Quitting under a load?

I am just going to try and explain why this is horrible advice.

When you give a company a two week notice and leave on good terms, you are eligible for rehire, when you don't you are not eligible for rehire.

So what, you don't plan on going back to that company.

Fine, but as a recruiter, when I am checking your work history, and you have on your application that you quit, and when I call the company they tell me you are not eligible for rehire, it goes against you in my decision to send your application on, if your application doesn't get sent on, you don't get hired.

Furthermore, it may be a determining factor in the company's who would consider hiring you. I have companies that are good companies, they will not even consider any one who has driven for more than 3 companies in the past 5 years, and no more than 1 "not eligible for rehire"

The drivers here who are telling him to do it the right way are not telling him that because of their concern for the company... they are looking out for a fellow driver and helping him to not lock himself into only working for just above bottom feeder companies or bottom feeders.

 

Actually, he probably is serious.. as it is simple common sense and he apparently understands the hiring process..

You don't do thing right for the companies benefit... you do it for yourself and to keep better opportunities open.

As A recruiter, yes, not quitting a job right hurts you more than the company.

 

Trust me. I understand what you're saying. I get the idea of giving two weeks. Maybe I'm the guy that will never work for another company again. Maybe I should've said, if you plan on working for another company, give this company two weeks. I just hate how companies can let you go a will, and expect 2 weeks notice. No logic in that.

 

Just as sure as death and taxes are real the one time you burn a bridge at some point later you find yourself needing that bridge. In my view screw the company. However with one exception every fleet manager I have ever worked for was good to me. My conscience would never allow me to just up and quit and leave that fleet manager with a full board. It's called treating people with respect. On another subject I have read several posts in here that seem to give the impression that truck/load abandonment is just another thing that happens. IT IS NOT. There are some trucking companies that refuse to hire you for this. Some won't even finish an interview if you can't give a good reason for that do not rehire comment your old company has in their file on you. Yes In some limited situations you can get another driving job but it is not that easy and in most your hauling dog excrement out of Omaha. One thing I have noticed over the last 30 or so years is more and more drivers seem to want to fly off the handle at simple things. Never make a snap decision angry. You are also not getting them good when you abandon their load or equipment. In the end all your doing is dousing that bridge with gas and burning that sucker down. I still get 3 or 4 calls a month from truckers I have tried to be a mentor to. I have asked them to call me before doing something stupid. In most cases I am able to talk them in from that ledge.

No matter the situation the best time to quit a driving job for an OTR driver is to do it over home time. This way your not under a load. Just clean out the tractor and get it checked out before you leave. Quitting at any other time just complicates the timing. I wrote the other night about a hard time I had parking an empty in PA. I left that place angry at the world. I did get my phone out and called night dispatch and asked them to get me routed through the home terminal. I had a long talk with both my Fleet manager and the head of safety. We all agreed to keep a watch on it but I went back to work. Then when I felt it was time I communicated this to my Fleet manager. I left on good terms with that company. I have actually called someone I know at their home company in Florida and got a driver hired.

Short of being sick don't drop a load and quit. Deliver the load or get the load re powered and sit tight until it is actually gone. Abandoning a load is like shooting yourself in the foot. It is pointless and in the end only hurts you the driver.

 

I am guessing you have never been in a position to hir or fire anyone,

If you had, you would know that there is no fun in hiring or firing.

For every one person you hire, there are more that you have to tell that they didn't get hired, you chose someone else. There is no fun in that.

When you have to fire some one it sucks. You do not know how they will react, will they get angry, will they breakdown and cry, will they plead with you and tell you about their kids, their bills, they will have no where to live..

When I had to fire someone I hated it, my stomach would be nauseous and in knots, I would get muscle tension, I would get a tingling feeling in my hands and feet and it was hard to keep still because of all the nervous energy and anxiety.

I never had to fire anyone who didn't know it was going to happen. They had been warned about their behavior previously and didn't change it, they did something that was clearly a grounds for termination act.

It isn't like we just pull someone's name from the hat and fire them.

It costs money to fire someone, so companies do not take it lightly.

Yes, there have been times when a driver lost his job through no fault of their own.. Arrow Trucking years back leaving drivers stranded all across the country comes to mind.

My brother works in manufacturing and he had been with this company for 13 years, however over the last 5 years things had gotten bad, a lot of guys no pulling their weight, and so corporate fired the plant manager and brought in a young college grad. He actually was doing good and in 6 months and made some good changes. However, the guys not pulling their weight and making mistakes were still there. Corporate emailed names of 6 guys and he had to fire them. He did, and my brother said he showed it was hard on him. With half the slackers gone and new hard workers in their place things were picking up. Then one day my brother and 3 others were staying late to finish up a job that the slacker guys messed up.
They heard a loud noise, and ran over thinking a big aluminum coil and fallen, but no, they looked for the noise never found it, when they looked at each other and had the same thought. They went to the young plant managers office and he had killed himself, on the computer was the email with the names of the last 5 guys he was to fire.

My brother was messed up for awhile from that, he had gone to the plant managers wedding just a few months before this happened, met his young pregnant bride. Not to mention seeing it. He came to visit me and told me about what happened and he was worried about me. I assured him I was fine. He stayed for a week and went home.

