Hello From Hopland

Well, I arrived at Wally World's distribution center per instructions from my driver manager. That was to arrive earlier than his negotiated arrival time and beg and snivel. Neither worked , so here I sit in a truck stop 7 miles down the road from the WM. I am not to return till 1330 or so. I guess I will get some rest but the lack of actual money making work (mileage)this last 11 days is nagging on my brain. I mean, I am a truck driver and by the mile is how I am paid. I am paid nothing to wait for a badly scheduled appointment time, delay by traffic, or any other excusable bit of misfortune. I am filling out job applications for other companies with all this spare time Jim Palmer is giving me.

I was looking at the internet and stumbled upon an anti-Amway website. I mean, who the heck isn't anti-Amway. You know, the annoying contact from a friend, stating that opportunity is knocking and you could be well on your way to success and financial independence. Him standing there with a new suit, drawing circles and talking about success while his credit card balance is nearing military budget levels. What a joke. But anyway, that really wasn't what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to address was the fact that in many ways, trucking companies are just as scummy and underhanded as the losers at Amway. Just read on and see if I have a point.

***Usually when you hire on with a trucking company you are pulled into a fold of information as you indoctrinate yourself with that company. You don't realize it at first. But there are many questions that you might have under normal circumstances. And these are not normal circumstances can you say cult like control. The company controls your lodging, eating schedule or lack of food, the pace of the orientation class and every bit of the material and information. All of this usually very far from home so that it isn't easy to leave. Some of the orientation materials will guide you towards a pointed questioning of the company representative. Usually that representative has the same social skills and scruples of a car salesman. Usually he is required to lie or represent the facts in such a way as to make them acceptable. For example: Our driver services guy at orientation stated that Jim Palmer does not pay its drivers in Rand McNally Houshold Movers Miles. He stated that we are paid not quite practical miles but not as short as HHG miles. I asked my dispatcher what he uses for mileage and he replied "I don't know what Curtiss is telling you, but we use HHG miles." Just in case you do not know, HHG mileage uses some way of calculating to rip you off of approximately 8 percent of the mileage on any given trip. Thats right, that is driving that you will have to do for free in order to get a paycheck on the load you are hauling. I don't think that the Department of Labor is really aware of the fact that I am not hauling Houshold Goods, It is not addressed in any of their writings posted on the bulletin boards at the Jim Palmer terminal.

***Amway will tell you in their materials that you are in the business of selling products and goods from their catalog to like minded people that want to also be successful selling Amway products and so on. Amway will not tell you that you must purchase weekly installments of tapes and training materials and take trips to costly functions. That would be illegal regarding pyramid schemes and other issues too numerous to list. The person that got you into Amway (your upline) will strongly encourage you to purchase these (tools) that are of course for your own good and these items are very good for your business. If you do not play ball so to speak it will be very difficult to get your upline to do anything for you..You do not get a credit or earn money on what you are forced, pressured, to buy. Your entire upline gets a percentage of what you are forced to buy. I don't think Amway knows or really cares what is going on here because all of it is against what they put out in their materials.

Maybe in a future installment I will get very specific about what some of these companies pull on their employees. I mean don't get me wrong, there are some very good companies out there. Jim Palmer is not one of them but they are not as bad as Schneider, Swift, England,...I dont have all day, you get the idea. Gotta go for now. I have 13 more hours of nothing to do. Late.