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

My Cascadia has the cooling seat. By far the best part about it. I keep getting into loaners and still don't have 1500 miles on it because because overall they're built cheaply and with no quality control

Every time I get into a loaner I'm happier with how the auto-trans is programmed and that I can actually engage manual mode, but at the same time every time I'm in a loaner I'm like "how did we ever drive without a cooling system to prevent swampass... this is uncivilized"

Short rolling hills like US 17 Fredericksburg to I-66 and the transmission just freaks out constantly shifting gears and racing the engine, and I can't figure out how to override that like I can in older trucks

Also if you're using cruise for the extra 3 mph to pass or climb hills, the thing shifts into neutral BEFORE you reach the top of a medium or big sized hill, and will stay in neutral until it reaches 67 mph, in anticipation to gain that speed back remaining in neutral going down the hill

So that and the fact that pressing the pedal turns the cruise off (and loses you the extra mph from the cruise) means it's usually rude or downright unsafe to pass, so I just don't pass in the majority of situations I would have passed. So much of what I do is 200-400 mile Hill loads that are extremely pressed for time... well we're just going to have to have them get those loads ready sooner, or we're going to be late more often. Trips take longer now in the new Cascadias, period. The adaptive cruise slows down even further away from vehicles in front of you, and you can't override it with the pedal anymore, and once you're in the left lane it takes a lot longer to build back up to top governed speed even if you're light, and you're slower accelerating on onramps than the older trucks even when light.

 

If anybody even did the math on how much time this adds to trips, I'm certain they did not consider how much time we'll spend stuck behind, say, Prime, and instead were just like "a few seconds of going 67 is no big deal" not realizing it's unsafe or will cause road rage incidents to pass, so therefore I'm gonna stay in the right lane and it's more like huge amounts of time at 55-62

And the fuel savings and wear and tear advantages are extremely eaten up by the stupid programming on short rolling hills

 

Bh load got swapped,dropping in Orlando tommorrow morning,been a great week.

 

Good job. With the music, I thought the truck was going on a zombie killing mission!

 

Note taken. He can have the whole yard and more.

 

As my time with Abilene has marched on, I have come more and more to the conclusion that those lunches are really a "Local Driver Appreciation" event. Because they're the only ones who have a decent chance at attending them with any regularity.

 

It’s been that way everywhere I’ve ever worked in this industry.

 

I could have sworn Abilene did it Monday-Friday at least once. Or 3 days or something that made it much more likely a road driver got a meal.

I could be imagining things though.

I mean with the 2-hour window, even most local drivers would seem pretty likely to be anywhere else besides the yard

I left the yard tonight and it looked like a Friday night, don't know if that's coincidence