FedEx Freight | Anyone seen new city trucks yet?

Tuesday, I reported to work to have a junior driver tell me that our supervisor wouldn't let him take a road tractor on a shuttle run. I made the mistake of asking why. He told me I wouldn't believe him if he told me.

I walked into the building and asked the supervisor why he wouldn't assign R15xxx to the run. He said it had just been downgraded from a trophy truck, because the #1 city driver received R23xxx. I asked why that mattered. He said he didn't know if R15xxx was a road or city unit and he wasn't authorized to dispatch a city unit on a 200+ mile shuttle run. I was temporarily speechless.

I recovered, and incredulous as I was, asked the 30 year supervisor if he knew what the "R" in front of the number meant. He didn't, and asserted that he'd emailed the SCM, who didn't either. The SCM then allegedly emailed the District manager and was awaiting the reply, about whether R15xxx was a city or road unit and could be dispatched.

I damn near blew up. "You have no idea what the "R" stands for? We buy two types of trucks, Local and Road. Local trucks have an L in front of the number. Care to guess what Road tractors have in front of the number?"

He shrugged his shoulders and said that no one had ever told him what the "R" stood for. He didn't know what the "R" was for. OMG! How stupid is the effen management???

After I was able to get him to realize the situation, he went on to tell me that he was afraid he and the SCM would look like idiots because of the emails they sent...told him "look in the rear view mirror, idiot is about five miles back and you're still doing triple digits on the speedometer."

My god, this is insanity.

ST
To the supervisor’s defense, even though the truck in question had an “R” prefix, that doesn’t mean it’s a road tractor...half of our city fleet in CLT is reclassed road trucks. He had already stated that the truck was the previous trophy truck for your #1 city driver so it’s quite possible that tractor R15XXX is classified as a city truck. Sending a classified city truck on a road run is a big no no mainly because city trucks are only apportioned for 54K-63K lbs instead of the normal 80K lbs for road tractors. The avg empty weight for a set plus tractor is 35K-36K depending on the tractor so with a classified city truck that only leaves room for about 20K-28K worth of freight before being over gross.

With that being said, all you guys had to do was check the registration in the permit book...that would’ve answered all of your questions. :1036316054:
 
I'm sure Fedx should have a computer system that could tell you the spec's on a tractor by punching the number of the unit. I know our's will tell everything about that tractor or trailer or maybe the supervisor din't know how to do that either
 
To the supervisor’s defense, even though the truck in question had an “R” prefix, that doesn’t mean it’s a road tractor...half of our city fleet in CLT is reclassed road trucks. He had already stated that the truck was the previous trophy truck for your #1 city driver so it’s quite possible that tractor R15XXX is classified as a city truck. Sending a classified city truck on a road run is a big no no mainly because city trucks are only apportioned for 54K-63K lbs instead of the normal 80K lbs for road tractors. The avg empty weight for a set plus tractor is 35K-36K depending on the tractor so with a classified city truck that only leaves room for about 20K-28K worth of freight before being over gross.

With that being said, all you guys had to do was check the registration in the permit book...that would’ve answered all of your questions. :1036316054:
Valid points. In my barn even the downgrades carry full weight rating because we constantly loan them out to road driver's from two other yard's.
 
Valid points. In my barn even the downgrades carry full weight rating because we constantly loan them out to road driver's from two other yard's.
If that’s the case then the supervisor in question probably remembered reading the memo about not using city trucks on the road but couldn’t remember why....I never said they were the brightest bulbs in the box!!
 
If that’s the case then the supervisor in question probably remembered reading the memo about not using city trucks on the road but couldn’t remember why....I never said they were the brightest bulbs in the box!!
He claims he had no way of ascertaining the tractor weight rating. So I showed him the cab card with all the ratings. He then said "I'm really not as dumb as I look."
 
sort of off topic but...

I noticed the new R23xxx trucks are KW T680s very similar to R16xxx - R17xxx series.

Anyone know if Petes are no longer being purchased?
 
Actually I have no faith in management anymore.
It's more about them trying to make themselves
look and sound good when they lie to your face
or go and hide someplace to avoid the questions.
 
Not currently, word is Freightliner refuses to build them to our specs. They said at the last spec meeting that the only reason we took delivery of the last batch of Freightshakers was because we were in dire need of equipment.
Thanks for the insight.
I assumed FL would take over FXF since FXE is all FLs.
Hopefully no more Internationals.
 
Top