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

Not that anybody at the office is really asking us to.

 

it's master blaster

 

It’s master something alright.

 

On fishing boats they are called master baiters.

 

When I was an account manager on a dedicated account in Atlanta we had a store in SPanish Fort AL that we delivered to daily. Had the GPS built into the Qualcomm and if you followed it you wound up Beach front on the gulf east of Panama City.
We knew the system had a glitch in it that sent it there. Had a guy that had been there 3 months gave him the load.
I personally called him and told him not to follow the GPS and told him how to get there. Left those directions on the pack with bills. Night shift told him the same thing before he gave him the bills.
6 hours later I get a call from him saying he’s staring at the ocean. He was 120 miles east of the store ignored every word he was told. Needless to say after that I only trusted about 5 people (out of 50) with that load.

 

We’ve got a few (well, maybe more than a few) like that here. One person has told me, on more than one occasion, that they only use the Qualcomm for general directions. Ok, then why do you end up screwed up a lot of the time? The answer? No joke-“That’s where the Qualcomm said to go.” SMH

 

Saw a brand new trailer at the yard yesterday-with a “Do Not Use” tag on it. Nice looking. 7723. So, if you figure we have trailers with numbers from 6400 to 7700 we should have about 1,300 trailers-minus all the ones t-boned by trains, what-have-you incidents, the plain old “I’m a rust bucket syndrome” ones, and not including 48’ ones and reefers. Seems like it should be more, but since you can hardly ever find an mty (especially on the weekend), Wonder how many we have sitting where they have been forgotten?

 

Snowed in still here on I80 waiting for WY to open again west bound. Might be a day late on delivery. Still make my doc appts though if I deliver 0100 Friday instead of Thursday. Thought I was going to get lucky and dodge the snow.

 

I have a delivery from what appears to be some kind of custom furniture/art company in Richmond. Delivery was to a place in Raleigh, NC. The first bit of entertainment came when I got the load assignment at 7:30am with an 8:00am delivery time. Raleigh is 2hrs 30min away from Richmond, so I sent dispatch a nice "######, Jim, I'm a truck driver not a time-traveller!" message in my best Bones McCoy voice.

Then I made phone calls to the receiver to make sure they weren't actually expecting it at 8:00am. They said they weren't and any time I got it there would be fine, so I did my pre-trip and hit the road. Arrived a bit before 11:00am, talked to the receivers, bumped a dock, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

They only got nine boxes, and I didn't feel the truck shake at all. After 30 minutes I shoulda been unloaded and done. Meanwhile, a 26-foot box truck came in 10 minutes after I did and left in about 15 minutes. I was watching the dude through the side-view mirror and he was unloading his own truck. And I thought "I bet these guys are waiting for me to unload this stuff."

Went back to talk to the guys in the warehouse. Guy who is obviously in charge says "You ready to unload this stuff?" I said "I just drive the truck." They said "We're just receivers, not lumpers. We don't unload freight." I said "Welp, neither do I. For me to unload freight they gotta tell me in advance and they gotta pay me, and they ain't done either of those things." They said "Alright, well you can take that #### back where you got it I guess."

Okie dokie, cowboy. I ain't got a problem with that 'cause I get paid regardless. Pulled out of their dock, called the shipper, and apparently the shipper is used to this problem. A few phone calls and 30 minutes later and I'm back in the dock and they're unloading me.