations manger in a minute.

I told the Op Manager that Dispatcher and I are finished. If he cannot find another dispatcher to run me in that office full of dispatchers I will have had my last day with that outfit for good.

And I said it nicely. I told him I will call back again in a hour and we will know which form the future will take after the second hour.

I called back. I had a good dispatcher. Loading out of Logan County Aluminum for Busch Brewry in Williamsburg VA near the Colonial Town for next morning. Get back to logan deadhead.

I spent the rest of my employ with that outfit running into Logan to load out regularly. They do not have any idea how well that Op Manager did his job.

And that old dispatcher? He probably died there. Buried him in the corner there. Run a cord to the phone jack into his grave....
 
SMOKESTACK said:
Report him to your Stu and HR , don't touch him or sass him . Use that phone and make the calls .
Click to expand...
Don't touch him as much as he may deserve an attitude adjustment. The way you get the attention of the company is to collect on a grievance. That is what we pay dues to the local for. I can tell you from experience the company does not like to pay for anything that does not pay a return on their investment. Be patient & you will have the last laugh.
 
In Indiana when you record a telephone call or in person, only ONE of the parties in the conversation has to know about the recording. Since you are a party & recording, you meet the Legal guidelines in Indiana. In Illinois, I believe it is still a felony. Do you homework. If you can record it, do it. If you can prove a outright lie of a ABF boss to you, you will win your grievance. And maybe the boss will be gone. A 27 year dispatcher @ ABF 050 Indy lost his job because he had a driver show a different time on a Time Keeper delivery during a morning P&D. When the customer called the Fort asking where his freight was, the response was it has already been delivered. By 1500 hours ABF was looking for a new dispatcher, @ the former dispatcher for ajob. von.
 
That company in Indiana I spoke of finally blacklisted me. It was years before I understood the meaning as such under Indiana Law. Any BL activity there is legal as long its verbal. When a prospective employer calls to check on my history with them, they verbally say BL and thats the end of that.

But never put it into writing. I check and pull those employer requests carefully now against them. If I catch it in writing... then I probably can own the whole place lock stock and barrel.

HOWEVER.

Time has a way of moving on. When something happens and 10 years, 20 years or even more than 30 years has passed in my case... it does not matter anymore who said what where, when and how.

And there lies the rub. Thats what we do now in trucking. But with the rise of the databases combined against a trucker for any reason... such as Protesting for example you could for life remove that driver and his expeirence, training, skills and passion for the trucking out of the service of the Nation for life. A form of prison. Because he said she said writ large.

Why stop there? Remove the problem ex driver from modern society completely by erasing banking, credit and everything else. They would have nothing.

The problem with that is if you did that to say 10 million people on purpose as Canada seems set on doing... you raise a army totally dedicated to your destruction. If only to be able to feed their families etc. It would by the acts of a government gone wild and totally scrapping the Charter or the Consitution or whatever else that prevented such wanton destruction with companies and corporations as the arm of the State or Arm of the Nation as it were. No longer in commerce and employment etc.
 
Thank you to all who have taken time of their day to give those great suggestions.

Two last questions for me.

1) hypothetically a dispatcher doesn't like you for whatever reason who is stopping him or her from manipulating the load board? For example on your call time there are 3 loads available, but you are offered only one. How do you know if you are getting screwed? Hopefully that makes sense.
enlighten this old feable mind wise men of ABf.
 
Leavemealone said:
Thank you to all who have taken time of their day to give those great suggestions.

Two last questions for me.

1) hypothetically a dispatcher doesn't like you for whatever reason who is stopping him or her from manipulating the load board? For example on your call time there are 3 loads available, but you are offered only one. How do you know if you are getting screwed? Hopefully that makes sense.
enlighten this old feable mind wise men
Click to expand...
 
Leavemealone said:
Hog. Yeah that's what I am planning on doing, but right now I am still in the evidence building phase. Looking through every time sheet and all . But in all seriousness you all have a wonderfull weekend.
Click to expand...
Let your steward do the evidence building and investigating. Just knowing that the situation is being watched and monitored by the steward is usually all it takes to correct the dispatcher/supervisors wrong doings. The last thing your dispatcher wants is to have a grievance filed against him that is ruled in the favor of the employee. ABF corporate hates paying a monetary grievance whether it is a penny or thousands of dollars and will take it up with the dispatcher/supervisor involved. Especially if the dispatcher/supervisor knew he was violating the contract.
 
