The Load from HELL that got us fired

Where to begin... this load turned out to be the load that got us fired from LCT. It's too bad too, because we really liked working for LCT.

We were at the yard in Okahumpka, FL waiting for our load to become available at 12 midnight. We got all the info from our "daytime" dispatcher and were just waiting for the trailer to arrive at our yard.

Then the "night" dispatcher comes on duty, and asks us to do a "quick" run to Jacksonville. We look at the QualComm message and ask her (the night dispatcher) if she believes we can make it back by 12 mid. (it is now 6pm). She said Yes, no problem. I say again... we will only have enough time to go up to this destination and drop the trailer, will that be OK? She says ok.
So we take the "quick trip".
-- Mistake #1

What is suppose to take only a couple of hours, ends up being a load to Wal-Mart that takes ALL night. We don't get back to the yard until 7am. By the time we get our paperwork for our Flower run, and get hooked up and do a Pre-trip, we are Late leaving by about 8 hours right from the start.

Everything seems to be going along OK. We are routed to go the southern route mostly I-10, then I-40. We make it to Kingman, AZ and Leroy has an "incident". He is driving in a parking lot and turns too sharply around a light pole. The light pole has a wider concrete base. The concrete base pushes the tires off the rims, damages the rims, and bends the axle. (No damage to body of trailer). But Not good. A repair guy comes out and gets us mobile. About 6 hours lost.
-- Mistake #2 -- our fault

After the "incident/accident".... the LCT Shop Supervisor directs us (re-routes us) to go up to Las Vegas, NV where we are to meet another team who is bringing us an empty trailer. We are to meet at a Cold Storage facility in Las Vegas where their workers will transfer the flowers onto the new trailer for us. We arrive in Las Vegas at midnight, the other team arrives at 3am, the facility doesn't open until 6am. --More time lost.--

After they open the trailer doors and discover that all the boxes are loose and are NOT on pallets, they say they cannot do the transfer.... so me and Leroy, along with the other team, Big Mike and Little Mike, go to the nearest truck stop.. back the trucks to each other, and do the transfer of 1800 loose boxes ourselves. 4 people, 4.5 hours.
-- Mistake #3 (re-routing, not our fault)

After the transfer, we head north on I-15 into Salt Lake City to go across the I-80 into Sacramento, CA then north into Portland, OR. --Big Mistake.-- We hit a big snow storm!
Weather - not our fault.

By this time the load is very late and we are being watched very closely. When we message in that we ran into a snow storm with white out conditions, and would have to wait until morning to drive, we are told by the night dispatcher (the same one who sent us on that "quick trip mistake" at the beginning) that we cannot stop and that if we can't keep rolling then another team will come get our load and deliver it for us. At first I tried to argue saying that if we can't SEE in these conditions, no one else will be able to see any better, but in the end I just said... OK, when will they be here..... She said about 2 hours.

After 2 hours, we get a message that says, "plans have changed and to deliver the load as soon as the weather conditions allow." That tells me that the other team ran into the same white out conditions that we did and couldn't get through. A little bit of confirmation for me.
-- Mistake #4 Northern route and hit snow storm.

After we started rolling, they were watching our every move. Even when we stopped to go pee, they would QualComm us and say... what have you stopped for??? Crazy. We even got a call from the President of LCT (Cory) wanting to know what our progress was, I told him everything that had happened.

He said that the client was threatening to pull this account from them because of us being late.
All I can say is.... they must have had other problems with this client in the past for them (the client) to threaten to pull this account because we were late - one time. This was our first time pulling for this client, so I know we were not the SOLE reason for the clients threat.

We finally made it to Portland, OR, with this load - three days late. We were suppose to deliver on Friday, and didn't get there until Monday.

LCT got us a load immediately out that same day. A slow run back to the Yard. When we finally made it back to the yard. We were called into the office and told that LCT would be "severing ties with us". In other words, we were fired. They said it was due to Leroy's "incident" which they made into a big deal. But we know it wasn't that.

So we cleared out our truck 3/24/08, rented a car, shipped our stuff home to California, and flew home the next day. 3/25/08

We found out from other veteran drivers at LCT, that we were really the "scape goats" so that LCT could save face with the client. The company fired us and swapped dispatchers (the solo dispatchers/for the team dispatchers) to show that things had "changed" to the client.

So now we are at home in Lakeside, CA staying with Laurie's parents and looking for work.
Pray that we find something soon.
3/25/08