Ever felt like your being screwed by your company?

Well its been a very quiet couple of weeks work wise, very low miles and to be honest its not just myself that's been getting a bit pissed off with this situation.

For the last 3 weeks this has been the routine.  PEI - New Jersey - Montreal - PEI
                                                                           PEI - New Jersey - Moncton NB - PEI
                                                                           PEI - Montreal - PEI.

The last run to Montreal and back was my request as I needed to be back as we were all going to see Bryan Adams live in Concert here in Summerside, and a bloody good show it was too.  It was Elliott's first major live concert and he enjoyed it, although he was a bit surprised to see that about 5000 people knew most of the songs and were singing and dancing along, me and his mum included!  That he thought was funny.
OK, back to the low miles, I was lucky enough to hook up with my good mate Ian Newman for the run back to the Island and during the 10 hour drive back we discussed the previous few weeks/months work as he too was feeling a little shafted by the company.

Its been a fairly difficult start to the year and freight volumes are down compared with this time last year.   Company announcement in March (just wanted to set the scene)
We decided the time was right to pop in to Central dispatch and have a chat with our Dispatcher and Planner over the events of the last few weeks/months and try and get some commitment to improving our mileage and destinations.
To paint a fuller picture for this particular situation I need to go back to January of this year and the introduction of the Fuel Bonus Scheme (more like a shambles and scam in my opinion) but I will go into more detail a little later.
Midland wants to incentivise the drivers to increase their MPG, like I said I'll get into the nuts and bolts of that later.  And in January they also published the table of company drivers and their performance, I came in at #120 out of about 200, not that I am bothered where I finished.  The thing that was of interest was the mileage totals.  Whilst I managed to scrape just over 7000 miles there were a high number of drivers in the 5 figures.  The highest total was 20,513 miles!   There were many drivers who were earning a small fortune above myself and other drivers.  Now if these figures are to be believed that would mean this guy would have earned $5400 more then me in a month.   This thing has been going on for quite some time and some of us have had enough and want some of this action.
We have put our case forward that we want more miles, we have done our share of short miles and believe that others should step up and do their bit.  We have been assured that a meeting will be held between our Dispatcher, Planner & Fleet Manager to look into a lot of the factual points we gave them.  We will now wait to see what the outcome is and what action will be taken. The results of which will be detailed on this blog good or bad.
Fuel Bonus Scheme.
Ever since they announced this scheme I have been very sceptical on what formula they would use to calculate this bonus and who would qualify for the bonus.  As the time has passed my suspicions have been confirmed, there is no published formula. I have studied the only published results and I have no Idea how they have come up with the results.
This is of particular interest to me as being a former Fleet Manager I also commissioned a study into fuel management and fuel consumption and ways of increasing our MPG, whilst trying to reduce costs.
Now here are a few things that contribute to the final calculation which, to the best of my knowledge have not been factored in, they are including all company trucks on this scheme.  Now there are various areas of operations within the company trucks.

• Canada Only
• US Triangle
• Michelin Contract

Within these 3 divisions there are many variations that will contribute to the overall MPG.  The most important are Weight, Route, Terrain. Now throw into that mix different gearboxes and trucks with APU's, some trucks still running at 65mph and some like mine turned down to 62mph   How the hell can you call it a level playing field?
The company has issued a message to all company drivers that it is mandatory to attend one of their fuel seminars, I so far have refused on the basis I will not keep my Welsh Gob Shut!  I have had a full run down of these so-called interactive driver seminars from a friend and fellow driver who attended one last week, and the points and feedback put forward were all meet with the same answer. We will have to look into it and get back to you! 

Personally I would have collated all the data from the different divisions, come up with the average fuel consumption/MPG over a 3 month period within those divisions,  then set a benchmark figure for each division. Exceed it and you will get your bonus. Its Simple, why do companies have to make it so difficult, but there again what the hell do I know I'm just a driver eh?

Here is just one example of a point put to this fuel committee.

Q.
I drive a route that takes me from PEI down through New York/The Bronx/New Jersey then back to Toronto then back to Moncton NB/PEI.  I nearly always carry a load in excess of 40,000lbs.  There are trucks running Canada only with Diaper's (nappy's to the Europeans) or tissue paper and the weight of the load is a fraction of mine, who hardly have any traffic congestion to deal with and drive mainly on the flat, how can I compete with them, they are always going to get better MPG than me. So I have no chance of getting this bonus and they will every month, how is this fair?
A.
We will have to look into it and get back to you.

For F***'s Sake how stupid do they think we are?

In my humble opinion I believe this so called fuel committee was put together to tell the industry we are looking at ways to reduce our carbon footprint/fuel consumption so we look good to the outside world, and at the same time reduce expenditure on fuel.In today's world, a very positive step. However, Based on what I have seen, read, heard and personally experienced, they will achieve none of the above.

I for one will not buy into this as there is no incentive, its a no win situation, I am a very competitive individual and like nothing more than a challenge. However its a no brainer, no chance of ever achieving their giddy goals based on the current criteria, so congratulations to the ones who did qualify for the bonus and I'm sure they will now look forward to receiving their cheques every month.

Only once they have revised the criteria on which one can "realistically" achieve this elusive bonus, will I even entertain participating.  I would even be willing to sit in on this committee as a consultant to share my meagre knowledge and experience in Fuel Management.  This would be at a compensatory rate in keeping with consultants here in North America mind.  Somehow I feel this invite will not be forthcoming.

So I guess for now it will be back to my role as a "Freight Relocation Technician"

Loading Monday 16th April for New Jersey, lets see where we go from there, if its Montreal or Moncton, keep an eye out for a mushroom cloud as this driver will explode with the force of a nuclear device.

Have a great week everyone.  




STT