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

LOL! It's just incredible. Computer programs dictate how life is. It reminds me of the movie called "The island" where people's lives where directed by a computer that told them what to eat, when to sleep, ect. And if it did match the computer programming; it was not acceptable... It was a Violation!

 

Our miles are short this week, what it said on the Qualcomm and what we are getting paid for is different. I have issues with payroll almost every payday. We get paid right eventually, but it is getting old.

 

I got mine early also. Safety actually called me to say that I was getting a rate increase. Really wasn't expecting them to do that at all.

 

I haven't checked my miles in a while. I did when I first started but lately I just make sure all my trips are on the settlement. I should pay closer attention if you are having issues.

 

That's case with a lumber shipper in WV. The shortest route that closest matches paid miles isn't truck legal. The shortest truck legal (though not recommended) route is 70 miles longer than paid which is a big chunk when you are only getting paid for 230ish.miles.

 

It all has to do with new roads being added; however, in the 2 instances I'm speaking of (my own), the route from each customer has not changed. 95 to 460 to 58 to 664 and reverse for the first one. 95 to 460 to 58 to 64 and reverse for the second. Although in the second one, my gps always wants me to go west on 64 through the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel and as we all know it's 13'6" restricted. There have been times I've been turned around as being too tall to go through there. But according to AKJ, on the first one the routing is exactly that and is 83 miles. Door to door going the route above is 85 miles. It's 95 miles going up 664 to 64 to 295 to 895 to 95. Its faster going that way (1.5 hrs) as opposed to 460 (1.75 hrs). I'm assuming the same for the other. It's 95 miles door to door on 460 and 106 miles going through a tunnel that Abilene doesn't want us using (or at least that was what we were told in my orientation 5 years ago). So where did 110 miles and 111 miles come from for this customer? Dunno. All I do know is that assuming I do 2 trips a day, it cuts me 54 miles per day x 5 days is $90 x 4 weeks is $360. I don't know about y'all but I tend to get a little antsy when my money is messed with, intentionally or not. Especially since I have no choice right now but to do this exclusively. Well, I do have choices, but a gals gotta work ya know.

 

Oh yeah. That one is a doozy. I just stick to the big road and call it even. The pucker factor is too rich for my blood on the short route. You would think that things like that would be taken into consideration, but just another way we, as drivers, get the short end of the stick. Zip code to zip code. Shortest distance possible, regardless if truck legal or not. Industry wide issue. Can you imagine if we made an hourly wage? Drivers (some) would be milking the clock something fierce. Our daycab drivers do. I've seen it quite a bit since I've been doing all this local work. Heck, just before having to be off this time, one guy left the same shipper over 30 minutes before I did. I caught up with him in Windsor, where he stopped at his favorite store. My husband has seen this guy there just about every day for at least 45 minutes. And sometimes 2x a day for the same amount of time. He's even had conversations with the guy and said a few things about how he acted(we'll leave it at that). My hubs is pretty observant that way. Creeps me out sometimes that he can read people so well. Anyway, I said something about hourly guys milking the clock to their boss and you'd have thought I killed someone's mama. Burns me up since I'm doing the same job as them but losing money left and right because I still get cpm. I don't care if you're hourly or mileage based, you don't fart around when it comes to work. Just my opinion.