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

Got home this morning, of course without some discussion last night with night dispatch.

I’m very fortunate about my hometime. The only time I go to Florida is when I have my hometime, and when I get to our West Memphis yard when it’s hometime, it’s a Byhalia MS to Jacksonville FL. Been like that for the last 8.5 years. It’s what I call my going home load. Drop and hook on both ends with Jacksonville being an after hours drop. If everything works out, I can get there about 8pm, drop and hook, sleep on the property and leave out about 6am and be home having breakfast with the Mrs. by 10:30.

In order for the load planners to know where I’m at when I’m done with hometime, and to get paid the proper miles, I need to get a deadhead move sent to me when I’m done. When I first started here 8.5 years ago, I’d wait for the move to come across the QC before moving. I then figured out that I’m delivering in Florida for the sole purpose of going home when I’m empty, so now I just head home and make sureI get it before getting out of the truck.

Well, last night, I call in when empty and tell night dispatch I need a deadhead move. I’m then told that it’s not in the system showing me having hometime and I can’t leave until the morning when dispatch comes in. In my very understanding and happiest of responses I could muster up, I told dude on the other end that I’m leaving to go home tonight, with or without the deadhead move and that the only reason I’m in Jacksonville dropping this load is for me to go home. I’m getting slightly pissed off with the lack of communication here. Whoever is my current DM didn’t do his job, didn’t enter my hometime in the system, and I’m the direct result of someone’s screw up. Don’t really blame night dispatch, he’s only following what’s in the system. Like everything else in trucking, poop flows down hill, and becomes the drivers problem. I’m wondering, if an 8.5 year driver at this company, with an impeccable record, all of a sudden starts screwing up, like oversleeping, turning down loads, refusing to drive in snow, not being a team player and so on. Maybe I’m just venting or looking at this the wrong way. In any event, I’m just getting tired of doing my job and following up to make sure other folks are doing there’s that has a direct result of me being able to do my job correctly.

 

Of course not. You read it wrong. But if I don’t get that deadhead move home, then my next load after hometime shows Jacksonville as a starting point, not Lake Worth and the 295 miles I loose out on coming out of the house, plus, the load planner needs that info in order to book a load in the right area for the truck.

 

I have 2 opportunities to change. One of them is perfect. But, like they say, how much brain damage can one take? In my case, it’s apparent quite a lot.