EPES TRANSPORT-Greensboro, NC

I feel your pain flying! I didn't have alot of miles last week....and I don't think I'll be getting alot of miles this week, either. I'm leaving Monday morning, dunno where I'm going,yet. Gotta go watch a video about FD then off to, where ever. But, they'll hafta bring me in on Friday so I can get a restart in so I can hop out with FD trainer Sunday afternoon!

 

Hope everyone has a safe and happy Thanksgiving! WOW, this is the first time in my life(36) that I'm gonna miss my Mom's Thanksgiving dinner.....oh well...I'll have leftovers on friday morning...gotta look at the bright side of things!

 

whew....what a weekend....had a NICE LONG RELAXING WEEKEND! FINALLY! Update on me....I turned down the FD account due to various reasons, 1) I have ALOT of freedom OTR, than FD, 2) if ANYTHING happened, I know I can get home, NO QUESTIONS/BS asside! Plus, I kinda like the joy of jammin' on my 120 gig ipod/iHeart radio going down the road enjoying my "new" office everyday....okay,okay...I LOVE MY TRUCK! And EPES takes GREAT care of it and I do like my DM. But, just like ANY work environment, I make them mad and they make me mad.....but hey, let's face it, WE'RE ALL ADULTS AND THAT'S WORK/LIFE!!!!!!! So, good things, maybe, on the horizon! I gotta friend that is a DJ at WSJS (600 AM) in W-S, for all of you outside of the Triad region, it's an AM talk radio station. He has a talk show, NOT giving anything away as of yet, as we DON'T know if program director has worked it in , it deals with sports, local/national news/etc.....he and I have been talking about, online and on the phone(personally) about the economy, etc...and we think I should call in "from the road" and let the listeners hear what "I" see around the Eastern seaboard of the US! Of course, I curse like a (*!&*^!)#&^!&*#!)&#)!&#)&!#%^!%#^@%#*%^^$@*#%@ sailor! lol But, I hafta maintain myself, and my OCD, lol which shouldn't be a problem...but....it's just all talks and it may look promising....I won't get any extra paycheck, I'm NOT looking for that and I CAN'T promote our company, which stinks......but I think EPES MAY be able to promote on the station at a very DISCOUNTED price....heck I don't care......it'll be fun and I know you guys can tune in....and MAYBE, JUST MAYBE...I can get some fellow drivers to fill in for me....it's all talk right now......but it looks like it's a "trial" run for a few days....I'll keep everyone posted....if it's a go....then I'll PM you guys with info about it....keep fingers crossed!!!!

 

well i hope your media exposure goes better than mine did lol

some comments i made in another thread got picked up by several national news sources and it was annoying and irritating at best.

they used my comments without permission to start with. they didn't post the comments in whole and only cherry picked the parts of it that suited their purposes to sensationalize the issue they were reporting on. once one national outlet picked it up in kinda snowballed into many. none of them actually tried to contact me to get further information on what they were reporting on just largely took my comments out of context in the furtherance of their spotlighting a safety issue of which they had no clue what they were talking about. i contacted every media outlet that was forwarded to me from the members on here who saw my post (or parts of it) used in a manner in which i did not intend it to be, but NONE of them actually responded to me. probably good thing.....they sure wouldn't have printed my comments to them anyway at that point.

in the end my comments on some morons flying by me in the fog in michigan ended up being used to make us drivers as a whole look like idiots out here on the road and all unsafe, not taken as the comments from a safe driver taking the idiots to task as it was presented.

the moral to the story is be careful what you say we drivers aren't the only ones watching what's said here lol

 

so it's been an annoying two weeks to say the least.......

when i last left off i was in for a couple of days waiting for a trip to grand rapids that was a wednesday delivery....which means leave tuesday early.....wasn't thrilled about having to sit for 3 days after having short miles the week before. so i'm sitting at the house monday around noon with breakfast going and tina calls.....'why haven't you picked up that grand rapids yet?'....well, it's not due till wednesday.....'uh, no, it has to be there tuesday 5am'......no it doesn't, check the preplan......so she checks the preplan and says 'oh. it does say that.....well, can you get it there on time?'......no....it's 13:45 up there and it's already noon......telll her if they can maybe plan a relay it can get there but no way that's happening at this point solo.....so she asks when i can be there and i tell her maybe 30 minutes and i'd roll on with it and we'd figure it out on the way......already the week isn't getting started well lol.....and puts me on a midnnight parking schedule most of the week. ugh.

get there and ask her who dropped the ball when i'm getting my paperwork and she said whoever entered the load info on our end put the wrong date in. go to the truck and do the pretrip and fire it up. no oil presuure. ####. stop engine warning. #### again. pull it up to the shop and they get to work on it. tell tina it's down again so she gives me another truck to run for the week. it's in the shop. gives me truck #2 to run for the week. people from freightliner pull up while i'm checking it out it's going back to frieghtliner for the week. gives me truck #3 for the week. it's in the shop. she gets irritated now and goes down to the shop and blows a fuse lol....truck #4....it's here. i go get in it. no WAY i'm driving that nasty dorm room for a week. he obviously never expected anyone to look inside. how can someone live in such a trashed out truck? go back down there and tell her that just isn't going to happen i'm not sitting in that seat, much less lay on that mattress.

so, 4 sensors later still no oil pressure. and getting later and later. they get a part over from volvo and it works. seems the upper and lower crankcase sensors look exactly the same but have different part numbers and wiring. get the right one and finally oil pressure on the gauge and stop engine warning goes off.

