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TATiTAA 1 1 Ii! [S kL" III
Page 15
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Rikki Chequer, the community manager for TruckNet UK, sings the praises of the site's private messaging service.
While the forums are the public face of TruckNet UK, a lot also goes on behind the scenes, hidden from the casual user's view. The site's private messaging system enables members to talk and discuss issues that may not be quite so suitable for public consumption.
This system is beneficial in many ways. Certainly from TruckNet UK's point of view, it allows detailed, private discussion between individuals about a number of subjects.
However, that's not to say that anything goes across the forums, private or otherwise.
By encouraging those discussions to go on between interested individuals; and out of the public domain, both the authors and the website ensure information can still be disseminated, but in a much more focused way.
Owner-drivers are constantly using the private messaging system to alert others on the forums to well-paying work. Posting this information openly could lead to the work being hijacked.
Also, the system can be used to help keep fuel prices down by quoting some of the cheapest deals to be found, Many owner-drivers report that they regularly get a reduction when they show the fuel card companies that other owner-drivers are getting their fuel at a cheaper price.
It is difficult for drivers to be totally open and honest on the forums when asked for an opinion on driving for a particular company. Posting that a firm encourages "bent" running, fails to pay drivers their wages correctly and never maintains its vehicles would probably result in immediate legal action, While the public forums are a useful tool, they become so much more when you have the ability to find those with the information you need and then contact them directly and privately.
With private messaging, TruckNet UK is turned into a network of experience and knowledge that is unsurpassed in this industry.
And being internet-based, it is active 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The only surprising thing about all this, though, is that with the forums being totally free to use, many more individuals in the industry are not taking full advantage of them.