U.S. Xpress is pissing me off. I've already complained about having to sit for the day to pick up a load that doesn't deliver until Thursday morning. Well, now they're telling me that it's a preloaded trailer and they're trying to get me to go pick it up. Fine with me. But the load info says clearly that the driver, me, cannot bobtail to the shipper. I don't have a trailer. And U.S. Xpress is doing its cloak and dagger shit. In other words, someone is pushing for me to go pick up the load, but no one is willing to tell me anything about where I'm supposed to get an empty trailer or whether or not I can bobtail to shipper. I'm just not in the mood for this shit.

This is why this irritates me, and it's pretty much standard operational procedure for some of the low-lifes in the offices at U.S. Xpress. What they want me, the driver, to do is to just get up and go at someone's urging. If I were to do that then the responsibility of showing up at the shipper would be mine and not corporate's. So they're trying to get me to go to the shipper without a trailer without actually going on record as telling me to do so. See how it works?

Here's the satcom conversation so far;

Dispatcher: It is preloaded see if they will give it 2 U

Driver: Load info says do not bobtail to shipper. Please advise.

Dispatcher: Correct. They have it preloaded but it also says no bobtail. We have to try.

Driver: Does that mean ya'll want me to bobtail to shipper?

Hehe. I know I'm frustrating the hell out of them, but I'm not going to bobtail to a shipper with specific instruction not to unless someone at U.S. Xpress goes on record as telling me to do so. I've been with this company long enough to know how to avoid getting blame for something transferred over to me. And believe me, Blame the Driver is the most popular game in the offices of U.S. Xpress.

After my last message, USX got very quiet. It'll be interesting to see if they come back with anything. Their favorite tactic is to just not say anything, but that's not going to work here. I'm not going to bobtail to the shipper without someone specifically telling me to do so. If I did, and the customer made a stink about it, the office personnel would simply say "the load info clearly says that the driver is not to bobtail to this customer," the implication being that I took it upon myself to do so. The only antidote to that is having someone send me a message on the satcom telling me to bobtail, because all satcom messages are archived. If a stink is made someone can go back and look at the satcom messages to see what went on. That's why I'm not going to let myself be put in the position of accepting responsibility for bobtailing to the shipper. They've known since this morning that I don't have a trailer and apparently no one has looked into finding me one.

I realize I'm being a hard-ass about this, but I'm just not in the mood.