Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Tales from the Workplace, Trucking Edition, Part II

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I am posting stories from my job, because I think they're funny.  I've done my best to disguise my company name, even the industry, and to keep the people I write about and even some details of the situation anonymous.  If you know me, and know where I work, please don't include details in your comments.  I'll have to delete your comment and reconsider posting these stories.
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Another good one.  Again with the customer that has a scheduled deliver time because WE provide the unload crew at our expense (with the cost built into their pricing ultimately, of course), and have to schedule them.

The scheduled time to deliver was at 9:00 a.m.

At 9:30, our customer calls us to ask where the truck is.  We call the trucking company.  Oh, the driver hit a deer last night, less than halfway between here and there.  Now, we're not quite sure what time or exactly where, but "last night" implies that it was long enough ago that they could have let both us and our customer know BEFORE the scheduled delivery time, and "southern Oregon" implies that they're still far enough away from their destination that at some point prior to AFTER the delivery time, they had to have known they weren't going to make the scheduled delivery time.

So now WE get to pay for the crew who had to stand around just to get sent home (once they've shown up, the temp agency has to pay them a minimum payment, which of course they tack their profit on to and pass along to us) PLUS the actual unload crew when it gets rescheduled.  Plus our customer is unhappy and possibly running out of product.

What compensation to we get from the trucking company?  None at all.  What explanation do we get from the trucking company?  "We sent you an e-mail last night."  (No, it's time stamped 9:17 a.m.) and "We'll be able to deliver at 5:45 p.m."  (No, that's not going to work, so now we have to reschedule it for tomorrow morning instead.)  and "We weren't able to get a tow truck very quickly."  (Not our problem--repair it, limp it, or get another tractor in to tow the trailer, or worst case, COMMUNICATE with us if you can't keep your commitment.)

I don't know how an industry that runs itself like that can stay in business.  If we could find any company in the industry who's NOT like that, I'm sure we'd be very loyal to them, but sadly, there don't seem to be any--we've had issues with all of the ones we use.

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