If you drive for an outside carrier that picks up loads at Tyson Foods, beware.
These problem has been going on for far too long. There is just so much that a dispatcher or planner can do. It seems like the emails and the phone calls and the complaints isn’t sinking in with the representative between the company I work for and Tyson Foods.
Let me get you up to speed on the latest development. Last night, Tuesday night, I was delivering a load in Mobile Alabama. Before I left the receiver I called Tyson Foods in Carthage Mississippi. I was double booked for tonight. So, when the shipping clerk answered the phone I gave her the first truck order number and was told that load was ready and loaded on one of our company trailers. First lie! Okay, fine. I then give the clerk the second truck order number and was told the same thing… Second lie. I said that I’ll be at the plant as soon as I can.
So, I leave Mobile Alabama and drive all the way to the Tyson plant in Carthage Mississippi. I get there the same clerk is still there that I spoke with earlier. She proceeds to hand me a BOL for my load. I sign it, walk outside and start looking for the trailer number. It isn’t one of our company trailer numbers. It’s a Prime trailer number. And I walked around the trailer lot and couldn’t even find a Prime trailer with that number.
I can call my company and complain until I’m blue in the face. The planner and the dispatcher will send a message to the Tyson Rep, and that seems as far as it goes. Nothing changes!
And Tyson is still at its old tricks. They might not do this every single day, but near about it. Say today is Wednesday. Every company driver that picks up a load at Tyson is required to bring in an empty trailer. So, we have all the empty trailers that drivers has swapped out for loaded ones for their Tuesday night deliveries. Tyson is notorious about taking the empty trailers that’s dropped off, not using all of them for Wednesday night loads, but instead loading Thursday or Friday loads on the trailers and making drivers have to wait to be transferred because they instead load Wednesday’s loads on Prime, Tyson, or storage trailers instead of our company trailers. They, Tyson, can deny it all they want. I have went to Tyson, say on a Wednesday, had to wait to be transferred when there was several of our trailers loaded at the facility, left, delivered my load, taken my 10 hr break and drove back the next day and those trailers that was loaded yesterday is still sitting there to be delivered Thursday or Friday.
Either these problems will be fixed and never repeated, or I am gone! I am NOT the only outside carrier driver that works for my company that has gone through this multiple times. Every driver that I have spoke to is just as sick of this as I am and it’s got to stop now!