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

Sorry for your loss. My prayers to you and your family.

 

Amen

 

They pissed me off so bad today I actually packed my big assault pack with essentials and was about to start walking the 770 miles back to WV from West Memphis after I dropped my Gatorade load to prove a point. Stubborn Jarhead grunt I am....I don't care what anyone thinks either of me up in HQ....driver manager stopped me and stuff was worked out.....

 

There's a story waiting to be told.....

 

It is kind of real simple actually, stop sending me to places suitable only for a box truck.....I don't care that the customer says that trucks do it all the time....Id wager that is why our equipment is always getting fawked up all the time....Im sorry but I can only handle that crap once in a while cuz it stresses me out trying to be precise so nothing is damaged and Im not stuck....

 

Haji put himself in the ditch down the road from the Pilot in West Memphis. Looks like he parked on the side of the road for his ten hour break then thought he could U-turn himself to the Pilot. Assuming it was Haji being it was an old Volvo. All he had to do was keep going straight to where the road dead ends into Rte-191 then go left a mile right to 40. Guess he didn't have a gps or map to notice that.

 

The car gps he was using said to “make a u turn”.

 

Heck, my trucker GPS occasionally tells me the same thing.

The trick is to be smarter than the GPS.

 

I had no uturns selected on the GPS I used to have. It would tell me to take a left turn at the light and then take an immediate left turn.

 

I am amazed to see so many of the same folks here, I have been away for a long time. Hey Abileners! We see you guys pulling Publix trailers down into FL every week.

It has been over a year since we left Abilene, and started pulling Fed Ex freight for various contractors. We are on our 4th contractor, one of them only lasted 2 weeks. One was so so, one was bad, and two were good/great. One offered us 100K per year each, then withdrew the offer after we quit our job! The company we have been with for the past 8 months is great. We are dedicated and salaried. Switching trucks often, and having to sometimes clean them up ourselves when we started, sucked. But we finally got a brand new truck. We make all the money and get twice the home time. This job is boring, and we sometimes miss the adventure that was Abilene. Parking in secure facilities instead of a broken roadside one block from Mexico! The good ole days!

Also, we don't pull doubles anymore. I didn't mind them, (I like a challenge) but it took 3 times longer to hook up, and there was more stuff to go wrong. Our very first trip with doubles, we lost a trailer tire. My GF was driving, I was in the bunk. She pulled over in a safe spot. I said "losing one of 22 tires is not so bad, is it?" She said "is that how many tires we have?"

Most of the terminals have a shop though, and they fix issues with your trailer right away. If there is a tire issue, they swap the whole wheel. They put 2 or 3 guys on it, and its done quickly.

If we lived in Richmond, we probably would still be with Abilene. But we are lucky to have a busy terminal in our home town. And teams are in demand with Fed Ex.