USX has officially lost their minds. They just added insult to injury. In addition to making me sit for 40 hours to go on stand-by (and for the uninitiated, “stand-by” means that I'm just an extra truck they're putting into position in case there is a load at the customer), they now want me to do a local delivery, as well. To facilitate this they empty moved me 35 miles north, when it's actually closer to 75 miles. I'm supposed to drop my trailer at one place, pick up a load from another place, and then deliver that load. If you just thought “well, that's sort of the way it works” you're right. The problem comes in when you consider that moving up there and doing all this is going to cost me hours on my log. All together the local thing will probably cost me around four hours on my log, and then I'm supposed to go over to the next customer and pick up a load that I'm supposed to be ready and able to run; only then I'll be running short of hours (assuming, of course, it's longer than the 400 miles I could run with my remaining seven hours or so).

Naturally USX doesn't understand this. They seem to think that my objections are over concerns that I won't be paid for the local work. Well, there's precedent for that, but that was the least of my concerns. Since it came up, though, I should mention that Mara and I have never really gotten paid for local work. If they pay you at all, they rarely pay you for the hours you worked, instead paying you for a couple of hours less. But that's not my objection here. I object to the treatment. For one thing, I delivered at 06:00 yesterday morning and have been made to sit here since then to go to a customer tonight at 22:00 that may or may not have a load for me. If the customer does not have a load, then I was made to sit for nothing. To add insult to injury, USX wants me to pick up the scraps from a rail load (the rail took the team freight that Mara and I used to run as a team) and waste my hours first dropping my empty, then picking up the rail load and delivering it.

I realize that I've just repeated myself. I don't think there's any way for me to explain the insult here. This is not a good situation. Mara and I are in a position where our checking account is in the red, creditors are calling, we desperately need for me to getting some miles, and this is the what USX does to me? I explained to my dispatcher my objections. He wasn't particularly interested. I mean, he tried, but he has enough on his hands without having to deal with another whiny driver. Those are my words, not his. He didn't talk to me like that. I told him that Mara was thinking about coming back next week (a half truth; she had decided to get back on the truck if nothing else worked out), but that the way I had been running had given her reason to reconsider. There's actually a lot of truth to that. Mara has said that if we could go back to running like we did a few years ago, where we were getting plenty of miles (the initial influx of money that made my family think we were raking in the cash) and before we made the fatal error of switching over to R&K Trucking, that she would get back on the truck in a minute. The thing that has stopped her dead in her tracks and kept her from even considering coming back to USX is, quite simply, the way they've been doing me. Well, that and the fact that we know from experience how hard it has been for USX drivers, and we're aware of how many people are leaving the company. You don't willingly board a ship that's taking on water. Especially not when they're going to hand you leftovers from the captain's table and tell you that it's a feast.

I don't know how this company's going to survive. Actually, I don't know how this country is going to survive. I left warehouses because the corporate pigs had reduced it to the lowest common denominator. Driving a forklift used to be a job that paid relatively well. Now driving a forklift has been reduced to a point where any kid who watches a 20-minute video is a forklift driver, and it pays accordingly. The same thing is happening to USX, and probably to the trucking industry as a whole. I've never thought of that before. But that would certainly explain my observation to Mara that the only people I see driving for this company now are youngins - people in their early to late twenties. Now, let's not get into the who age thing. Being young has nothing to do with whether or not you can drive a truck or be a good driver. But the noticeable absence of older drivers means that the more experienced people are taking their services elsewhere and the only people willing to work for the table scraps that companies like USX are offering are the young people who are willing to work for next to nothing.

I think I've reached my breaking point. I keep thinking I'll see better miles. I keep thinking that next week will be better. But I'm continually frustrated. This has been a resounding chorus from me in all the years I've been driving; that I can't justify being out here for the money I'm making. But always before my complaining has been followed by a good week and a good paycheck that shut me up. I've been largely silent about this, since I left home I've been given nothing. I'll be turning in around 1,200 miles for this week. I quit Epes Transport because they couldn't give me more than 2,000. Why in the world would I stick around here for less? At least with Epes I got home every weekend.

I told Mara that it was strange. People look back through the years and can pick out, in hindsight, certain things or certain moments that were "the final straw." I realized as soon as USX gave me the local run that this is mine. I won't be leaving any time soon. We have financial realities that cannot be ignored. But, to use a few tired old trucking cliché, as soon as I'm able I'll be looking for the exit and I'll be getting out from under this load. It's time for a change.