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

Coal fillers in Bluefield Va. wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, though I almost passed the entrance up, SAT image threw me off.

 

I run a cb cuz it has saved my butt a few times. But sometimes like tonight I want to shut it off with the amount of complaining some drivers do. Had an owner op whine because I was only going 50 mph up a hill with a heavy load. I was grossing little over 78k. Gee, I can't help it my company dials the trucks back. I wasn't able to move out of the center lane due to another truck being there on my right. Then he proceeds to tell me I need to get another truck. No thanks, you can have all the head aches mr big bad owner op. Some owner ops sure have a superiority complex.

 

A few days back I heard a billy big rigger on his over modulated cb pose the question as to why the “f” is so and so is holding up the center lane? I replied with “I figured if i stayed here long enough someone would talk to me”, it got a few laughs and not surprisingly no response from him. It’s comical how aggravated people get these days over the simplest things. Safe travels.

 

Got sent to Olive Branch, MS to pick up an empty on my way to Volvo to drop and get my Reno load. Get to the empty and discover the left side of the landing gear was missing its foot. Had to drag it back to the yard and red tag it cuz they didn't have the part to fix it. Can't believe somebody thought it was perfectly fine to drop it like that. Ended up bobtailing to Volvo after that. Wasted my entire morning with that. My load not due til Tuesday in Reno anyway. Ill get rolling about 3am tomorrow.

 

Points of amusement since I returned to the truck a week ago:

Got in the truck Thursday morning. Immediately got a cross country load heading to Riverside, CA, trailer already on the yard. Nice!

Except that the trailer wasn't on the yard. After circling the lot three times I called my DM and was informed that the load "fell through". Not sure what that meant. Wound up with a BH load from Jarratt to Groveport instead. Not nearly as lucrative.

Was sent from Groveport to Tampa and then Orlando to deliver some lunchmeat. Nothing particularly eventful there, aside from the fact that I hate Orlando almost as much as I hate Atlanta.

From there, had a multi-stop pick-up load, first at Nestle in McDonough and then Naturally Fresh in Atlanta.

Here is a picture of the route Walter (my trucker GPS) tried to send me down to reach 1000 Naturally Fresh Blvd:



Down Roosevelt Hwy, left on Feldwood Rd, left on Naturally Fresh Blvd, arrive at shipper, bada bing, bada boom

Except that:

A) That little stretch of Naturally Fresh Blvd adjacent to Jones Transportation Inc. is, in fact, a private driveway and not a public street.
B) The entrance to Jones Transportation Inc. is gated, and liberally festooned with signs reading "NO TRUCK TURN AROUND" and "PRIVATE DRIVE" and "NO ACCESS TO NATURALLY FRESH BLVD". So apparently I am not the first truck driver to be led astray by his GPS in this fashion.
C) Immediately past the intersection of Feldwood Rd and Stacks Rd, before the entrance to Jones Transportation Inc, is a very official-looking "No trucks over 30' in length" sign. Which I drove past before realizing that Walter had done me dirty.

Fortunately, traffic was slow enough that I was able to blind-side back onto Stacks road and extricate myself from my predicament. Just in time, too, because as I was straightening myself out on Stacks Rd, a cop drove by.

I have given Walter firm instructions to avoid that route in the future.

The delivery was a drop in Memphis, and it was due at 6:15am Memphis time. Which I was not going to be able to make without driving overnight. Pretty sure I didn't strictly *need* to be there at 6:15am, but I got a note from dispatch indicating some urgency in the matter. So I hit the road at 1:30am and delivered the load with time to spare.

Slept very fitfully for about 90 minutes of very unsatisfying sleep before being told to head to the West Memphis yard and pick up a trailer due in Shreveport for a 10:00pm delivery. Whoever gave me that load clearly had not looked at my driving hours, because I'd started at 1:30am and there was no way I could get in a reset and drive from West Memphis to Shreveport in the time I had available. Only option I had was to arrive at the receiver five hours early, twiddle my thumbs for a while, then do some off-the-clock work.

Did indeed arrive five hours early, and was hoping that they might get me in and out early so I could go see my mom. But no dice, this place was not in any hurry. My appointment was at 10:00pm, and they didn't call me to get the ball rolling until 3:30am. Didn't bump a dock until 5:00am, didn't leave the dock until 6:00am, and didn't leave the facility with paperwork in hand and an End Trip macro until 6:25am.

Put in for six hours detention (appt. at 10, two hours later is midnight, not unloaded until 6:00am), but had to fight for it later when my DM called about it. Said that they were only willing to give me 3 hours since I had to take a reset anyways.

That got me a little steamed. Told 'em that if they were gonna play that game, I would make sure to do everything 100% by the book next time. So instead of me using personal conveyance to make on-time delivery for a load they gave me knowing I didn't have the HOS to complete it legally, I'd just wait for my reset to finish and let the chips fall where they may. I mean, if they ain't gonna pay me my detention because some part of it fell on my break, then I ain't gonna work during that break and they can kiss my butt.

After laying all of this out to my DM in some rather frank and uncompromising terms, they agreed to give me 5 hours of detention. Which I still ain't happy about, but I'll live.

Never did get to visit my mom.

Next load after that was picking up rolls of paper from Pine Bluff, AR to drop on the West Memphis yard. This was pretty leisurely since, thanks to the overnight driving and the shenanigans at the Shreveport delivery, I'd only gotten about 5 hours of sleep between Tuesday morning and Thursday morning. Had to stop a couple times to take a quick catnap before hitting the road again, but finally made it to West Memphis and dropped the trailer.

Current load assignment is hauling Volvo/Mack parts from Byhalia to Jacksonville. Load assignment gives me a delivery range of anywhere between today and Monday morning. But it also says "Deliver ASAP". I personally suspect that I do not have to ACTUALLY deliver it ASAP, because I've done dozens of these Volvo loads and none of them have ever been time critical. Plus, I'm pretty sure the Shipping/Receiving department for Volvo Jax isn't even there on the weekends. So I got no clue how I'm gonna get past the gate.

Nonetheless, my DM assures me that it really is an ASAP load and that it is vitally important that I do not take a 34-hour reset on this load and deliver it on Monday. So I'll be there tomorrow morning sometime and we'll see what happens then.

And that brings us to the present day.

 

Nice to see that the more things change, the more they remain the same.

 

It sure has gotten quiet in here! Is everyone that busy? If so, that’s a good thing.