Not impressed with the new plan, so far

I mentioned that there were big changes afoot at work, with a new communication/logging system, a new pay system, and a new dispatch system.

Well, the first two may work just fine, but the new dispatch system, where our week is essentially planned by a computer program and then assigned according to seniority, has changed my usual 4-day week, usually made up of two overnight trips starting Tuesday and Thursday, into a 5-night week, consisting of one overnight trip starting at night and 4 addition local runs at night.

I don't like night work. I don't sleep well during the day. And this is going to kill my shelter volunteer work.

How is that even legal to do? They can't go and change the working agreement just like that.

Contact the Labour Board in your area and ask.

If the Labour Board agrees that they can do it, if it were me I'd be looking for a different job.

Not everyone can function on nights. And there are people who actually enjoy working nights. So it's quite possible that some of those who like nights have been moved to days and would prefer nights.

Is this because you are low man on senority??? Any chances of trading these routes with someone else. I would think with the large demand for OTR drivers there would be lots of companies that might offer the hours you would like.

Yeah, it's legal. Actually, even if we had continued doing exactly what we had been doing, the mileage/drop pay would be higher than the hourly pay.

And yes, I'm #33 out of 36 drivers. Not a lot of turnover at the top.

My bet is that there will be a lot of shifting.

Part of the problem is that if you tell a computer that a load has to be delivered by 4 a.m., and you tell it that it's an 8-hour drive, the computer will almost surely schedule the trip to leave a 8 p.m. We HAVE been delivering 8-10 hours early, a lot of the time. The computer program is designed to take a lot of the slack out of the system, but a lot of that slack is there to allow for the numerous changes, cancellations, etc. And one flat tire will ripple through the whole schedule.

We'll see.