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

Prayi

Praying for you and your mom. I know (somewhat) how difficult this can be. My mother-in-law has been suffering with some serious health concerns for the last year and it certainly has taken a toll on my wife. Stay strong RebelChick!!

 

Ooh. That sucks. Good luck.

 

Fort Myers huh my home town low and behold what are you bringing here.

 

I would rather the same speed on cruise and the pedal.

 

Cahill US Marshall, he paid $50 for a mule.

 

My slow week continued yesterday with an aborted run to Nestle in King William. Got sent out there to hook a pre-loaded trailer. Got there at 1:00pm, which was the scheduled appointment time. Talked to shipping, found out that not only was the trailer not finished, they hadn't even started it yet.

"So...you just want me to wait around? Or what?" I asked.

"Up to you, my man," they replied. "Probably won't be until tomorrow before we can get to you. We're pretty backed up. But you can park here and wait if you want."

Since the idea of driving 41 miles total for the day and then sleeping on the Nestle yard didn't appeal, I called dispatch and explained the situation. They had me drop my empty and bobtail back to the yard. So that got me 82 miles for the day.

Now here is where my ignorance of how trucking work starts to show.

I sat for two days. I was okay with it. Alan asked if I wanted to come in and take a loaner truck just to get some miles. I said "Man, that's up to you. If you've got freight that needs to run, I'll come in and run it, no problem. On the other hand, I'm kinda enjoying my unscheduled hometime." Alan said that was fine, and to come back in tomorrow.

Thursday I sat at the yard for 4 hours without a load.

Wednesday and Tuesday, they had me make short local runs.

So from this I infer that we didn't have much freight to run.

I said as much to dispatch when I got there. "I guess we're light on freight, huh?" "Aw no, man, we got freight." "Oh, okay."

But then it took 'em nearly three hours to get me another load.

And understand: I'm not griping. I am legitimately curious as to how all this works. I know absolutely nothing about what they do on the other side of that dispatch window, and I seek to clear away the cobwebs of my ignorance.

Anyhow, they finally hooked me up with a Hill-Phoenix load that needs to be dropped off in the West Memphis yard. Stopped in Wytheville for the night, and will be heading out to West Memphis here directly.

 

Man, took me a minute to figure out why 7:30am wasn't 10 hours after 9:30pm last night when I stopped.

Daylight Savings Time Delenda Est.

 

9:30pm became 10:30pm at 2:00am on March 12, 2017