they reschedule the load for wednesday after all so now i've wasted half a day at the shop and too early to leave now. go home and back to bed.

get on up to grand rapids and empty then over to romeoville and down to atlanta. of course at this point i'm not home for thanksgiving and the delivery is for friday so i get ot spend 24hrs sitting in atlanta on thanksgiving. get there and the quick trip half mile from the cons is gummed up with bobtails. that irritates me to no end when they #### well can park just about anywhere.....so over to the petro and pay to park.....get that one off and looking for the trip home....nope, up to ohio.....then virginia.....then back down to winston.....

monday morning run down from chester to winston for the unload then home......nope.....after a 4hr unload sends me the load assignent for kernersville to tobyhanna for tuesday....with only 5 left on my 70 at this point.....send in a message and ask if he's drunk? ran and sat the holiday. ran the weekend. 70 bout gone. not going to Pa, going home. go over and pick up in kernersville then drop in winston and bobtail in for 34.....get to kernersville and hurry up and wait.....2pm appointment......2pm comes and goes.....end up 12 trucks all piled up in the entrance and finally 5pm they put all of us in a door at once.....told the kid loading he better step it up at this point time is running down and i had 2 hrs left.......got me out quick and i ended up back at the yard with 2 minutes left on my 70.

this week was short only left wednesday morning but still ended up with 1500 by the time i got in last night.....not so bad but did get to go back to my old nemisis the paper plant in philly.....nnot so bad going in at 2230 but a real adventure coming back out making that turn around the concrete pillar onto the bridge at 0915.....i just blocked all the lanes and then made the turn wide and slow. the locals weren't happy but screw 'em.....i absolutely hate philly i cringe every time i get something in or out of there....by far the rudest people, worst traffic and hardest streets to drive of anywhere i've been.....

up to baldwinsville out of there and then syracuse to browns summit.......stopped at the petro in scraton that's usually good parking no matter how late but it dies irritate me a little most of the spots are blindside.....who builds a #### truckstop where most of the spots you have to blindside into? that just makes no #### sense at all......T/A in greencastle used to be that way too until sometime last year and they repainted the lines....anyway, get up and go in and get some smokes and the snotty ##### behind the counter cards me......guy behind me laughs and says 'yeah but you look so young'....she snapped at him that she didn't smoke and she wasn't using her birthdate and she didn't want the computer thinking she did smoke......wtf? really? i laughed and said she wasn't the only one on the planet with her birthdate and that computer didn't know or care if she smoked and she just came absolutely unglued and went off into a tirade about how nobody needs to smoke and it was against her beliefs to sell smokes and if it was up to her we'd all die and then she wouldn't have to worry about selling such a horrible product to such stupid people......really?.....he and i just stood there for a second and looked at each other and then her and then laughed at her and i went and found the manager and told him what a ray of sunshine he had working the cashier's desk.....normally i wouldn't care but that always rubs me the wrong way when someone in a customer service position gives such poor service....it isn't your job to provide commentary and be disrepectful to me towards my purchases, just sell me the ####......anyway the manager slammed his pen down and said he'd had enoug of her holier than thou attitude and thanked me for my input and then stormed off towards where she was at. pretty sure new career opportunities were about to open up for her....but in this case it was warranted if she treated the customers the way she did me.....

so at home now and getting ready to call in and see what i've got going out next....don't really want to leave in the morning would rather wait until tomorrow evening but gotta get some miles in before cutoff....

 

I'm proud to be an EPES driver.

 

nah...no worries here! Nobody knows it's me! I use a "radio handle" and can't mention the company I work for. Just the name of the game. I'm only gonna call in about once a week.....wish I could call in more, but you know how our schedule goes, so it makes sense....plus it is fun! I do mention "my Suzy-Q" though...lol boy she HATES that! But, she doesn't have a clue about it....so I'd LOVE to see her piss me off....wow, the damage I could do to her in front of the Triad NAH, I couldn't jepordize my job...I really do LOVE IT HERE! hope everyone has a great week!

 

gotta admit...that is CLASSIC...asking the dude if he was drunk LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Man, I could imagine what the heck was going through his head when you asked him...should've said, "Here buddy, let me drink that next beer for you!" haha

 

BOOM.....thump thump thump thump thump......lol that's the way my week started......sitting on the side of 495 just north of DC with a blown tire playing hurry up and wait for a service truck.....

then right back into philly to the paper plant lol.....but it gets easier each time i go in there......i'm just blocking all the lanes for the turns and that makes it much easier getting around that concrete pillar on the end of the bridge....locals don't like it so much but they'd really hate it if i drug the trailer against their car coming in or that pillar going out lol.......

back up to baldwinsville same trip i made last week and then back to browns summit for wednesday morning....not a good place to be on wednesday that will mean short ones the rest of the week or long ones and in late for the weekend.....

 

I had to wait for repair service twice last week....trailer tandems were REALLY messed up. I dropped it at Chester to be fixed....the air system was broke and the guy, the second time, disconnected it and just made it manual! Dunno why he didn't do that the first time! Say, when you go to MI do you pick up in Kentwood? That's where i ALWAYS pick up at...would like somewhere else lol Now going blindsided into FL in Greencastle....dunno if it's a drop or live load.....better be drop I'm outta houra at 1800 and it says pickup at 2000....what are some of these idiots thinking. They know I start around 0300!!!!!!! lol