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

I feel for you JB. I too am working on my 42nd year and have a tick or two over 4mil safe miles myself. You live in paradise. Unfortunately that area is not trucker friendly for being able to make a good living without running the way you do. It’s a crying shame that even for a mega they aren’t smart enough to appreciate who you are and what you do for the company and lump you into the same category as the other mirror foggers they have working for them.

 

This is why you do a thorough pretrip every day. 2011 and I was a total rookie (as opposed to just being the rookie I am today). First company I worked for. Trainer who NEVER did a pretrip or allowed me to do one. Yes, I told the proper people all the time that it wasn’t done and no one cared. I had been driving for just shy of a month when this happened. It definitely is something I will never forget. Load from hades. 5 days waiting at Cargill in Friona TX for this load. This was on I-40 eastbound at xit 136 (Garth Brooks Blvd). I was driving and noticed smoke coming from the drives so I pulled onto the get off. My trainer looked at it and told me to limp to the TA. Yeah, that didn’t happen because just as soon as I tried to take off, this happened. Needless to say, the truck and trailer were towed and we were put in a hotel. I flew home the next day for 7 days and when I was picked up in emporia, the environment was so toxic in the truck I only stayed another 3 weeks with this company. I guess my “trainer” got in a lot of trouble because of it and took it out on me. I mean, that was an extensive repair and I’m sure the bill was up there.
Thankfully, the next company and trainer were 100% better. That chick was 180 degrees different. She was all about it and you could even eat off the floor in her truck (whereas the first one was a nasty pig). Yeah. I won’t ever forget either of these women, albeit for very different reasons.

 

I feel you,what burns me up is when they call me everytime I pickup a bh load,to remind me that it needs to be set at 31.

Its like have you been paying attention the past 5+yrs.

 

The messages such as this one you referred to drive me nuts. But we tend to get the standard canned messages with regard to certain customers and their delivery expectations which don’t irk me as much as a personalized one. I don’t blame you for feeling as you do. Enough is enough.

 

That ain't a reflection on you, my dude. We lost a full Boars Head load last year due to temperature. Pretty much everybody gets those messages.

I know for a fact my driver manager considers me one of the best drivers on his whole roster. He's responsible for 60+ drivers, and if I ain't at the very top of that list, well, there ain't many people above me. And I still get those messages. If I'm running a BH load Mon-Fri, I will get a text message from my DM: "Set reefer to 33 continuous."

And like I say, I know in what regard I am held by my driver manager. So I know that he is not sending me those messages because he thinks I need to hear them. He is sending me those messages because Walter is telling him to send that message to all of his drivers. And Cam is telling Walter, and Kimberly is probably telling Cam.

Because unlike me, my driver manager has supervisors he actually has to pay attention to. So I try not to take it personally when the people above him in the chain give him these kinds of directives. I know what he really thinks of me, and a text message about reefer temp isn't going to change that.

 

I used to get those from Prime all of the time too. I think they were just canned messages that went out with every dispatch.

 

You got to be kidding. Hard to believe that a "professional driver" would be so addicted to alcohol Where in the hell do companies find these drivers at?? Does the company even bother to do a background check?? And then the companies will reject a driver who "went off on a sorry ### dispatcher" but turn right around and hire a "drunk". We sure got our proirities screwed up. .

 

Just discovered that the Exit 76 truck stop in Berea blacktopped their whole parking lot. You can now drive through their lot without having to engage your differential. A welcome change for those Hyster-Yale loads.