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

FYI , it is raining in TX.

That is all ,

 

I've seen many Abilene Drivers during my travels, but one truck I saw in Wytheville lately had me wondering what happened...

A few weeks ago, I was headed north on 77 and south on 81 at the same time. Off to my right, in the 77 South/81 North Lanes, I saw a wrecker pulling an Abilene Truck, with the trailer still attached...

From the looks of the truck, it had rolled over...

I don't know what happened, but I hope the driver was okay...

Anyone know anything that he/she can share about that incident?

 

News to me.... but I too would like to know if the driver was ok.

 

That's cool... guess his date backed out at the last minute... LOL

 

Oops.

 

Just adjust your 5th Wheel...

 

Gatorade?

 

That was from yesterday. The whole business, start to finish, was a major fustercluck.

I go to this feed factory out in East Jesus, KY. Appointment is at 10, but they're first come, first serve. I got there at 8:30, so bonus.

Except that I need a pick-up number, which I don't have. Turns out, this is the first time Abilene has ever sent a truck to this place. Definitely a broker load.

Took over an hour to get that sorted, but eventually we got a number and I bumped a dock to get loaded. 21 pallets of protein tubs for livestock. The bill of lading said that the whole business weighed 41k, but when I got there that morning, the loading guy was saying they always load 44k. So I figured it was probably in my best interest to scale out.

Problem was: The closest scale had a weigh station in between me and it. The closest scale I could get to that didn't involve me driving past (and potentially through) a weigh station was 24 miles in the wrong direction.

So I schlepped it down to Mount Sterling, KY and weighed out at the scale. I was just thinking I needed to adjust my tandems. Was quite surprised that I was over gross.

Back to the shipper I go to have them take some stuff off. Found out that the guy who had loaded me up had immediately quit without notice after loading my trailer. He'd been there 13 years, and apparently had finally had enough. I dunno what "enough" entails in this context. Maybe he just hates green trucks.

Anyhow, the guy who was doing the loading and unloading takes my paperwork to go unload my truck. Then he comes back and tells me he can't unload my truck, and that Abilene needs to call the consignee and have the consignee call the shipper and tell them how much to take off. That took about an hour before it all got straightened out, and they took off one pallet.

Naturally, having learned my lesson, I went back to the Mount Sterling Pilot to scale out again. Under gross, both axles under weight, all good. Finally got on the road for real around 5:00pm after having arrived at the shipper 8.5 hours earlier.

Spent the night at Tamarack Travel Center where I found the last open parking spot. Hit the consignee this morning around 11:30, was empty by 12:40, drove down to the Pilot in South Boston to fuel up and wait for a load assignment. Still waiting some 6.5 hours later.

Which brings us up to the present day.

 

Wow! I had a crazy couple days, but not that bad. Did a Gatorade to the lovely wintersville. Overgross by 1000 lbs. They fixed it pretty quickly, but still ate up 2 hours of my clock at the end of my day. Ended up just staying at the Wytheville yard since it was late and truck stops full. Then after waiting 2.5 hours for reload late in the evening yesterday, drove 50 miles beyond BFE to Beverly WV only to find out the load I was to pick up had already been picked up. So, back to Wytheville to pick up a 180 mile load. Gotta love being a local driver. They always do this crap when it's time for me to go home in a few days. Short runs. Humph!