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

Thank you so much for writing this George, I'm just thankful you are able to enjoy my writings and am able to follow along with me through my stories. God bless you and your family this holiday season.

 

Boy, you couldn't have said it any better! Be safe my friend.

 

I'm sitting in Jackson Ms waiting on George to finish eating inside. I finished my meal out of my fridge. This trip has beat my a.z.z. Into the ground. We dropped our San Diego load at 3pm local time Thursday, all of 20 minutes to drop & hook, get paperwork signed and leave. On our way into the drop I got a deadhead move from dispatch to bring the empty reefer trailer I had to Wally World produce center. I got there at 7 local time and had not gotten reload info. This was a little unusual, especially for a team. I called into night dispatch and asked Bo if there was a load assigned to me in the computer, he checked and said no and that he would call me back when he got something. That call never came. I said effit and went to bed.

We went and found a restaurant then went to our drop yard and called it a night, a night that had the truck not moving and us sleeping like two babies the whole night. That 8 hour sleep was shattered at 8am when my phone started ringing, and the Qualcomm going off like the Fourth of July. The phone was my dispatcher Tim calling, the Qualcomm was the load planner sending me three messages all wanting me to get rolling with the load they just sent over. Long story short, I did have a reload the night before at the same place I dropped the empty, in fact, it was loaded and waiting for me to pick up, except the load was never entered into the system so when I sent in my empty call there was no reload info in the system.

I got the load info, bobtailed the five miles back to get the trailer, and finally left at 10am Richmond time. Now the fun part, the load was scheduled to deliver at 3am Sunday, I called into Tim to let him know that the best I could do was 7am. I get a new delivery confirmation for 6am instead of 3am. I'll be there right at 5:30 am.

Im tired, all that is seen by the load planners is that my truck has 2 drivers on it, not a trainer with a trainee. At this rate it's going to take me 6 months to get George up to speed. He's doing just fine, but I'm not able to take my time to train him and work with him on some of the points he's lacking confidence in. All we are doing is dropping, hooking, fueling and driving. I will continue this way until I get back and pick George up after Christmas, then there needs to be some changes implemented. We'll see.

in the meantime, I got my very first preplan in 8 months of working here at Abilene. Friday afternoon my computer came to life with my reload. After I get empty Sunday morning I have to deadhead 80 miles to Dillon Sc and pick up a loaded trailer going to West Palm Beach for 6am Monday morning. I'll be able to get a night at the house with my wife, dogs and George. He offered to stay in the truck but that's not how my wife and I roll. He to will get a night out of the truck in a nice comfortable bed, a nice hot shower and a home cooked meal. I explained to him that we have a 4 bedroom home, 3 full baths and a heated pool that he can use. The other things I'll just have to wait another 10 days for.

Its time for bed, I have to take over at 2 am for the last 4 hours. God Bless all, be safe.

 

Got to our delivery at 5am, got done at 9am, got to my drop and hook at the Perdue plant at noon and was done there at 1pm. After showing George how to adjust the axles in order to be able to scale this 79,900lb load we are headed to my house for the night. Should be home around 10pm , just in time to shower eat and sleep, just so I can get up at 5am to go and unload. Did I ever tell anyone how much I dislike this job at times?

 

Got home last night at 10:30pm, we ate, had showers then went to bed. George was up half the night playing with 3 of my 4 dogs. My yellow lab is so attached to me that she spent the whole night cuddled up with me on one side and my wife cuddled up on the other side. We got up at 5am, my wife took us to the truck and we were at the delivery at 6:15. I was done at 11am, met my wife for lunch then headed over to Belle Glade and loaded a load of corn for Washington DC. It delivered Wednesday at 5 am so I asked Tim if I could drop it in Richmond in the morning. He wrote back and said absolutely.

In the meantime, I got a message from one of the load planners to meet another truck in Brunswick GA, give him our load, take his empty, then deadhead to Fort Mill Sc for a drop and hook early in the am and be back in San Diego midnight Wednesday night. Right now George is driving and I'm in bed.

 

Jason, how you doing pal? The Fort Mill Sc p/u is Ross clothing stores d/c. It goes to a local trucking company in San Diego. Drop and hook anytime you get there. They did send me up to Perris Ca which is about 70 miles north of SD to another Ross d/c for a drop and hook going to Charlotte Nc to a local trucking company there for a drop and hook.