EPES TRANSPORT-Greensboro, NC

Ouch lol you got a bunch of not so fun places to go all in one day lol and recap just makes it that much worse. Been there done that can feel your irritation.

Yeah those blindside parking spots suck. Whose idiot idea was that anyway? A truckstop and most of the spots are blindside? Makes no #### sense. That TA in greencastle was a bad one for blindside spots until somebody got a brain last year and repainted the lines.

 

Not that I want to pay for parking but figure when ill have to ill try it. Worse they can say is no.

9 hours?!?!? Where was that at? Holly cow.

Limping my way back to Texas on recaps. Its gonna take 2.5 days to go 700 miles.

 

Two different customers , Jackson Ms racked up 3 hours detention then same day Visalia La another 6 . Wasted day !

 

All I can say is OUCH!

 

They paid the back detention this morning , had to bring it up. Not a bad week miles wise , and that helped out.
Headed down tomorrow afternoon to Wilmington . Had a Road Team event Saturday . Then back out Sunday am towards Jackson. So not getting home this week. But Road Team does good work. Glad to be a part of it .

 

Just a few thoughts on Flying's post the other day.



if you run texas, expect to be out 2 weeks or better. if we go out there once we're there we are under the tse dispatch and they are lacking in communication to put it mildly. they are concerned with getting their trips moved and couldn't give 2 ##### about getting us back home until they get us there. another issue with going out there is their freight base isn't as big as ours and there's going to be a bunch of short trips and waiting until you can get something to get you back on our side of the river and back under our dispatch. what we end up with is a bunch of loads going that way and not as many coming back and we get a bunch of us out there and no way to get us back until things shake out and we get back. so we end up doing their trips under their dispatch until we can get back.

It's the same thing for a driver coming out of Texas heading east. once we get there we are under NC dispatch. just got home from a tour that included Talladega, Valdosta, Pineville, and others. Now i don't know if ya'lls dispatch is as lacking in communication as it is in Texas, but, i'm not even allowed to call NC dispatch to ask just what is going on. (and i suspect your not allowed to call Texas either.) I have to admit that once i'm out east, they only keep me for about 4-5 days. (i'm out for 10-14 at a time by choice.) as for them trying to get you back/freight base/length of haul, i think it's all wrapped up together. TSE didn't have a HUGE area of operations. In fact, from what i've been told, as a company it would turn down loads for really good customers because "we don't go there." Now that the are EPES, folks are working on getting those loads based on EPES history with those customers.

the communication between rockwall and Greensboro with regard to their planners our dm's isn't good. they have some issues to be resolved with answering phones and/or emails and the concept that we're one big happy family now hasn't really gotten into their heads yet. my dm assured me that this was being addressed by our senior management in Greensboro and over time was going to resolve itself but the issues were known and being worked on by the people that matter. as with anything like this it's going to take some time to break their mindset and habits and get it into their head there is no them and us anymore we're all us.

Agree with that 100%. And, from this drivers point of view it even gets worse. I had a dispatch to pickup a paper load on the coast, that neither gps or google maps could find. msgd for directions. "none available." i msgd can ya'll call NC and ask where it's at? msg i got back was, "try to follow routing."i replied "can I call NC?" and got the same "try the routing." which was all good except for that last 5 miles or so of "local."

it really will change the way I look at getting preplans out that way. if it comes as a straight up load assignment then that's one thing but if it comes as a preplan i'm going to be more inclined to turn it down now knowing what to expect once I get out there. over time i'm sure it will improve but I can tell you for sure after the last time I was out there I sat 4 days out of 7 and only got 1100 miles the whole week running their short trips with 2-3 days on them. that just won't work for me. but at least I was able to have a frank discussion about it with my dm and he said they are being somewhat understanding at this point if we turn those trips down going to texas until rockwall gets the message that we communicate and we need to get with the program and act as one company and not 2.

i've yet to turn down a load. pre plan or not. i have argued and gotten delivery dates changed or loads T/C if there is to much time on them, and i will continue to but not over just short loads. Recently i was given a 800 mile run with 5 days on it. It wasn't until they truly believed me when i said i'd take it home for 3 days then leave with it before they changed the delivery date.

there is a ton of animosity in Tx. They lost like 60+ long time (10yrs or more) employees when it all changed over. Plus there is a ton of confusion there as well. They are really good at what they do. Dispatch and plan Tx and the surrounding states. I hope the bumps in the road start to get smoother, because personally i love the running lanes that EPES has. I believe the miles are there and there is money to be made, just this period sucks.

