Thank you all. The "rule" at our station is over 7:59 mandatory hour break, and no break in the last hour. No exceptions, no excuses...drop to the next route beside you because "stop counts" are way down. Of course the accident/incident levels have skyrocketed due to the new policy. The desired outcome is achieved, reduce the hours, reduce the delivery window, add unnecessary pressure to get the job done and make the outbound pull. Several routes in our station drive 50 miles to make the first stop of the day. Of course service is suffering, morale is in the sewer and they wonder why accidents have gone through the roof. Our station is composed mostly of 15+ year vets. Most of us have seen it all and done it all, but yet, despite the changes over the years we still bleed purple and we try our best to take care of our customers.
It is very aggravating when the "bean counters" set us up for failure before we even start the truck in the morning.
They have tried this at our station before and it did not work. It's not working very well now but the policy is still in place. I just hope no one gets seriously injured or killed because of the "numbers/budget".
It will be an interesting peak...to say the least. Please be careful. When we physically bleed it won't be purple.