Abilene Motor Express....A New Place To Call Home

Took a reset at the yard,now delivering up the road,have a preplan,Hp to Carol Stream,Il for Wednesday morning.

 

Got a PetSmart load yesterday. Load said to pick up a pre-loaded trailer from the PetSmart warehouse yesterday at 5:00pm and deliver it tomorrow at 7:00am. I got there early to see if maybe they'd finished it already. No such luck. And the first receiver of the 3-stop delivery was only 7hr 30min away.

So I spent the night at the nearby PFJ and picked the trailer up this morning. This freight is being delivered to actual PetSmart stores. Waited a few hours after I got underway, then called the first receiver. Told 'em I could be there between 3:00pm and 4:00pm today if they wanted, and would they be interested in taking delivery a day early? Or would they prefer if I just showed up in the morning as scheduled? Dude checked to make sure he had the space to accept delivery, and confirmed that he would be 100% okay taking delivery today. Groovy.

Around 30 minutes before arrival, I get a phone call from HQ. They wanted to confirm that I would be there for on-time delivery. This is the second time I've delivered one of these PetSmart loads to the actual stores, and they were anxious about the first one, too. Apparently they are Very Worried(tm) about losing this account, and so want to ensure that we're there at the appointed time.

"Have I got good news for you!" I said, and told them that I was delivering a day early, and there would be zero chance of the delivery being late. I was even planning to call up the 2nd stop after getting unloaded at the first stop to see if they wanted to hop on the "take delivery a day early" bandwagon.

AS IT TURNS OUT, HOWEVER, HQ was not happy with this arrangement. Apparently PetSmart has, in the past, had trouble with drivers showing up a day early completely unannounced and basically demanding that they be unloaded. And so they don't want us showing up early OR late.

I had to get the manager to write a little note in order to mollify HQ. Note reads "I approved early delivery for this load," signed and dated by the manager. Hopefully this will soothe HQ's troubled brow.

Decided to abandon my plans to see if I could deliver the 2nd load today. Don't want to give HQ another attack of the vapors. Fortunately, the dude here is fine with me spending the night in his dock. So I have a whole shopping center with several restaurants at my disposal for dinner.

 

Had a delivery to East Peoria, IL. 24-hour delivery window. Anytime today, 6/26/25, according to my load assignment.

Address sounded familiar, but couldn't quite place it until I got here, whereupon I immediately remembered my last trip here.

My last trip here said it was a drop-and-hook. Drop the loaded trailer, hook an empty, no appointment times, just a 24-hour window.

The assignment was wrong. It was a live unload, and I did indeed have an appointment time, and I was 4 hours late.

This time, they at least correctly had the delivery listed as a live unload rather than a drop-and-hook, but again, they had a 24-hour delivery window. And I was told it was FCFS. And, once again, that was incorrect. I had an appointment time at 10:00am, which, through sheer luck and happenstance, I was 20 minutes early for.

Was told by the receiving manager that this is an ongoing problem with Abilene, one they have not managed to resolve despite repeated attempts. They stop taking deliveries at 3:00pm and lock their gate at 4:00pm, and they've had drivers show up at 6:00pm wondering why they can't get unloaded when their load assignment says they have 24 hours to deliver. Dude said they had another Abilene load scheduled to be delivered today with the same appointment time as me, but he was nowhere to be seen. Probably because his load assignment told him the same thing mine did, so he doesn't know he has an appointment at 10:00am.

In any case, I've been unloaded, and now I'm waiting for HQ to figure out what else to do with me, since I have hometime coming up on Sunday and they need to get me back to Richmond.

 

That customer will eventually kick abilene to the curb

 

They’ve already lost two of their biggest accounts.

 

Direct customer. Shipper is a drop-and-hook, and we've been coming here at least six months.

 

The operational staff at Abilene has always been a joke, that’s one of the main reasons we left years ago. I’ve never seen such a dis functional place in all of my years trucking: