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

That's sad, because it's the brick and mortar that help the local economy, not some warehouse 500 miles away.

 

I wasn't talking about overnight parking at the DCs. I was referring to stores only for parking. I was referring to the wait time for unloading at the DCs.

 

I never ran into a 4-6 hour wait , but always took 2 hrs whether it was a truckload or a single pallet, as far as parking @ the stores I stand by that.

 

We deliver to several DCs and it's a pretty standard 4 hours delivery time. Then again, it's all in what you are delivering and diversity of product. We usually have several different items on our trailers, hence the longer wait time.

 

From earlier this year:
www.thetruckersreport.com/truckingindustryforum/threads/amazon-from-chester-va-to-balt-md.332911/

Miss Elvee's entire post is extremely instructive on Amazon's view of, well, everything. Having spent several years in an Amazon FC at varying degrees of responsibility, none of this surprises me, especially given how I've seen FC Receiving Area Managers and their Process Assistants treat the carriers that came through our dock. Walmart is, as we all know, no better.

Make no mistake: no matter who comes out on top of this, Americans lose.

 

Man, are you trying to turn this job into real work?. I hope all those brownie points and pats on the back you are racking up are remembered should you ever need them.

 

Now that's some funny stuff right there!

 

Yesterday, long about 2:00pm local, they finally pulled my truck in to the shop to begin working on it. I'll spare you the gory details involving how the shop was waiting for authorization to work on my truck while the Abilene shop was saying they'd already sent the authorization.

I figured maybe my fleet manager would be interested in knowing that they were finally going to start working on the thing, so I called him.

"Hey man, they're finally working on the truck. Should be ready sometime tonight."
"Are you going to be late with your load? Or will you make it on time?"
"I don't *have* a load. I called dispatch last night and told them that I wouldn't be able to make either of my two pick-up appointments today because the truck wouldn't be rolling until the afternoon at the earliest. And I followed that up with a qualcomm message to the same effect. And dispatch was making noises like they were looking for another driver to take over the load."

If phone calls and a QC message aren't enough, what else do I need to do? Post card? Carrier pigeon?

Ended up spending a second night at the Volvo repair shop. The truck was fixed circa 8:30pm Richmond time, but they need the final paperwork from Abilene and Volvo Action Center. Which they couldn't get by that time since everybody who could issue the correct paperwork had gone home for the day.

"Can I at least sleep in the truck tonight?"
"Nope. Can't let you sleep in it until we get the final paperwork. We've had people drive off before without getting us what we need to get our money."
"Look, man, here's my CDL. I ain't going anywhere. Just let me sleep in my own truck tonight. Otherwise I gotta spend the next hour trying to wheedle another night's stay at the hotel out of a woman who went home for the night three hours ago."
"...okay, fine. We'll put this with your paperwork and you can get it in the morning."

AND THEN:

Tornado warning. Tornado touched down two miles north of the shop. The sky looked like God had eaten some bad oysters. Freaky scary sky. Sleeping in the truck didn't sound so appealing. Power went out, and we were all standing around in a darkened diesel garage watching Mother Nature do her thing all over northern Illinois. They had cleverly parked two semis bobtail over the oil pit just in case we all had to run for our lives and hide.

Eventually it settled down enough that I felt like I could spend the night in my truck without waking up in Oz, so I buggered off for the night.

While all of that was taking place, I got contacted by dispatch. They hadn't reassigned the load, so I should go ahead and run to the two shippers as originally planned and then head to Groveport, just a day late. Okie dokie.

Rolled out this morning as soon as the shop was open and as soon as they had the paperwork they needed to let me leave. The two shippers I needed to visit are dairy plants in Wisconsin. Called the first one to make sure I was going to the right place, since I have had instances in the past of traveling to the address of some rural dairy plant as given to me on the load assignment, only to be told "No, you need to go another 10 miles down the road to our warehouse."

"Hi! I'm a driver for Abilene. I had a pick-up appointment yesterday, but couldn't make it because my truck was in the shop."
"Oh. Yeah. We were wondering where you were."
"What? Nobody called you?"
"Nope."

Same story at the 2nd shipper, though in their case they called Boar's Head and Boar's Head told them that I was in the shop (because apparently we did manage to call BH and tell them that the shipment would be late).

2nd shipper was surrounded by high water on all roads approaching the facility, but I managed to find the least watery path in. Bumped the dock in two inches of standing water, and this cute little shipping clerk came out in her bare feet to bring me my paperwork while they loaded me. Which was pretty much the highlight of my day.

Currently sitting 2.5 hours away from Groveport, and will be rolling out tomorrow as soon as my 10 is up.

Which brings us to the present day.

 

I've run into that before, where a shop is saying they are waiting for authorization while Abilene says they sent it. I was told by the shop that the problem is the breakdown company being the middle man not relaying the authorization, but I suspect the shop was just feeding me a line to shift their blame for why my truck was not touched for hours.

 

Yep. That would be the shop trying to figure out the cheapest way to fix things just good enough to get you rolling to get you back to Richmond where they wil hold you up for days to fix it and then still not fix it.

That didn't sound too cynical, did it?