Abilene Experience

Beware Publix in Lakeland FL... Arrived and checked in at 6pm for a 7pm appointment. 9:45 they finally gave me a door. Its now 10:15 and no progress. Very unimpressed with the receiving folks. Cussing and horsing around and they look like little Rico Sauvey wanna bes with all their bling. I just want out of here so I can go to sleep! Detention, detention, detention...

 

Ifinally got out of there at midnight. Call it 5 hours, this is par for the course in my experience, one reason for a lumper svc is to expedite snd streamline the delivery process... They were probably union anyway....

 

Just because of Fl?

 

Anyway, off to a rural area to pick up a truckload of cucumbers that will be delivered to Long Island, NY and become pickles... Nice run at least. Just have a three hour wait before i can load...listened to NFL all day on my XMSirius and it was awesome. Great investment! My Broncos did well and proved the Chiefs hadnt played ANYBODY until last night now the can sink back into mediocrity!

 

Finally loaded at this farm and took the remainder 5hrs off to give me a 10 and headed out north. Discrepancy between Qcomm and ppwk...qcomm says del 11/21 0600 and ppwk says 11/20 0600 which aint gonna happen regardless! Going with qcomm as the gospel! I just do what Im told!

 

10-4 Millions. My situation is changing up a bit. Got a call from Sally and she had another AMX driver in her office whos out of the wytheville terminal. He wants to be a trainer and I want to train/team so Scott is putting us together as a team in a Kenworth 1446 starting Monday. That way we can both acclimatize to sleeping while moving. It should be less worry because both of us are established solo drivers. We do have the option of staying as a team but i thinks abilene will split us up soonest....
Bad side is that we both have identical gear in our trucks! So 2 cbs(his is better than my 29) w microwaves 2 xm's, antennas, both of us have RMcnally TND520 gps... Argghh and i just got 1320 set up perfect! All wiring routed and clean and perfect!
Right now i am sitting outside the pickle factory in glen cove ny (long island) waiting to be unloaded! Cool thing is my backhaul is a load of pickles from this plant back to abilene richmond! Its a miracle! An awesome pre-plan! Im liking it!

 

Sorry i forgot to answer your question! We are fully on the qcomm logs and dispatch etc. the older qcomms like i used to have (i called it the Speak-n-Spell!!!) should be gone with the last of the 2011 trucks so the 2nd and 3rd generation Qcomms have a pretty good GPS nav system already in the truck. Its a little cumbersome so I still use my Rand McNally gps. But a great back up!

 

They only use paper logs when you first start out to make sure you know how then you transition to the qcomm. This is usually for less experienced drivers and/ or "refreshers" . I was a refresher when i came in because even though i got my CDL at 18 in 1994, i had been in operations for the past 2 yrs and not in a truck everyday.
Heck i know Abilenes dispatch software system like the back of my hand. I have many years experience with TMW. Thats scary...i could be a dispatcher again and know all the tricks and excuses!!! Just kidding! See yall!