BTW, is EPES an acronym? Like Edward, Paul, Elvis and Steve?

 

Epes was the family name when it started 82 years ago. Al Bought in in the eighties I think. Bought Texas Star Express in 92 . Ran them as semi separate companies till this summer. Epes had to buy Texas Stars ordered trucks twice . If you see one of our road trucks with steel rear rims , it was ordered as a TSE truck. Instead of causing friction with our dealer , we bought them. Larry did not care which checkbook paid , as long as he did not get stuck with 20 or so extra trucks on his sells lot.
And some of the guys say its Empty Pockets Every Saturday. That said some would not work at the pie factory , as a taster .

 

excellent post teq......and I have to admit that i'm glad to see those problems are working both ways and not just one. I do think over time they'll shake out but it's going to be annoying in the interim until they do. personally, I think all dispatch and planning should be routed through and done in Greensboro.......it's not like we're a 20,000 truck company it could all be done in a centralized location as small as we are and those problems would be immediately eliminated.

there are still some locations that you get the dreaded 'no directions available for the customer of this stop' message when you try to get directions. one thing that works for me in almost every case when that occurs.......if you have a smartphone or a laptop go into bing or google and in quotations put the complete company name and address as it is shown on your load assignment. that will almost always give you several links either directly to the company location or links to 3rd party sites that will give you info on the company and most of them include a mapping link to map it for you. find a street, cross street or intersection close to the location you want to go and enter it in the gps and that gets you close and then scroll the map on your gps to the location you want to be at. then, most gps units I've used have a 'route to here' function in some manner or other and click it and it'll get you there.....or #### close to it anyway.....and once you're there, send in the directions free form on the box so that next time the next guy won't have to go through trying to find it. I always do when I go into a place like that.....sometimes you're the first driver to that customer or location and that's why you'll get the 'no directions' as well.

as far as the animosity......that much I figured even without you confirming it......one of the few times and situations that I really miss being the boss and hate being an employee lol in my previous career I was in the middle of a buyout like that and I was the gm of the facility absorbing the company we bought which had a station in raliegh.....it was an operation where that station had to remain open to service the customers in raliegh but were operating under new rules and new policies as they related to the original company buying them out....the people in raliegh really bucked the system and didn't want to play ball and tried at every turn to remain autonomous and do things their way.....I finally had to go in and tell them all that I didn't care how you did it before, you belong to 'y' company now, not 'x' so suck it up and play ball by our rules or take your ball and go play somewhere else. of course, there were still the old timers with years in who were hardheads that didn't believe it until I fired them. all it took was 3 and the rest fell into line real quick. just another reason why everything should be going out of planning and dispatch in Greensboro. we're just not that big of a company to have different dispatch offices and planning. it's only going to gum up the works and be more of a problem than a solution. i'll predict over time it may end up being just that if the communication and animosity doesn't subside and get better.........centralized dispatch may look like a better option as things finally shake out and more streamlined unless and until we become that 10-20,000 truck company that would dictate regional dispatch as being more efficient. I personally hope we never do become that mega carrier and remain around the same size we are now. if we had thousands and thousands of trucks I could understand it and see the need for different dispatch offices but with 1100 trucks it's inefficient and just doesn't make sense.

back to work sunday after a week off. pitman. ugh. i'd really hoped after a week off i'd roll out of the gate with something a little stronger than that.

 

There is a bright red.
Untagged.
Shiny.
New. Peterbilt.
on the Greensboro yard.
Anyone know why?

 

Hmmmmm wonder if they're shopping around? Did the see the shiny new Mack there 3 weeks ago? Nice truck but another #### automatic.