Why may I ask did they bounce you from St. Louis to Gary if there wasnt anything there?

You can ask, but I don't have a answer for ya'. They've taken most all control out of the dispatchers hands and the planner sent me there and I'm not in the TA lot for 5 minutes when I get the load info for the Monroe load.

I called my dispatcher to say wtf and he just apologizes for it. If they would have let him know they were going to bounce me all that way he could had me loaded and home by Sat.

this is common, if we are in an area where there is no freight, they send us to another area where there might be a better chance of getting a load. usually its nowhere specific. it has happened to me at least 3 times, SW AR to SW KY, Springfield MO to St Louis MO, and another one I can't remember.

TMC does it to avoid having to pay mileage drivers layovers, as long as they are deadheading, they are getting paid.

as promised:

this one happened a few weeks ago. get a voicemail on a rare Sunday night at home from the shop. "we need you to unlock your truck so we can work on it" I call in, advised them I am pretty sure both my truck and I are 800 miles from DSM, did you by chance call the wrong driver? they said no, we are showing your truck, 92281 or something, due for service. I said I drive 91374. someone apparently decided to kick me out of my truck in the computer system over the weekend, which apparently caused a disaster of epic proportion for my FM Monday.

I thought everything was fixed until I tried to get fuel. 7pm, I have about 5 gallons of fuel in each of my tanks, I have to be at my customer 200 miles away at 6am, running low on hours, I am sitting at the Pilot and my fuel card won't work. I have just enough time to make it sorta legally if they can fix it in the next half hour. tried to call night dispatch for 2 hours. qualcommed night dispatch to death for 2 hours. nothing. turns out the system crashed in DSM or something. OK I can understand technical difficulties. but wouldn't it be great if this had never happened in the first place? I certainly had their attention when I said I was not going to be on time. I made it to my customer at 2:30am, got up at 6am and untarped in 4 degree weather on 3.5 hours of sleep. wasn't thrilled with the idea of having to repower the load, I had to make on time delivery, at all costs. I was rather cranky that morning.

fast forward to the next Friday, I have a load of lumber going to the Amish in SE PA. no one knew when, or even if the customer would receive it at 530pm, which was the earliest I could be there. finally the guy calls me back (Amish man, mind you) and says I can't take this load until Tuesday, you won't be able to make it up my driveway. I am thinking how bad can it be, there's hardly an inch of snow down here. I found the place, and saw what he was talking about. made it about 100' up his 20% grade, ice covered driveway, don't even know what I was thinking trying. another Amish guy comes over and wants to hook on to my 77,000lb unit with a 10,000lb tractor. I declined. this driveway was so bad it was not safe to take a truck up it in good weather. so eventually the entire Amish community shows up to see what a Peterbilt is doing at this guy's farm. eventually they put their collective heads together and decided to send me to a farm 15 miles away on back roads not meant for a truck. yay 30 miles out of route right there. I found the place, almost got hit by 2 Amish kids that were not qualified to operate forklifts. all the while I am 300 miles from home. backtracked to the guy's farm, had him sign the bills, and got out of there real quick. I don't think I have ever been so tired at the end of a day. made it about halfway home on diet mountain dew and finished up in the morning.

sometimes I wonder how stuff like this happens, and why it happens to me. almost every week I am having my FM take off miles because of mistakes on their end. sending me to the wrong location entirely cost them 90 miles earlier this week. I have a load that pays $368 for 550 miles including bounce miles for Monday. $0.70/mile, awesome. still making almost $2800 to the truck almost every week though, which is apparently unheard of after talking to some other drivers.

I have been staying busy, getting real sick of seeing empty flatbeds, especially TMC flatbeds, so I know this is not the case for everyone. spent the weekend loaded 2 weeks in a row now, which is a new record since about December.

oh and a commuter train hit a car on the tracks and killed a guy this morning in Long Island about 100' from my customer. one of those trains that goes 80mph. I thought the cops showed up because I parked on the street! had to move to facilitate their response.

Your right about deadheading to an area with more freight. I had this happen to me this week. Picked up in Jacksonville, FL going to TN. Company changed its mind and wanted me to drop it in the Tifton, GA yard. On the way so no problem but my 600 mile load just changed to 150 miles. I figured they had something else in mind for me but an hour later I get a message to drop it in the Atlanta, GA yard instead as there was no freight in Tifton and I would get stuck there. Brought it to Atlanta and was given a load the next day that would get me home for the weekend. Seems like someone had their head out of their *** and knew what they were doing. Finally!

advice
 

any drivers still with the company who can still afford internet access?

might come off as a rant, but if freight is picking up, I am not seeing it. I grossed over 2k to the truck one week in March, all I do is get sent to the northeast, where in turn all I do is sit, or if I am lucky, deadhead 400 miles.

maybe I am just cranky, this is out of character for me but if things don't pick up in the next 60 days, I am going to have to look into something a little different than linehaul flatbed. nothing personal against TMC, this would be a business decision. if I am going to be home twice a month it's going to have to be for more than $400-$500 a week.