However I new the truth was that I wasn't fine, I had started keeping a bottle of vodka and some scotch in my lower desk drawer for when I had to fire someone, to take the edge off. So I put in my resignation and was gone in 6 months, because in middle management you don't give a two week notice, you reign and continue to work until they replace you, and your replacement is up to snuff.

After that, I became a truck driver and drove truck for about 6 years.

 

I ran into an old Arrow driver several months ago at the Hampton VA hospital. You green drivers that think you know what bad is? Talk to some of these people. This guy was stuck in Nebraska for several days. Wife had to send him money and he was selling things just to eat. That was a VERY VERY bad time and trucking in general got a black eye on that one. My Memory also wants to remember a tanker company doing just about the same thing. This one owed comdata so much money comdata just turned the fuel cards off stranding hundreds of drivers.

 

I remember when that happened with Arrow.. it was just before Christmas.. Drivers woke up thinking it was just another day... go to fuel their trucks and the fuel card wouldn't work, called the company and couldn't get ahold of anyone... Then they got a message to turn the trucks in to the dealership.

Drivers were stranded... other Drivers stood up and helped who they could how they could, maybe give them a lift and get them closer to home...

It was a bad time... but, we must also remember how so many drivers did help stranded drivers... They were the bright lights in that dark time.

 

I'll have to agree on all of what you said.I guess under certain conditions sometimes a driver has to do what he has to do to finally leave a company that's done him wrong from day one.

 

I'm not familiar with US labour laws, but in Canada, if you are outside the probation period (usually 90 days from DOH) you are required by law to give proper notice to quit (usually two weeks). If not, and especially in trucking, it'll haunt you for a very long time when looking for more work.

Even worse, the company could nail you with abandonment, even if it's on their property, and that's a big no-no.

I can understand not liking where you are currently working, but what motivated the switch? Why couldn't you have left more time between being finished at your current workplace and the new one? People don't just up and quit when they've got something new lined up, they generally try not to burn a bridge just in case the new digs don't work out.

 

Just read this whole thread, have a couple of comments fwiw.

First, good for OP for finishing the load. Take a picture of the truck and trailer in front of the terminal with a date and time stamp so they can't put equipment abandonment on your DAC, and keep a copy of that last BOL so they can't hit you with load abandonment.

Second, the only time in 40 years of working that I quit without notice was my first trucking job. I had been there 1.5 years and had a clean record. I leased the last year or so (bad idea!) and did fine until the last four months. I talked to the right people to let them know that I wasn't making enough, never turned down loads, didn't whine and #####, but still nothing changed, got the "freight is slow, rates are bad" line. But then I started talking to company drivers. They were getting way more miles and loads that I knew paid better than I was generally getting. (I knew because sometimes I got those loads, but not often.) I got three offers from other companies, took a week of home time to think about it, then called my dispatcher and told him I quit, I'll have the truck at the terminal in a day. I still had three days of planned time off, so I knew he hadn't even started to think about what my next load was going to be.

He wanted two weeks notice, told me I'd be burning a bridge, said he'd mark me as not rehireable. I told him no thanks, I've talked to other drivers, you guys hold the last two weeks of pay for 45 days before the final settlement on the truck lease, and I can't afford to work for free for two weeks since I'm already hurting from the low net settlements I've been getting for the last four months, as we've discussed. Not to mention that they emphasize during orientation that they are in an "at will" state and can terminate with or without cause at any time. And there was no time frame for the notice provision in the lease, either. And I'm a 1099 lease operator, not your employee.

So I quit, he put not rehireable on my DAC, and I went on to my next job. I left that job because of unplanned major surgery. When I came back to work after being unemployed for over four months following that surgery, i had six job offers in under a week. Only one recruiter asked about the DAC comment, and he was satisfied with my explanation.

So, while I absolutely agree that it is generally much better to give two weeks notice, some companies make that undesirable through their own sketchy policies of holding settlements for an unreasonable amount of time until they've checked your truck for damage. And having one "not rehireable" on your record isn't necessarily the kiss of death, especially if you have a clean MVR and service record.

Finally, for the person who had to liquor up just to fire someone, it's good that you are no longer a manager. I have hired and fired dozens of people during 20 years as a middle manager and never had any trouble looking myself in the mirror afterwards.

Why? Because every single person I fired failed to meet objective standards of behavior and/or performance that they had been taught and trained to meet. Most got more than adequate warning and additional help and training before they were let go.

Was it my favorite thing to do? No! I disliked having to go through recruiting and training another person to do the job. That's a gigantic PITA. At the same time, I couldn't continue to harm my employer and the rest of the team by holding on to people who couldn't or (much more often) wouldn't do the job.

So, have a few discussions about how to improve, provide what they need so they can improve, and walk them out the door if they don't improve. No need to cry about their kids. I'm not the kids' parent, the jerk who won't do their job is. I don't owe those kids anything beyond doing what I can to make it possible for their parent to stay employed. In other words, I don't owe those kids anything - their parent does. If you are trying to manage people while taking on the responsibility for your employees' bad decisions, you have not received good training on how to be a manager.

I'm sure that's more than what anyone needed to hear from me today.