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

What is Abilene starting drivers at now?

 

40 CPM plus opportunities for up to 3 CPM for production and safety.... I think up to 46 if you have experience.

 

The manager volunteered to give me a 10% discount off the rental... so it was close enough.

 

Over 40 years experience

 

Just had our Driver Council meeting today. Heard some very positive news from the company.

First off, we are going with Blue Cross Blue Shield when open enrollment comes around next month.

We will start getting in the first of our 100 new Utility reefers with Thermo King units in September.

The reason all the old trucks are sitting at the entrance in RVA is because the trucking industry is working through a down turn and no one is buying used trucks right now.

The gate system along with the inspection lane will be functional next month.

At our last meeting in March, we had 385 trucks on the road, we now have 415.

The one thing that enlightened me and made me appreciate the job Abilene is doing is this, we turned our fleet completely over with the purchase of 290 new trucks since the first of the year.

One other very enlightening point, it’s called ratio’s. What that means is this, for every dollar a company makes, what are they netting? Here are some numbers,

USA truck, 100/100
U S Express, 100/97
Abilene, 100/85

What these numbers say is this, for every dollar the company makes, after all expenses and operating costs, the difference between the two numbers is their profit. USA Truck is not making money, US Express is netting 3 cents on the dollar, Abilene is netting 15 cents on the dollar. Years ago, you were doing good if you netted 5 cents on the dollar, we are way above that.

From what was discussed, we now have a good handle on lowering our deadhead miles, preplanning will be getting even better.

We will be working on getting our trucks serviced at either RVA or WM. They will be rolling out a system in the next few months to alert us and route us to or thru one of our terminals to get that service. Apparently, a bunch of our drivers feel it isn't important to keep up on service intervals.

That’s it for now. This meeting took 1 hour and 45 minutes out of my pool time, but in the end, it was all good.

 

When it takes days to have a simple service done at our shop in RVA, is it any wonder why folks don’t want to put their truck in the shop? Heck, I was off for 5 days and it took them that long to complete my service. And guess what? Not all of it got done AND my check engine light came right back on. Go figure. But, it is good to hear they are making progress. Wonder if us locals will have to go through the inspection lane multiple times a day? That should be interesting. And where will it be located? We have little room and I can just see drivers being on the honor system to go over to the shop and get an inspection done. Yep. I’m still cynical. It’s my best feature. LOL

 

And just how much is that going to cost us? It’ll be interesting to see how long they give us this year to make our choices.

 

Cigna raised their rates 23% From what was said today, our rates are staying the same with the new carrier with more options.

 

From what was said today, they are designating 2 bays with 4 people to do PM’s. This has nothing to do with service, check engine lights, trailer issues or anything else. I had mine done 3 weeks ago, 3500 miles under the mileage due, in and out in less then 2 hours on a Thursday morning. Everyone can gripe, complain and biotch about how it use to be, these issues that are being addressed are a direct result of those gripping, complaining and biotching. I for one was one that was very vocal, now it’s being addressed.