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

Cool! Love going in there! Not really, but hey, I’ll take it. Tests my skills. And I gots mad skills! LOL

 

This is one reason I opted for an Orange truck...not too common outside of a Schneider terminal....

 

Send me the information please.
That's one of my sicologica fears... Seen that thing coming straight to my eye!
But I really would like to get rid of this glasses.

 

PM sent!

 

Thanks.

 

Today I'm going from Richmond to little "Havana" figure of speech Miami.
It's been two years since I last was there.
Cuban coffee.
Cuban cigars. ( I don't smoke).
Cuban food! Mmmm!
Cuban music.... Miami sound machine with Gloria Estefan!
Houston we have a problem! This truck won't move out of Miami!

 

Well, true... but I was the one in college...
he was working and earning... for a better car.

 

Load assignment from yesterday initially had me picking up in Norfolk and bringing back to the yard for someone else to deliver. But discussion at the window with dispatch revealed that it was only going to Ohio (outside of Cincinnati) and wasn't due 'til 1:00pm. I had (at the time) plenty of hours to make on-time delivery, with room to spare.

Dispatch #1: Why you having him bring it back to the yard? Why don't he just take it all the way?
Dispatch #2: Can he make it there by 1:00?
Dispatch #1: It's only 490 miles.
Me: Yeah. Ain't but 8 hours from here, so 10 hours from Norfolk. And I still have 6 hours and change on my clock today. I can make it by 1:00pm no problem.

So they gave me the load assignment to take it all the way. And I hopped in my truck and headed off to the shipper in Norfolk.

BUT THEN: it took me forever to find out how to actually get to the shipper. At this point I'm pretty good about spotting when my Garmin is going to do me dirty, but occasionally he sneaks one in on me. And this was one of those times. Took me an extra 30 minutes of driving to get from the address as indicated by my GPS to the actual location of the warehouse.

AND THEN: They took forever to get me loaded. I spent a full hour in the dock before they even bothered to open my trailer.

So by the time I got finished at the shipper and had paperwork in hand, it was 3:30pm in Norfolk on a Friday, and every possible route out of the area was going to add an additional 25 minutes. Either I could spend 25 minutes sitting in traffic waiting to get through the Harbor Tunnel (seriously, how do people live in this area having to deal with that 365 days of the year?), or I could go the southern route up 460, which would miss the tunnel traffic, but would add 25 minutes to the trip just because it was a slightly longer route.

I did, eventually, make it to the Pilot at Exit 213 on I-81, with less than 10 minutes on my 14. But all that spare time I had to make on-time delivery had vanished. I was going to have to be in the seat doing the pre-trip as soon as my reset ticked over from 9:59 to 10:00. And I was going to have to drive non-stop for 7 hours to make on-time delivery.

And that's exactly what I did. I didn't even take my blood pressure meds this morning, because they make me pee, and I couldn't afford to stop for anything. Just started trucking at 5:45am this morning and kept the left door closed until I arrived at the receiver with 15 minutes to spare.

Felt pretty ###### proud of myself.

Turns out the appointment was for 10:00am. Whoever put it into the system typed it in wrong.

 

I HATE when that happens….

 

Ah yes... the Then Brothers...
... we all know them so well...

AND SERIOUSLY!!!!!

All that hustle to only then discover you were THREE HOURS LATE??? Crazy but par for this course. Now, I know data quality is my personal pet peeve here (yes, remnants from a former life) but ya, hard to hit a target, or pass it off to a better solution, if it’s a moving or unknown.

And they will say something like “well, it wasn’t your fault” or “you did your best” or “tomorrow will be another day”... LOL ...

Meanwhile, the Driver is thinking “THANKS A LOT... nearly pissed my drawers for this load... and you’re welcome”.... LOL