After I dropped my trailer yesterday afternoon I moved over to the (only) local truck stop and called it a day. When I got up this morning it was more than 12 hours since I had dropped and no buzzer with a new load. So I took care of a variety of housekeeping -- my upper bunk now actually flips up -- watched some shows, ate, took a nap, snacked some more. Still no load.
Finally I got buzzed around 2 PM with a load to pick up tonight at 9 PM to Pennsylvania that I will take as far as Joplin to get me home. I arranged to pick it up first thing in the morning instead so I can run all tomorrow and roll into Joplin Thursday afternoon at which time I will be sitting down with my fleet manager to discuss some issues.
About five weeks ago I had two runs, back-to-back, which involved me helping unload the product. The first load had two stops with La-Z-Boy furniture in Tucson and Phoenix, followed by a load from Phoenix to West Sacramento, California to the baby Bell SBC. Each of these loads required my help (the SBC folks don't even touch freight... they point you at a pallet jack and tell you to have at it) and when this happens I am due $17.50 an hour with a minimum of two hours, or at least $35.00. For those three drops I should have been paid an extra $105 total ($35 x 3, since none of the unloads took more than two hours) but it is my dispatcher's position that I'm not owed anything more because I didn't have the consignees write the In and Out times on the BOLs (Bills of Lading). My position is that I delivered on time (as I always have) and under direct orders of CFI I assisted with each unload, and since none of them took more than two hours from start to finish the In and Out times are irrelevant. I could see if I was at a consignee for, say, four hours and wanted to document more than two hours of driver assist time then it would matter, but if I spent a single damn minute of my time on company ordered fingerprinting then I'm due my pay. If I assist for one minute or 120 minutes I'm paid the same, and only if it is more than 120 minutes does the assist pay differ.
We'll see what the official line is on Thursday or Friday.
