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

A brief rundown of my week so far:

Got back in the truck on Tuesday from a weekend with the kids. Got a load assignment that instructed me to drive bobtail to Virginia Beach and pick up a pre-loaded trailer from an auto salvage yard.

I thought it was kind of odd that we'd left a trailer at an auto salvage yard. Last time I had to pick up a trailer from a salvage yard, the truck that had been pulling it had been involved in a wreck. Arrive on site and look for the pre-loaded trailer. At which point I discover that there isn't a pre-loaded trailer. The shipper was expecting me to bring an empty. Oops.

So I get on the horn with my driver manager and tell him I need an empty trailer. And then I wait. An hour and a half goes by, and then I get instructions to drive 15 minutes away and pick up an empty from Stihl. Stihl is a hot mess these days, and I am lucky to have escaped with my life, much less with an empty trailer.

I return to the shipper with an empty trailer and they load me up with a bunch of battery cores. All the way to the trailer doors. I eyeball it and adjust the tandems, hoping I've got it right. Because the Virginia Beach area is a desolate wasteland when it comes to truck stops and scales. The closest scale I could find along my route was that Huddle House truck stop right where 13 turns to 460...and there's a weigh station about a mile before that exit. I roll down the road, and get pulled in to the weigh station. I've got my fingers crossed because I dunno if I'm legal or not. I'm on the scale for maybe 5 seconds and I get the green light. Whew!

But I still wanted to check my weight, because sometimes they'll let you slide if you're only a couple hundred pounds over. So I hit the truck stop five minutes down the road and checked my weight.

I was 1800 pounds over on my trailer axles.

No idea how or why they let me slide on that. Last time I was overweight on my axles, they told me on the speaker to pull in and slide my tandems to adjust the weight and make it legal. This time they just let me roll. Weird.

Yesterday was a new day with a new load assignment. I arrived at the shipper and was told that they'd accidentally loaded my freight onto the wrong truck, and they were going to have to unload it off the other dude's truck and put it on mine. Last time that happened, I was the dude with the wrong freight on his truck, so I sympathized with the other driver.

Today I have delivered to two stops, and am currently at the last one waiting for them to get here and unload me. It's a Hill-Phoenix load for a Publix just south of Atlanta. I have already made parking reservations at the TA truck stop down the road in Jackson, because this place is festooned with signs informing me that truck parking is prohibited and violators will be towed.

 

Surprising, the Suffolk scales on 58 are pretty strict. But nice.

 

Twice, huh? You’re doing good then! LOL

 

Frank’s Truck Stop in Chesapeake is right before you get onto 58 from 64/664. They have a CAT scale. It’s about 2 miles before the weigh station. The Huddle House is about 8 miles past it.
And yeah, Stihl is totally a fun place. Go there about twice a week. This past Sunday I broke down in there. Seems the leveler (?) that holds air in the air bags on the tractor decided that the 44k load I took in there was a bit much for old Oscar and he just gave up the ghost. Waited 3 hours for roadside. Took him all of 10 minutes to fix. He’s been dispatched on breakdown calls for me 3x now. He told me I was rough on trucks! Hahaha!!! He doesn’t know the half of it!

 

Question...
Since this is my first Volvo truck.
If the truck has a problem that the Richmond shop can not fix.
Is the truck sent to the Kenworth around the corner? Do they have Volvo tech there also?

 

They send it to Colonial Volvo over in Ashland. It's across the freeway from Bass Pro Shop, more or less. Same exit you take to get to the first TA going north on 95.

If you're heading south towards Richmond, it's a bit easier to see due to the trees not being in the way. You can usually spot one or two Abilene trucks there.

 

Nice blind side back early in my day at this receiver since they gave me the dock at the end.....

 

Thanks for the info.

 

JB, MD, and anyone else who has family in FL, hope they’re all preparing and getting to safe locations. Looks like the end of the holiday weekend is going to be rough down there.