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

Love when you have to use your exception to get home and get stopped by the slow train from China. 10 minutes so far of the 45 minutes I have. And it’s another 20 minutes home.

 

@JohnBoy ... have you reconsider yet?

 

Got a load assignment yesterday to pick up at BH Jarratt and deliver to BH Groveport.

Load picked up yesterday morning. Scheduled delivery...tomorrow.

It's like 9 hours from Jarratt to Groveport.

Well, I took things a little leisurely yesterday, but had no intention of dragging this business out until tomorrow. Got there today a bit after noon and dropped the trailer.

Seconds after I got parked in their bobtail area, Edna beeped at me with a new load assignment. Pick up an empty and go to someplace an hour away. Had hour and a half to get there before they closed.

Turns out it's a egg farm. Dude was happy to see me. Because they'd turned away four other Abilene drivers who showed up with an empty dry van. I was the only one to show up with a reefer.

My load assignment said "Hook empty reefer", so I dunno if I just read the load assignments better than the other drivers or if the "hook empty reefer" note was added after the first four guys got turned away. Not that I had much choice in the matter, being as how I was hooking at BH.

So anyhow, I am now hauling 40k of eggs, kept at a cool, crisp 34F. Load assignment says to be at the Gordonsville WalMart DC by 6:00am, but I've already let dispatch know that won't happen. Apparently any time I drop it is fine as long as I drop it tomorrow.

 

I screwed up today... been running for going on a solid two weeks ... said I’d take anything but would appreciate a shorter run if they had one instead of taking a day off... I got a shorter run... 7 hours... but 8 stops... ugh

then the very first unload was goofy... short one pallet of milk but had an odd ball pallet of milk... long story short, it went to all eight stops with me... at the last one they told me to call in as I needed to run that pallet to the right place... (kind of felt like they were saying I goofed but it was the store that didn’t want it)... so I took it back... and they still didn’t want it... lol

so it goes back to the DC but the last store also loaded up my trailer with “back haul” which looked like a lot of the pallets and plastic trays that stuff ships to the store in... fine, I just drive, I’ll find out what to do with it later.

got to the DC and explained the fuster cluck and that I have both the “back haul” and the pallet of milk... they looked at me like “you have what?”... lol

I guess we can’t haul “garbage” with “food”... ok, fine... it doesn’t look like “garbage” and it was all stuff sitting on the dock... lol ... and just shipping containers... not “rotting food” etc... lol

they were very nice and asked who I drove for... Abilene... (again, nicely) ... does Abilene allow you to carry garbage with your food items??? My response “well, we don’t haul garbage”... lol

he laughed and said the Store knew better and just took advantage of the new driver.

I reminded them that the sum total of my “how to drive for Publix” was being handed a “Driver Trip Sheet” and sent on my way to figure it out as I went... lol

 

I thought we could only drop dry box loads? I hauled a chicken load in there yesterday. LUL. Only took about 2 hours from check in at the gate to check out at the gate. And it was busy as all get out. Last time I was there, it took 4 hours, but everyone wasn’t in crisis mode then.

 

It was probably always in the load assignment to hook to a reefer, but people don’t read. If it wasn’t in there, then it’s on dispatch.

 

Especially when the load assignment will have an temperature setting on it.

Been running this publix deal,for about 2 weeks now,and besides some of the stores it's been a nice change of pace.