Steward of the Rock said:
Let your steward do the evidence building and investigating. Just knowing that the situation is being watched and monitored by the steward is usually all it takes to correct the dispatcher/supervisors wrong doings. The last thing your dispatcher wants is to have a grievance filed against him that is ruled in the favor of the employee. ABF corporate hates paying a monetary grievance whether it is a penny or thousands of dollars and will take it up with the dispatcher/supervisor involved. Especially if the dispatcher/supervisor knew he was violating the contract.
Click to expand...
Absolutely brother. Thank you and to the other lads who have chimed in.
 
Leavemealone said:
Thank you to all who have taken time of their day to give those great suggestions.

Two last questions for me.

1) hypothetically a dispatcher doesn't like you for whatever reason who is stopping him or her from manipulating the load board? For example on your call time there are 3 loads available, but you are offered only one. How do you know if you are getting screwed? Hopefully that makes sense.
enlighten this old feable mind wise men of ABf.
Click to expand...
If you are the only driver available at your call time, there can be 100 loads ready to go and they only have to offer you one. Has far has I know there is nothing that can dictate what loads the company moves and when. The company can move whatever load they feel is the most important.
 
Leavemealone said:
Thank you to all who have taken time of their day to give those great suggestions.

Two last questions for me.

1) hypothetically a dispatcher doesn't like you for whatever reason who is stopping him or her from manipulating the load board? For example on your call time there are 3 loads available, but you are offered only one. How do you know if you are getting screwed? Hopefully that makes sense.
enlighten this old feable mind wise men of ABf.
Click to expand...
In our experience we depend on pay.

As in making sure that we are paid. Dispatch has no meaning.

We once were on a load from Buffalo to Phoenix AZ a nice 2500 mile haul getting the hell out of Toronto ahead of a classic ice Storm blitzing Ontario. In Erie on the interstate a message came from FFE's Chicago Dispatch Office asking us to give a solo that big money paying load and scrape his now late load across the border at winsdor to Toronto in the teeth of a growing winter storm that probably will mean up to 30 hours of grinding with interlock on at less than 10 mph to get there for a little bit of dollar (Not worth it)

We told them No. See you in Phoenix. They did not like that very much. So they sanctioned us in their Chicago territory from that day forward. HOWEVER it was a silver lining because we ran out of either Denver Dispatch or Phoenix Dispathc in addition to LA and SLC without any trouble.

Made some money without the Chicago crap. We put them entirely out of mind.

Dispatchers have done things that we consider to be either a punishment or retribution for a variety of reasons known only to them. Sometimes that was the last day we stayed with such a abusive office and company. We had good records and could usually count on being in a new company and truck by end of the following week which was pretty much how it rolled in those days. There are any number of other drivers the old company can abuse. We simply dont stand for it on principle.

I have a history of constantly disagreeing at times some of the things a Dispatcher would tell us to do. Oh really? This? What part of no do you not understand? (For a variety of reasons too much to write here) that usually results in one of two things. The problem being remedied or we no longer worked for them. End of problem.
 
Part two...

Being able to freely change companies required savings. A great deal of it. When you have ten to twenty thousand in cash or in banking ready to go for a whole year of trucking without pay.. you are free to simply do the work or more to another company with better working situation. And that was what we did.

The greatest test of that system came on 9-11. We were told our Company Payroll People were destroyed and it might be months before we get paid, Would we love to go home to Arkansas and file and get Unemployment until payroll is replaced?

No. We had savings that day. That ran us the two or so months needed for payroll to get caught up again. When we did our taxes the following year the withholding formed a new savings foundation against the upcoming 2002 trucking year, which was for us over at that point for medical reasons that needed to playout.

Most drivers barely get 20 dollars to scrape together or have massive obligations, debt or what have you and they are trapped. I cannot tell you how many times we shuttled failed orientation rejects back to the bus station with them crying that now they have no money and a wife and kids to take care of because of some failed orientation problem. What ever are they going to do?

The last one that bawled was maybe 24. He had two kids. I handed him a pair of 20's You think I would have handed him a Solomons Mines Shipment or something. He made good use of it one way or another. It was a long time ago.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top