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

Started driving at 4:30am, finished up at 5:30pm. Made it to the receiver with 3 minutes to spare on my 11. Haven't burned a full 11 in a good long while.

Currently parked bobtail at the Ashland TA. Will mosey back to the yard sometime tomorrow and then head home.

 

Ended up dropping the Manassas load on the yard last night cuz there was no way I was getting there 0400 this morning being my ten wasn’t up til 0630 this morning. Got to the shipper and of course I wasn’t given the right pickup number. Close call last night, get on 95 from 85 and a couple exits up a minivan misses the exit and decides to stop right in the middle lane and a pickup truck narrowly misses slamming into the back of the van by swerving into the right lane and almost gets hit again by the van trying to drive all the way over to the exit, pickup had to go to the shoulder and barely got by and I meanwhile stood on my brakes being the van kept on crossing over to the exit. I laid on the air horn a good couple minutes…I often wonder what goes on in people’s heads, just go to the next available exit and turn around and come back instead of causing an accident. Figured Id at least end up with an unneeded 34 with freight the way it is. Got what I need this week along with a day layover though. If nothing tomorrow Ill put in another day of layover.

 

Sat til Monday and was told I couldn’t sit there and forced to take one of a handful of loads that had way too much time on them, so I picked the one with the most miles going to AL due Thurs morning. Knight/Swift 2.0 this place has gone to cuz all the Knight drivers I talked to while getting my service done at their shop Friday were complaining of the same thing, short loads with too much time. Lot of the good local jobs in my area of WV get snatched up pretty quick by other experienced drivers I think, at the P&D ones that paid good unless internal hiring going on which is understandable. Hazmat tank seems to pay good but only home weekly the one I saw at least. Getting fed up with low miles, Im not picky either just make the short loads make sense delivery wise and put two together.

 

Much as I complain at least we are still operational considering all the places shutting down. Hopefully this week can be salvaged in spite of two days for a 700 mile load. At least I was able to watch Ozzy’s funeral procession this morning, the only celebrity death that really has hit me in the feels. I took his advice he said in an interview once to write as much song lyrics you can before you get popular cuz once you start touring you don’t have time to do anything. Got a whole notebook of stuff Ive written over the years, just never pursued putting music to them.

 

One of our other drivers managed to earn six days of breakdown pay, which works out to $900.

I know this because they accidentally credited it to me instead of him. Oops.

Fortunately I have not gone out and blown that $900 already, and HQ will be deducting it from my future paychecks so that the driver who earned it can actually get it.

 

Maybe somebody around here knows how to play the guitar...

 

Yeah, I believe most bands write lyrics then put music to them but it can go the other way too, like Ozzy could hear a riff and right lyrics to it according to an article I read. Music is therapy for me, most of the songs I have written are about my struggles with certain things in the past and tragic moments that have happened as well.