EPES TRANSPORT-Greensboro, NC

Equipment is really good! Cascadias, Columbias, a few Prostars and Volvos. 10 speed transmissions, bunk heaters.

 

Thanks Guys! I'm relocating to Southern Pines (about hr from their yard in Greensboro). This little town has a ton of truck traffic and I have been noting the companies I see......I see their trucks all over, as well as the meat haulers like Tyson, Prime, and Trans Am. I guess its all the poultry plants in the area. I'm just looking for a stable company and like that fact that they seem to have alot of drop & hook. The last company I worked for here in Nashville hauled alot of Walmart DC freight and Fedex freight up to the east coast and we kept empty trailers on site so we could just drop and hook and keep on moving.

 

Hey flyingmusician, how many miles have you been averaging since you have been solo?
I'm looking at epes and was wondering about miles,thanks in advance.

 

###### i hate it when that happens lol......

twice now i've done a long post on how this week went to hell and twice lost the connection so i'll just do a short one to answer your question and post again when i get home tomorrow.....

i've averaged 2800 since i've been on my own.....until this week.....will do good to see 2000 this week....can't put that on company though i guess because it seems to be widespread this week both with other epes drivers i've talked to and drivers from other companies i've talked to this week......sitting at a pilot now in Lima, Ohio.....loaded yesterday at 5pm and on a firm appointment 8 hours away for 7pm so i get an 18 hour break and then only going to have 3 hours drive time left when i get there and it's a live unload....so probably out of hours there too and another 10. just been one of those weeks.....but, almost everyone parked here has been here awhile and complaining of no miles this week after having run hard last several weeks. alot of them hardly have gotten 1000 so i guess i'm a little ahead of the bunch. the consensus is that between the budget bs in congress and the credit downgrade that shippers/receivers are a little scared and waiting to see how things shake out......but hey, we're just truck drivers, what the hell do we know about economics? lol......

i'm realistic enough to know that i'll have weeks without the long runs and big miles but this is the first one after running hard and consistent so it kinda stings a little lol......

i'd love to hear from any of you running the volvos if you have issues with it being heavy on the drives. no matter what i've got in the box, no matter how i set the fifth wheel or the tandems, the weight distribution runs heavy on the drives....and when i'm loaded heavy it's almost always near max gross.....i'm heavy this load and since i've got some time on this one i experimented a little last night with different configurations of 5th wheel and tandems and running it back over the scales to see what it read (the girl inside kinda started looking at me like i didn't know what the hell i was doing after the 4th or 5th reweigh until i told her what i was doing lol) and no matter what i did, the drives didn't vary by more than about 2000lbs and it's #### heavy no matter what. is this just a quirk of the volvo and the suspension geometry or is there a sweet spot that i'm missing for the 5th wheel? any comments or sugesstions would be appreciated.

we'll see what tomorrow brings......will be kinda glad to get home tomorrow and start over next week lol

 

How much fuel did you have on board. Used to haul alot of heavy paper loads and I would never refuel until I had my weight adjusted. Most were picked up in the Atlanta area and I woudl burn off some fuel just west of chattanooga before refueling. I'm sure you took this into concideration, just trying think of ideas that might help.

 

Fuel is always a concern with anything over 35k in the box.....and I've had alot of those lately. If it's over 35k I always load first and then fuel. I had one of those paper roll loads out of N Charleston, SC last week going to Ohio and put me almost at max gross and with just half-tanks 33,800 was the best I could do on the drives. Every other possible configuration put me over. I had to skip my first fuel stop and run it #### near dry to my second one and then only took half because I knew what it would weigh.

I'm also a commercial licensed pilot and have alot of time in heavy aircraft so I do understand fully about weight distribution and it has served me well in that I rarely have to re-weigh but this thing is always heavy on the drives, light on the steers and either balanced or light on the tandems no matter how I set it.

I can live with it and know what to watch for with regard to loading and balancing it now, but just wondering if this is a quirk to all of the volvos in our fleet or just mine.

