When is someone going to aid drivers in their effort to get fair and truthful reporting to DAC by employers? To stop forced dispatch, and retaliation for trying to keep our logged hours legal?
While at McKelvey, I experienced layovers of three days and more, if I didn, t accept an imediate assignment after delivery of my loads. If traffic or construction delayed arrivals/deliveries, drivers would also find themselves waiting days for a new 'load'. While favored drivers routinely recieved return load assignments, or round trip assignments.
Dispatchers would routinely take attractive loads 'off' the board to reserve them for their favorite drivers. To avoid being accused of delaying shipment, they would simply reschedule the load for a later date.
Once, a new driver at the Fontana terminal complained that he was badgered by his dispatcher to pickup a load after his legal hours had run out. He related having explained to the dispatcher that he would have to go directly to the terminal for ten hour reset before continuing with the load.
After about eight hours he was contacted on the 'Qualcomm' (an onboard computer and dispatching tool linked by satelite) and after explaining the situation again he was removed from the load 'to keep it moving'. The next day (12 hours later) he and his truck sat without an assignment, But so did the load he was taken off of. It did not move for nearly 30 hours later when assigned to another driver.
The new driver was still sitting there with two days of no miles, no pay, and no reasonable explaination.
Every time a driver needed to stop for reset of hours, they would lose prompt reassignment to a new load.
One dispatcher actually threatened to shoot a driver. Another would, romove an assigned load from a driver if he had previous difficulty with that driver. And put that driver on hold until the next shift (That means 'No Loads'). This dispatcher openley brags about his abusiveness twords drivers.
The management knows all about these practices and defend the dispatchers who commit them.
I personally wittnessed part of the saga when management tried to deny a driver payment of a workers comp claim, when he had a witness, a doctors report, and physical evidence to support his injury claim. The company had two other employees conjure a report that they over heard the driver speak of fraud (a false claim), in an attempt to avoid covering his injuries. Of course, it did not matter that the drivers face was so swolen that he could not drive the truck for six weeks (His eye was swolen shut from a bee sting. A bee had come in through the window, hitting him in his eye.) Another driver had to be sent out to complete his delivery.
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