Dispatcher
Owensboro,#2UPDATE Employee
Fri, April 24, 2009
Unfortunately there are disgruntled ex-employees with every company in the world. Dragon Creek is not alone. Ms. Lalla was employed by us for a VERY frustrating 3 months (not sure on time). I remember her well. This company has been in business for over 30 years in the trucking industry. When someone tells us they are a truck driver, we expect them to know how to operate their equipment. We do understand that there are variations on each unit but, they are all relatively similar. If you can operate one, you should be able to operate others, tentatively. In response to this disgruntled employee, we were drastically mislead as to her abilities. She was unable to perform the required duties of a "truck driver". You must be able to check fluids, tires, fuel and so on. Regretfully she was unable to do any of those things. She drove the truck and that is all she was able to do. Backing up was an issue as well as she demolished a fence in Tennessee. Weekly we were repairing and replacing tires that she would destroy. When she was asked how it happened she was baffled and said she must have ran over something, but she didn't know for sure. As for her first run, I rememeber that as well. She had wanted to be driving an automatic, we do not own any. She complained about this the entire time. She did have an issue with the heat in the truck as it was VERY cold in Montana (not Missouri) at that time. She was asked if she could check the antifreeze levels and this is when we learned she knew NOTHING about a truck. She informed us she could make it to Oregon and we would fix it there. Upon completion of this run we probably should have terminated her employment as she had mislead us as to her ability to operate a truck. But we liked Lalla and were willing to give her a chance to redeem herself. This was not forthcoming. As for being late, she was ALWAYS late. At one time she was 1 & 1/2 days late which lost a load with a revenue of over $7000. This became a constant issue with her. When asked why she took her own routes and was constantly late, she laughed it off saying "What's the big deal they are only trees". As for allowing 3 -4 hundred miles of fuel, she is correct as she refused to answer her phone and communicate as to her location. So this was the only way we had to keep a tab on where she was. When she had the fuel issue in Iowa ... she ran out BEFORE she called me (I am the Dispatcher). She was told to check the valves, but to quote her "ME, NOT KNOWING ANYTHING ABOUT TRUCKS". She was unable to perform her duty. She told me she had 1/4 tank of fuel which is about 50 gallons but she couldn't make it 40 miles, however she drove past one fuel stop because she wanted to go to the other one further down the highway. Therefore she ran out of fuel again. When we sent the road service out (second time) we asked THEM to check the valve and they turned it on so the fuel would move from one tank to the other. They did charge us for doing her job. As for the incident in Illinois, she was out of route ... AGAIN ... and was in a residential area, she had lost the plate off the trailer (she didn't know where or how) and did not have her proper paperwork in the truck (her responsibility) which caused her ticket. If we had not had the proper papers we could not have gotten the truck released, it was NEVER impounded, it was at a scale on the route she was supposed to have been on. I made several attempts to contact lalla regarding this issue after she had gotten back into Owensboro. However she refused to answer my calls and did not respond to voice mail messages. As for her pay, I only know that I was giving her advances several times a week. As for what she had coming above that, I don't know. I am sure it wasn't much as she did not run many loads because she took so long just getting one load done. I got to the point that I didn't look for her a reload until I knew she was empty, as it makes me look bad that my driver is not on time. This also makes our customers question our ability to hire a "competent driver" to transport their goods. Professionally I have nothing further to say regarding Lalla. Personally, even though I feel as though I was personnally attacked in this little area, I have nothing nice to say, therefore I will say no more. "The Dispatcher"