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

That left a mark.....

 

I’d love to see the other object he hit.

 

The Gatorade Loop has been broken. Delivered to Mountain Top today but had a preload waiting for me: Pick up a load of coat hangers in Reading, PA, haul it to Edison, NJ tomorrow, where they will offload THESE coat hangers and replace them with (presumably) DIFFERENT coat hangers, to be dropped on the yard where they will doubtless sit for a week or more until someone delivers them to the prison in Hopewell.

I suppose it's possible that they will unload the coat hangers from my trailer and then put the exact same coat hangers right back on. Will keep you posted as events warrant.

 

I don't blame them. I just looked at Abilene's website. $0.45 CPM base pay for drivers with 2 YEARS EXPERIENCE. 2 YEARS EXPERIENCE FOR $0.45 CPM IN 2021 COMING UP ON 2022. Wow.

That is crap, anyway you cut it no matter how many miles they give to you. If they are paying experienced drivers $0.45 CPM what are they paying new CDL grads? $0.40 CPM?

I think I read somewhere Swift is in the mid 40's CPM starting out (don't quote me on that, anybody on the forum feel free to chime in). LTL's are begging for drivers, I saw a dock to driver advertisement from Old Dominion in Greensboro, NC a few months ago which is right down the road from Southern VA. I'm sure other areas are the same in regards to LTL.

Plus Swift has terminals all over the country. I would think after 3-6 months most Swift drivers could probably switch to something dedicated if they wanted to go that route and get home every weekend or maybe even daily in some cases. Something that Abilene probably doesn't have. With Swift you know you'll never be in an old beat up truck either, they're so big they're always keeping new equipment.

If I were a new driver I would go to Swift over Abilene too. I really can't believe they're paying drivers with 2+ years experience $0.45 CPM. Those wages are complete and utter trash no matter how low the cost of living is in Southern VA. In this drivers market that says to me that they don't even want experienced drivers. Plenty of OTR companies that will hire out of VA even if they don't have terminals in the state.

 

Today’s equipment update. Found at a shipper in upstate NY. Was dropped like this after the driver made a right turn a little to sharp. My bad, not driver, a steering wheel holder. This is the antics one gets to see at a training company. I hope the Board of Directors back in Phoenix say something about the amount of equipment that’s being used as a demolition derby. My buddy who was assigned to pick that trailer up called me and asked my opinion about pulling it off the property. I told him there would be no way on earth I would pull it. It needs to be towed out of there to get it to a shop for repairs.

 

It's humorous that you think 2 years is experienced.

 

And I’m sure the driver that dropped it in there like that is still gainfully employed at Abilene.

 

Based on the amount of carnage, if they fired every wheel holder that caused this damage, I’d be driving multiple trucks everyday because of not enough drivers.

 

From viewing the pictures and seeing where the damage started at, I would say that the driver made the turn way, way too sharp. The right mirror should had this point still in clear view. Was the driver even paying attention at the right mirror??

 

If you saw the amount of right side damage on our trailers, I’d have to say viewing the mirror was off the list of things to do. I want to believe that a good portion of this damage is done at various DC’s throughout the country, but I’m leaning towards driver inattentiveness.