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

Abilene was gonna send a truck for me,but I told them to just hold off,and let's see what happens tomorrow,only been in this truck for a month.
I can tell you for all certainly Abilene only cares about the freight,hope I'm not out of line.

 

Still at the dealership,getting hotel for night,hopefully be done by tomorrow.

 

Unloaded at starbucks pretty quick this morning then got to Humboldt to check in and lady gets upset they keep giving us the really long pickiup number instead of the 450 number she keeps asking the planners to give us. Loaded and parked at the Loves off exit 126 hoping I can get out of my spot in the wee hours in the AM. Got all day until 2300 tomorrow night to get to the receiver to unload being it is an open FCFS place. Trying to get there early though. I40 in TN looks like multiple cluster bombs have been dropped on it in places. Go to set up to back into a spot and a crete lease driver or owner op flies in and gets in my way and slams to a stop and I just put my head down with my hands on top and scream….can’t stand the stupidity anymore out here. Dude looked young and barely knew how to back up blind side into four open spaces, dude slammed his trailer tandems up over curb into the grass and almost over the hill side. With how high the tandems jumped in the air then slammed down it is a miracle he didn’t damage anything.

 

There was a comedy of errors yesterday.

Got to the plant at 7:00am local time to pick up the Coachella load, and discovered that the power was out across the whole plant. Or at least the bits of most concern to me. Yard jockey said that the power had been out for a few hours by the time I got there, and that they were probably going to send everybody home, and that the exact same thing had happened two days prior, and that they wouldn't be loading anybody.

Called my DM and explained the situation. Some time later, I got a new load. Pick up a bunch of polymer resin beads and deliver them in Huntington Beach the next day. Made my merry way to the shipper. Shipping clerk was a very nice lady named Betty Ann, and she explained that I was a few hours early for my 12:00 noon appointment time. I explained that my load assignment said I had a pickup window of 8:00am to 3:30pm, and we commiserated on how brokers never seem to get that right despite her best efforts.

She got me in early, though, and as she was assigning me a dock door, she wanted to make sure I was okay with helping the receiver unload the freight. Whereupon I explained that We Don't Do That Here, and I'm just there to hold the steering wheel. Which prompted another conversation about how she always tells the broker that driver assistance is needed to unload the truck at the receiving end, and she even pays $100 extra for the service, and despite these two things most drivers roll up in complete ignorance that they will be expected to help unload. And then they get to the receiver, who is expecting the driver to help, and the driver refuses, and then it becomes a whole thing. And she's still out $100.

So she contacted the broker and in short order I got a call from my DM asking if I was willing to help unload the trailer. All I needed to do was use a pallet jack to move the pallets to the end of the trailer so the forklift driver could take them off the truck, and Abilene would pay me $50 for my troubles. So I said "Sure", which brightened Betty Ann's day considerably.

Note that she's paying an extra $100 to have the driver help unload, and I'm only getting $50. No telling where the extra $50 is going. "Administrative fees" like Tickemaster, I'm guessing.

At which point she dropped a new wrinkle on me. The load, which was scheduled to be delivered today, actually couldn't be delivered today. Needed to be delivered a day later than stated on the load assignment. If I tried to deliver the load today (Thursday), I would be refused, because they were conducting their quarterly inventory and wouldn't have anybody availble to unload me.

So I called my DM back and explained the new situation, and now I'm parked at a TA in the middle of nowhere on US-395 with plans to drop this trailer on the Colton yard. Someone else will be delivering it tomorrow.

Sure hope they tell that driver he's expected to help unload the trailer.

 

They need to pay the whole fee to the driver,but I guarantee they'll tell the driver there paying 50 extra because they won't know.

 

They've rubbed me wrong ever since they accused me of flatten a trailer tire,not to run a load,which I got fixed and still made it ontime.
I hear there in hot water with Boarshead,the place in Carolina I delivered to said they were late 10-15last year alone.

 

Having to do a forced regen in on the side of the road in the middle of nowhwere in the mountains of Southern Califnordia. Been here for an hour now, and the regen is still underway.

It's amazing how desolate this area is compared with the urban morass that surrounds LA just two hours south.

 

Still here on the side of the road, still in regen mode 4.5 hours later. I begin to suspect that it is not regenning. On the phone with Breakdown, and they're trying to tell me to just sit tight and let it complete the cycle. Being as how I am six miles north of the nearest small town and 15 miles south of the nearest somewhat larger town, and there is nothing around me but asphalt, dirt, and scrub, I am not inclined to continue sitting here waiting for a process to complete that doesn't look like it's working at all.