 

okay....so back to the week that was....or wasn't as it went lol.....

started out sunday evening at the yard with a load to Pa......and as I pretrip and get the supplies loaded in the truck, dispatch sends a q/c saying they have an 'emergency' load that has to go to radford, va and the driver on it now doesn't have hours to get it there....can I take it? will get a long one if I can help them out.....since i'm a flexible kind of guy i say sure and wait for him to get there.....will be here about midnight.....

so i wait. and wait. take a nap. and wait. finally about 2am he shows up.....and it's a load with a firm 4am appointment and no way i'm going to make that. they say they understand and it won't go on me thanks for helping out just get it there quick as you can. so, i run it up there and get the only 30 minutes past appointment.....not too bad considering it's heavy and having to pull the gap and the rest of the hills getting up there.....

bounce on down to morganton to pick up my long one to florida.....

show up at the shipper at 9am sharp, and walk in with my load number and the guy behind the window has a serious case of attitude....."where the #### have you been....you were supposed to be here friday.....no way were loading your ####### truck until someone from your ####### company calls and make a new ####### appointment"....and on and on and on.......keep in mind that everyone except mr. attitude is sitting around the picnic table outside drinking coffee and smoking and there are NO other trucks there.....for a fleeting second I almost went biker on him and just as quickly realized i didn't show up on my bike i showed up in the truck and immediately put the politician hat on and gave him my best fake CSR smile and assured him that I wasn't supposed to be there friday, and apologized that I didn't know why whoever was supposed to be there friday didn't make it, but that I would call dispatch and have someone get in touch with them......and said terrible things to myself about him and his first born all the way back out to the truck lol.....

so i call and send a q/c to dispatch about the situation.....

5 hours later lol.....and i get a call from my DM to get out of there and bounce over to claremont and pick up a load and take it up to charleston, wv....of course, by now there are trucks everywhere, i'm blocked in and can't get out......had to wake a guy up to let me out but he was cool about it and i got out of there.....maybe a mixed blessing....bottled water, all the loads were heavy, and there were no scales between there and the scalehouse on 40, and everyone there was sweating it about having to get through the scales....

so up to wv....then back down to wytheville for another heavy one.....gatorade going to brook park, ohio.....surreal place.....farms and mountains and fields and this huge gatorade plant in the middle of it out in the country.....like something off a pink floyd album cover lol.....

then, another heavy p&g load from ohio down to salem, va......firm appointments on both ends and an 18 hour wait in between to make the appointment......luckily part of that was a 10 i had to take, but then wait another 8 before I can make the 8 hour run to va.....thankfully, I got into the truckstop early enough to get good parking, the tv and wifi sgnals were good, and the truckstop was decent....

get there and hurry up and wait for the unload.....FINALLY 5 hours later they get done and i've got 2:15 left on my 14 and the gps says 2:27 back to greensboro......####### elog.....no way i'm going to take another 10 just 10 minutes from the yard......weighed my options and almost ended up just taking my 10 there and coming in next day....but, no load for me till sunday and it's hometime soon as I get in....so, i rolled the dice and pushed it on down 220 to the yard....thankfully it was late night and thin traffic and rolled onto the yard with 6 minutes left on my 14.......in retrospect a bad decision and not something i'll try again.....that just cut it too #### close and if i'd gotten two redlights along the way and i'd had gone over my 14.....better to apply my pilot logic and not push a bad position in the future......still, i knew when the clock said 60 minutes and the gps showed 56 miles that truck was going to the yard lol......

so home now, got the dogs walked, played with momma awhile......got a good meal on the grill today and got to watch at least the nationwide race today....

heading out to plainfield, indiana tomorrow around noon....so, even though the week started out on the trying side, a bunch of little short hops and little in the way of miles on any of them, it all added up by week end and i'll get that one in by cutoff and still end up with around 24-2500 for the week.....still a slack week compared to what i've been doing lately, but much better than it looked like intially.....

 

Just read this whole thread. Thanks for all the information and I look forward to reading more about your time at EPES, flyingmusician.

Be safe out there.

 

Back around 2000 Epes bought out my old company A & W Trucking out of Mount Airy NC. I wonder if Epes still goes to California with our old accounts like wicks filters out of Gastonia NC and such. I could never drive for them though trucks are too slow, our trucks ran 70 and we about got run over back then, speed limits are 75 in some states now, 62 would put you runnin with the motor homes and jb hunt.

 

Actually i pass jb hunt all the time lol

But yeah , they're slow