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

Yes sir,deadhead to SC for another walmart going to Mt,Crawford.Than we're deadheading to Petersburg,for a drop in Groveport.

 

Got to nashville bh 0330 to avoid traffic while trying to back in but unfortunately had some arsehole long hood better than everyone else at backing pulling a tanker show up behind me biotching the whole time I was backing in screaming I was going to make him late cuz I kept stopping to get out and make sure I wasn’t going to end up in the deep ditches across the street. Takes me a bit longer to back when dark out and got obstacles in the way….if was daylight out Id have gotten it in faster since I can see everything. It is amazing how many impatient loud mouth one shot backing in drivers there are out there that refuse to help anybody and point fingers to deflect blame for late deliveries…..

 

You should have went full WV mountain man on him. There is a never ending supply of people who need it.

 

Delivered my HP load this morning. They actually finished before 8:00am, so no detention.

Follow up load was to pick up some molded plastics in Erie, PA and deliver them in Byhalia on Monday. There's enough dead time on the load to take a full 34, which I don't need, seeing as how I will still have 35 hours on my 70 when I stop tomorrow. And if I really felt like pushing it and driving out my full 11 today, I would have around 47 hours of dead time where I'm doing nothing but babysitting my trailer.

So I called HQ and got ahold of one of the DMs (since mine is on vacation). I explained the situation, and asked if there was a way I could drop the trailer on the yard tomorrow for someone else to deliver on Monday, and then they could give me something else to keep me moving. Otherwise, they're gonna need to pay me a babysitting fee to babysit this trailer.

Long story short, every one of the other loads they were trying to offer me also had at least a full day of dead time on it. Since the point of this exercise was to keep rolling instead of sitting idle, didn't make much sense to drop this load only to pick up another one with the same issue.

I remember the first few years I was here, we seemed to have a lot more weekend loads, where you could pick up on Saturday and deliver on Sunday. Or pick up on Saturday and deliver on Saturday. But for the past several years, seems like all our weekend loads deliver on Monday. I ain't smart enough to understand why it's happening that way, but I wish we could go back to the way it was.

 

Got a DH move to drop reefer on yard after Nashville was empty then got sent to forrest city to pick up a Brooklyn/NJ two stop dropping in Wytheville tomorrow afternoon then a 34 being Ill be low on hrs.

 

Sitting here at the Petro in Kingston Springs, taking a 34 I don't need. 37hr 22min left on my 70. Will deliver this load to Byhalia on time tomorrow, and then I'm going to see about getting a new truck. Still having problems with the coolant system on this one. Still having to pull over with alarming frequency because the truck thinks I'm out of coolant. So far they've replaced the radiator, the coolant reservoir, and the EGR, and they've monkeyed around with some other stuff besides because they said the turbo charger was causing all of the coolant to be sucked out of the reservoir. This has been going on for months now, and as much as I hate to get out of this truck (and I really hate to get out of this truck), I'm tired of having to nursemaid this thing along to get where I'm going.

I know for a fact that the Volvos have certain features which I would consider highly annoying when compared to my KW. I do NOT know that about the Freightliners. (I'm not saying they don't. I'm just saying that I'm pretty much ignorant when it comes to anything Freightliner related.) So I am probably going to see if I can get into a new Cascadia, in the hopes that it won't annoy me as much as the Volvos do. We just got a bunch of brand new Cascadias on the Richmond yard, too.

 

The freightliners don’t beep constantly and interrupt the stereo collision system wise, just beep once with a message on the display if too close or in heavy traffic but they do have that annoying E-Coast gear where it shifts out of gear and you coast a bit which is annoying when you try to pass someone. At the 22 I had briefly was that way. I just prefer the Volvo transmission wise being how smooth it is in reverse.