Tractors & Trailers Doing Nothing–Trucking Tales Ep1

“We got tractors and trailers sitting around doing nothing.”

Jack, head of Bright Mountain Trucking, reflected on what Fritz told him this morning. It wasn’t really news. The situation had been that way for months. Expansion was dead in the water. But the normally cool Fritz showing exasperation was new.

“Look we’ve just got to work through this Fritz. Turning down some loads hurts but it’s not going to kill us.”

“I know Jack but so far it’s been a pretty bad day. Two more drivers just quit. Both of them are newbies--haven’t even been with us for six months. One gave a week’s notice; the other just left his rig on the interstate. We have to go find it.”

“And Joe Black’s retiring next month at age 60—lucky guy. Okay, I’ll go talk to Bud and see how recruiting is going.”

“And that’s not all. You remember how one of the trailers hit an overpass two months ago?”

“Yeah”

“Well one of our other new guys hit the same overpass last night. Did a lot of damage and stopped traffic on the road outside Springfield. Nobody was hurt though.”

“You got to be kidding me! How the hell can we do the same exact thing twice? What are we—stupid? I thought we got this fixed.”

“I don’t know. I guess when we lost Fred last month to workers comp, they had to put a new guy on the route. He must have not got the word.”

“What a surprise.” Now Jack was steamed.

“One more thing…

“You’re really the bringer of sunshine, aren’t you Fritz?”

“Look, I’m just trying to give you a heads up on what’s going on. We got a letter from the Feds—seems like we have a worse rating for CSA than we should. They want us to have a plan to correct it or they’re going to what they call “intervene” --slap us with penalties.”

“What’d we do now?”

“Too many speeding tickets for one. Plus guys are running too many hours…HOS violations. We knew we were high on this stuff but FMCSA didn’t contact us until now.”

“Other companies must have the same problems…”

“Yeah, but we’re above the top 80 percent in two categories. We stand out like a sore thumb.”

“If we don’t spend some time to fix this stuff, it’s going to take a good company and turn us into a crap company. We need more drivers. We need better drivers that give a damn.  We need to communicate and execute. This stuff never happened before…not to this extent. Let’s get the management team together this afternoon. I’ll let everyone know.”

Lou Graziani: creator of Bright Mountain Trucking
“transportation guru, training expert, and imagineer.”

This story continues…