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

When I started driving for Abilene 9 years ago, we ran a lot tighter on delivery times. I could pick up a load off the yard at 8:00am that might only be 200 miles, but it delivered later that day. And as soon as I was finished making delivery, they would find me another load to keep rolling.

Over time, and especially over the last 3-4 years, that has stopped being the case. Our loads now usually have a great deal of dead time on them. It's not uncommon to get a 300 mile load that picks up at 8:00am today and delivers at 11:00am tomorrow. And if you get a load out of Richmond on Friday, it's very likely that it won't deliver until Monday, no matter how far away (or how close) it is.

Whenever I've gotten a load with 1 or 2 days of dead time built in, I put in for layover. If I'm in the truck ready to roll, and the truck sits idle for 24 hours, then Abilene owes me layover. That's how it was explained to me 9 years ago, and I hold Abilene to it. If they want to pay me $150 a day to babysit their freight, welp, it's their money.

Apparently the Mothership has decided that enough is enough! They're tired of paying us $150 a day to sit around doing nothing because of all the dead time on our loads!

So, going forward, they're only going to pay us $100 a day for layover.

That's less for layover than what they were paying 12 years ago when JohnBoy started this thread.

 

Small world - I live down the road from the dealer that truck was sitting at. Saw it sitting there for a bit but I thought it may have been a lease truck or something since it was gray with small logos (but I don’t know much about AMX) and the driver bailed out. They have been getting A LOT of the new Volvos coming in on the hook, especially new ones leaving the plant due to the proximity of the route south I guess. Hopefully you have good luck with it!

 

@JohnBoy
Here's to your next trip to Italy:
Our Last Walk by The Water – A 1960s Italian Romance by the Sea
`
The Night We Kissed in Naples – A 1960s Italian Love by the Bay

 

Welp, three weeks later and I am back in my own truck. Just long enough to start losing old habits for this truck and start forming new ones in the other truck, and now everything feels wrong. Or at least not quite right.

Still, glad to be out of that one. They didn't clean it out after the last guy. I guess he just moved out. Got fired, maybe, or put in another truck. Bro had like 18 Little Tree air fresheners all around the truck. Smelled like grandma's brothel in there. Every time I thought I'd thrown 'em all out, I'd find another two or three squirreled away somewhere else. Dude must've had a powerful odor to need all that aroma artillery.

 

Run of bad luck with this new volvo. Hit a deer Monday night. 4 point buck standing in the left lane decided to run in front of me last minute and damaged my bumper and hood. Body shop ordered new parts and will call me when they are in . Tonight a western express driver backed into me at the J in carlisle. Folded the drivers side mirror damaging the back cover, convex mirror on the bottom and dented the door. Drop in Norfolk IKEA tomorrow then back to see the body shop again Monday morning. Now that the shutdown is over got assigned a counselor for the VR&E program at the VA and have a video meeting on 9DEC. Gotta send in my transcripts for my BS degrees and hopefully will get approved to get my master’s in electrical and computer engineering. Machine learning is the future I think so figured computer engineering would be good with my interest in computer stuff. Miles hit or miss. Debated whether or not to go elsewhere while working on my degree since Id just leave after Im done.

 

Got a call from my driver manager circa 7:20am, giving me a choice of loads. One was going to Breinigsville, PA, but wouldn't be available until noon. The other was going to Cranbury, NJ, but was already on the yard and I could hook it and leave any time. Both due today, any time. Since I like loads that are ready to roll, I took the Cranbury load.

Got the load assignment. Took 'em an hour before I got it. Had to call my DM to let him know it hadn't come through. Live unload. Delivery window: Any time today before midnight.

Because I have been working for Abilene for close on to a decade, I knew right then it was BS. But hope springs eternal, so I put it in gear. Five hours and change from the Richmond yard to the receiver. ETA: 2:00pm.

Holiday traffic began to manifest itself as the drive progressed, and I didn't get to the receiver until a bit after 3:00pm. Whereupon I discovered four things:

1) The receiver works Monday through Friday and stops receiving at noon. (I suspected that something like this was the case as soon as I saw the load assignment.)
2) Today in particular, they stopped receiving at 11:00am.
3) My appointment was at 10:00am.
4) They are closed until Monday, and they are overbooked for Monday, so the load will have to be rescheduled to Tuesday at the earliest.

So my current instructions are to drop the loaded trailer at the Knight yard in Carlisle, PA and then see what tomorrow brings. I told 'em I didn't feel like fighting holiday traffic, so I was gonna park it and head to Carlisle in the morning. So here I sit at the Molly Pitcher Travel Plaza on the NJ Turnpike.

My expectation is that they will not have anything for me to do tomorrow. My expectation is that I will be spending my Thanksgiving at the Carlisle Petro. Fortunately, there is an Indian restaurant with truck access just down the road from the Petro, so that will very likely be my Thanksgiving dinner.

They oughtta make Turkey Tikki Masala for these occasions.

 

This company has turned into a real crap show,anyway home for the holidays.
Everyone have a great holiday.