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

Old step deck from older days. Lives at the museum, mainly used for moving the antique stuff. Sometimes to help get wrecks. Pic is when I took it out to Iowa in May.

 

Had a shipment to a Costco facility on the south side of Atlanta. First time there. Freight was a bunch of HP printers.

Arrived at 8:15am for my 9:00am appointment, bumped a dock at 9:30, they were done by 11:00, smooth like clockwork.

Except for one printer, which they left on my trailer. Box was damaged. They refused it with a little sticker saying that it had been shipped on a non-approved pallet. Thing is, they accepted all the other printers that had been shipped on the same non-approved pallets. That's nice, I guess. They're making sure that the shipper gets the blame for it instead of me.

This is the first time in the 1yr 2mos I've been driving solo that I've had any kind of an OSD situation. So I parked on site, sent in an OSD macro, then called HQ. They told me to sit tight and they would set the wheels in motion to determine what I needed to do next. "It might take a while," they said. Okay, no problem.

Three hours later, hadn't heard from 'em. I'm a patient guy, and I don't like blowing up their phone when they got stuff to do, but I figure three hours was plenty of time to figure out SOMETHING. And just as I'm grabbing my phone to make another phone call, my QC beeps at me.

It was a load assignment. I hadn't sent in an "Empty Final Consignee" or "End Trip" macro, because as far as I'm concerned I was still on the trip until I got word about what to do with the printer. So I was kinda baffled as to why I was getting a load assignment when I was still on the previous load.

Called my DM, and definitely got the feeling that nobody was in any way trying to figure out what to do with this printer. "How big is it? Can you put it in your cab?" It's a big-ish printer, but not too big for me to carry or put in my cab. But I coulda done that three hours ago and gone down the road. "Go ahead and put it in your cab and get on the road to your next assignment." Okay. Can you send that to me in a QC message? Y'know, just in case.

One QC message later, I had the printer in my cab and was heading to the east side of Atlanta to pick up parts from Anthony on Sigman drive to take to Battery Dantzler (choral response: Booooo). And then my phone rings. It's my DM! They want me to take the printer to a FedEx place and FedEx it back to wherever. Okay.

After consulting my options, I discovered a FedEx Office a few miles away from my next pick-up. So I dropped my trailer on their yard and bobtailed down to the FedEx. HQ faxed me some paper that was supposed to explain Everything(tm) to the fine folks here at the FedEx Office and prevent me from having to pay out of pocket for it.

Except that the fine folks at FedEx did not seem to recognize the information on the paper as useful in any way.

Called my DM back. "Call the phone number at the bottom of that paper we faxed you. They can answer your questions." Okay.

Called the number on the fax. Number is supposed to be a main switchboard number where I can type in a specific extention. Only it isn't. Goes straight to voicemail. No way to get back to the main switchboard from the voicemail.

More phone calls followed. "Tell 'em to ship it to the address at the top of the page." I did, they want to know who to bill it to. "Tell 'em to bill it to the address at the bottom of the page." I did, they want an account number. "They want an account number?" Yes, they want an account number. "They don't need an account number." That may be. But they say they do, and they're the ones that are going to ship it, and they ain't gonna ship it without an account number.

So now I've been here at the FedEx place for an hour and a half. Someone at HQ is supposed to call the FedEx place directly, for reasons I do not fully understand. Hopefully with an account number.

I put in for 3 hours of detention. We'll see if I get it.

 

Any reason why the printer couldn't be brought back to the yard and handled there?. That's what happened when I had an OSD. It was 12 pallets of cereal so maybe that's why FedEx wasn't suggested, but even so the point still stands.

 

Is it wrong to feel smug when you are backed in the dock at a consignee and 2 trucks you passed on the way here pull in and have to wait until you get finished?.

Extra smugness factor when one of those trucks held up traffic overtaking another truck that was going 1MPH slower and you gave him the stink eye when finally got past him.

 

Part of the Keystone museum.

 

Yeah that's the one thing that get's me about this company,sometime's I feel like I'm having to do someone else's job,but they don't want to pay you for it.

Any way's just finished my favorite run with the company,sitting at the ta in Sparks,Nv taking a reset.

Walter called and said you want to go to Reno,you kidding me,haven't been this way since April,been real nice to get off the east coast for a change.

 

That's what they eventually decided. APPARENTLY I was supposed to go to a specific FedEx place here in Atlanta. The instructions I received over the phone did not make that sufficiently clear, and I thought just any old FedEx place would do. So I picked the FedEx place just a few miles from the receiver.

Anyhow, now I'm schlepping this printer back to Richmond tomorrow where they will presumably get it to where it needs to go.

Amusing bit, though, which I forgot to mention earlier: After I pulled the printer out of the trailer and put it in my truck, an R&L truck pulled up next to me and the driver honked his horn. He wanted to know if I needed him to take the printer off my hands. He was legit trying to buy my overage off me. Thought that was funny.

 

I have had a driver give me some of his overage at a shipper once. He had a couple damaged cases of hand wipes and everyone there got a couple tubs.