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

I’m going to voice my fingers.....typing.

I agree with everyone’s frustrations. I also have mine. I’m not talking about the everyday garbage we go through, that’s part of this profession. What burns my behind more than anything else is the lack of communication. I have never, in all my years driving, been kept in the dark about anything like I am here. I will be the first to say, that lack of miles is not one of them. I’m very fortunate in that area. I know some folks have to fight for miles, and I feel for them. If any of my trainees call me with frustrations about miles, I’ll always help out.

Here is a perfect example. I did a reset in Sparks last week. I had hometime scheduled starting today. I got my load assignment on Tuesday late afternoon. My reset was done at 2am Wednesday. No one called me, and in the load assignment it had me deadheading 172 miles to Lodi Ca to reload 6pm Wednesday night. The reason for the late loading? They wanted to make sure I was able to get over Donner without any issues. So, I get over the pass and take a 10 at the Flying J 4 miles from pickup.

As I do with every load, beginning the day after loading, I send in an ETA update every day. I sent 3 in telling everyone on the other end that I’d be in West Memphis 5pm Saturday. As it turned out, I got to WM at 4:30pm Saturday, a half hour early. Friday after lunch, I got my revised load assignment showing me ending in WM. That was the last I heard from dispatch. Saturday afternoon, after dropping my trailer, I now call in.

Here’s, the conversation......

Me...Phillip, where’s my load to go home?
Phillip......uh, um, uh
Me interrupting Phillip......Phillip, you’re kidding me, right?
Phillip......where do you live?
Me.....South Florida.
Phillip....I don’t have anything, I’ll get you something tomorrow coming to RVA.
Me.....save your energy, I’ll be home in the morning. This is nothing short of BS.
Phillip......what do you mean.
Me......I’ll rent a car and go home. When you have a load for me call me after my hometime and I’ll be back in WM to get it.
Phillip......hold on.
Me......hold on? Dude, you’ve had a week and a half to get this right and you couldn’t, what am I waiting on, for you to pull a rabbit out of your a..s..s..?
Phillip......there’s 4 loads sitting in Byhalia going to Jacksonville. I’ll send you the load assignment.
Me...Phillip, everytime I have hometime
and drop my inbound load in WM, it’s a Byhalia to Jacksonville.
Phillip......no one told me.
Me......come on dude, tell that sob story to someone else, not to me.

That shows me that there’s no communication between operations and drivers, AND operations and operations.
I’m all for doing my job, stepping up when asked, bailing out operations and anything else needed to save a load, but this lack of communication does nothing but burns my backside. There’s issues going on in RVA, my train of thought says it will be corrected, I’ll do what I need to do, but when Pooh happens like this, then Johnboy here becomes a little irate. They don’t want us calling in on phones, so the best I could do was go to my truck this morning, after getting home last night at 11pm, and send in a QC message explaining what happened. I no sooner sat down at Dunkin Donuts and I get a phone call from operations. So, after explaining again what happened, letting them know how this lack of communication is making people walk, I was told it’s being addressed. Great, let’s see what happens next time.

Besides that issue, my biggest concern is these wrecks we are having. I’m waiting for the hammer to fall and have us all cut back to 65. You know, one size fits all.

 

Nice. I mean really, who puts a guard house in the middle of an entrance to a trucking company? Didn’t they realize someone might knock it over?
...Sarcasm...