Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Kirkland razors, bye bye

It's OK if they drive golf carts and don't back out of the driveway.

Costco still isn't giving free samples. There's no incentive to go there now.

NO worries. You dint break your ankle.

WalMart only cares about money.

Not sure how long you were with them Teal, I was there from 1/91 until 2/96.
Driver, Driver Trainer, and Ops Support at the Harrisburg facility for 2 different
quarters. I never once felt they cared more for me than any customer.
Disappointing, in a way, but it's business. My job was to make the costumers
happy, not make me happy.

They were focused on growing then. Every business meeting was more focused
on market share than return on capital. We were at 14,000 drivers and only wanted
to be bigger. Also it seemed that the focus was on government funded training,
More than long term drivers.

It seems to me a lot of that has changed in the last decade or so. I see
they have actually shrunk in size quite a bit, and seem more interested in
having experienced drivers than in having cheap ones.

That said, I called them on my 21st birthday. Nobody hired at that age
without experience, but they did. Sure, it benefited them, but me too.
4 months later I had a CDL and was off to work. Made decent money
for 5 years. Darn good for someone like me from around here.

They were among the first to use satellite communications, which was
controversial at the time. I loved it for almost 4 of those years. I did my
job, and it only benefited me. Then, they started tracking us for compliance
purposes. That affected income and home time. Not good.
Today, with E-logs, it doesn't matter.


Dassa,
You experienced or new?
If new, you are probably going to get some of the better training in the business.
Unless things have changed, you will be taught things other companies won't
even want you to know. Simple mechanical fixes to common issues, things that are
much better handled by you than by looking for help.

I never heard that.
Good to hear.
Did they can Grey Worldwide? The ad agency that came up with it?

I was there 2008-13 and then 18/19.

I saw driver business leaders tell them to park the truck, grab an uber and fly home - all on company dime, to meet promises. I saw load after load get missed because we prioritized the driver being home rather than one last load. Uber bills to get drivers around were in the millions. I saw them rent cars for drivers to drive home - company dime. Not once but almost daily. I took a lot of phone calls from pissed off CSR's about missed freight because we had drivers home instead of on the road - at driver's request.

Oddly enough - when I was there in 08-13, worked in M&R and we couldn't get drivers to do ANY minor mechanical work. "I drive, I don't work on them - send service" and they'd sit, not making money for 3 hours till a service truck could get to them and put on a new fuel filter. 10 minute job that would have had them rolling quick.

The number of drivers that didn't even have a flashlight with them on the road would astound you.

Just my experiences - later. I'd say the drivers of your/my generation are few and far between now. Hell they complain if a load's over 28k lbs. Not the company, the driver, because they don't like driving heavy.

Wow!

Things have changed.

Some of the stuff, if we HAD been there at the same time, we might have saw different.
That happens depending in your viewing position. Bjt i only knew of them sending
people home that way was Christmas. That was a big deal and they busted butt to
get everyone at least 24 hours at home. Except operations. One of my times
working in Carlisle was Christmas 1993. I had to stay there, and actually worked
quite a few extra hours to let a local guy with a family go home.

The mechanical?

We had to actually demonstrate or explain step by step, at the truck and pointing,
how to,

Adjust both type of slack adjusters we used.
Change fuel filters.
Bypass the air dryer,
Bypass the fuel/water seperater
Bypass the fuel shutoff and cgange throttle springs on a Cummins
The 4-way flasher (boy did we use them crawling uphills)
Free up frozen brakes
Throw chains. (East coast guys didn't have them, I scrounged some😁)
Change every light bulb on the unit except the top of the trailer.
And carry whatever was need to do that.

None of this as a big deal to me. I came from a farming/logging/mechanical background.

It saddens me they aren't teaching that stuff anymore.
I can't fathom anyone wanting to sit and wait for help when they
could get their hands dirty and get rolling in 10 minutes.



War story alert!
Another guy and I were in Brownsville looking for empty trailers late one night.
He found his, I couldn't find one.
So I rode around in the facility, found one at a dock that sounded empty,
And took it. (We had waited all day in Laredo for empties to come back from Mexico
and I had had enough. Was almost to Houston before I sent the message)

Anyway, his trailer had 0, none, no not a single lightbulb.
The Mexicans had stolen them all.
So we get in our bulb stashed.
We didn't have enough of the right ones, but they all had the same connections
but different configurations. A little knife work, duct tape, and he
Had some lights on all three sides and one brake light.

It worked to drive toward Houston until we got to a truck stop to buy the
right ones.

I'm actually on a dedicated run hauling for home depot. All drop and hook. I've been driving for thirty years, and I've actually worked for some good companies.

I'm actually on a dedicated run hauling for home depot. All drop and hook. I've been driving for thirty years, and I've actually worked for some good companies.
Old, way too old.

Dassa - you'll be fine then sir! I've just seen so many drivers hop from carrier to carrier, not realizing it was the job itself they weren't suited for. Drop/hook for Home Depot is a good gig.

Dillion, Easter of 2019, basically all of ops/planning worked. Software upgrade. I wasn't a fan of that one. Hitting the office at 0500 Easter to babysit systems. At the time I was a Sr. Area planning manager. Oversaw the 6 managers that planned freight for the west.

Teal, I've been driving for a certain company for almost 21 years. Over Thanksgiving, a new dispatcher completely fugged up my route, and I told our boss that the guy was a jack ass. When I told the Schneider recruiter that, he laughed and said he probably was.

I believe it.

Too many people in transportation front offices who've never bumped a dock. Across the industry.

Fairly certain that in my current co, I'm the only one who has. Definitely the only one with a current CDL.

The original Costco in Kirkland, where my wife shops, is like a journey into the 3rd world.

Most people on the East side [of the Seattle area] are white or Asian... but at costco the customers seem to be 90% immigrants, a good fraction from India wearing non Western garb.

I hate shopping there, as it is so crowded [shopping cart traffic jam], but one interesting thing is how many employees are working at cooking chickens. There seem to be a dozen actively working behind the glass.

I often said that Schnieder should have required every Prospective STL to go througn the driver
training and spend 6 months driving as part of their work training.

I know a bunch of the then only college graduate/ex military officers (which is all they hired)
would have had a fit. But...If you are too good for that job, you shouldn't boss the guy who does it. Don't know if you ever heard the name Kenny Butler. He was one of few drivers
in management at Carlisle. An absolute first class guy. Every one wanted on his
board. But like all the good ones, he moved up. The worthless flotsam, the floated
around forever.

Anyway, at that time I don't think they really wanted sympathetic managers.
They thrived on the turnover and constant supply of lower paid and partly
subsidized drivers. The trouble Swift had changed some minds.

You mentioned software changes.
The story I told took place after Thanksgiving in 1991, I think.
There had just been a huge system change, and everything was FUBAR.
Wait times for dispatch, and customer service were horrible.
Took about 3 weeks to get it right.