I have 5 years driving experience, 4 years part time (used to work in management and drive on the weekends) with the last year full time, no accidents or convictions, have gotten quite a bit of OD flatbed experience in the last year, is this enough to start looking at specialized flatbed companies or am I still too new?

money is the variable here, I know I am lucky to have a job, I'd be perfectly happy hauling shingles and lumber all day if there were shingles and lumber to haul, just wondering what else is out there.

You might want to read my opinions for a "new hire" a sticky at the top of this post. You wonder why these things are happening to you...actually you already know why they are happening to you. You are told not to come, so instead mr supertrucker heads out anyways, makes more trouble for the customer, and adds OOR for the company. These are not TMC mistakes. Sometimes, you need to step back and see where the root of the problem is before trying to correct what you "think" is the problem.

I ran 4 back to back trips from Wayne NJ to New Haven CT all on 287/95 all on Thursday. After trip #3 I was ready to have a nervous breakdown because I had the mindset of go!go!go! all the way up and back, which most of you know is impossible in CT on 95. Final trip back I told myself, "Im gonna go with the flow, im in no hurry because the consignee is closed." It took me 8 minutes longer, but when in Wayne NJ I felt fine and didnt feel like "ripping someones head off" Problem wasnt them...It was me, I just had to readjust.

I dont think freight is picking up, so whoever is saying that is full of it. I still see the same amount of TMC/other flats empty heading across 80 in PA, as usual. But I do know that TMC is brokering their own loads and leaving trucks sit at the same time. Load of stone from NE PA to Verona WI, hauled on a freinds TMC truck, paid the Qualcomm $8** (i cant remember the exact) 4 days later a local company brokered one from TMC for $1090

So #1 yes they are taking fuel/others from your rate
#2 Whats better making more by brokering the load, than placing in on your own truck? For TMC it is. You guys are getting sold out. Next time you speak with someone higher up in TMC, ask them why they are brokering ELK/GAF shingles from Myerstown PA, when they have their own trucks waiting around for loads? You think im making it up....try me.

hah, I am anything but a supertrucker. TMC says you deliver at 1700 Friday afternoon, you deliver at 1700 Friday afternoon. this load was scheduled to deliver at 1700 on a Friday afternoon. so I showed up around 1700 on a Friday afternoon. I don't work for the customer. in fact they don't even want us calling the customer. the total lack of communication was indeeed TMC's mistake. they don't pay me enough to play dispatcher too. granted it was the end of the week and I had tunnel vision as far as getting home, and was already preplanned to load close to home. unique situation that I probably won't run into again, I don't haul much for the Amish. just one of those days.

nono man, I believe anything. how they do some of the stuff they do baffles me. like pay for their trucks.

my attitude and productivity are suffering because I spend every week on the east coast. send me out west and I'll probably shut up. I have hauled a load west across PA once since christmas, ironically enough out of Myerstown. bounced 400 miles from Boston to upstate NY and 500 miles from NJ to WV last week.

I just think it's funny that all those TMC cheerleaders that I was fighting with on here months ago telling me that TMC is the next best thing since sliced bread are all gone now.

What happened to the great TMC? Was I wrong in telling you what to expect? Did the exact thing happen that I told you would happen?

Tell us how great TMC is now.

I'm sure there will be another group of kool-aide drinking newbees coming along real soon to take your places. Lets just sit back and enjoy.

TMC was on a steady downhill slide when I joined them 1.5 years ago. By the time I quit 6 months ago, the quality and value of the job was far below what I could ever expect from any company that runs such fancy equipment.

I'm not surprised to find none of their cheerleaders in this thread any more... The company is below bottom-of-the-barrel even for a brand new driver, and they have been for quite some time. There are some pretty arrogant and shady people running this company... I'll stop short of saying I hope they fail completely (only for their drivers sake), but I do think they are getting now, what has been coming for quite some time.

Leaving this company was the best thing I ever did for my driving career, joining them was one of the worst choices I ever made in my life... we all live and learn.