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

Today was the day I was suppose to leave. Got a load assignment picking up convention freight 0700 tomorrow at the Tampa Convention center and drop it at the Knight yard in Atlanta. Nice easy load, get to sleep at the Marshaling yard at the Florida fairgrounds near the center. The only issue is getting both these mud flaps and brackets installed on this trailer I hooked to in Jacksonville last week on my way home. Right now I’m 65 miles from the house and have been waiting 2 hours to get called. What I’m hoping for is that it takes the rest of my day and then I’m not able to load. If enough missed loads happen because people aren’t taking care of their responsibilities, so be it. I’ll just go back home. Last I saw my chocolate lab was swimming in the pool, I’ll just join him.

 

I hate this Damco place in Santa Fe Springs.....always a cluster, especially when most of these can drivers take forever getting through the gate because they don't speak good english and no place to drop your empty most of the time.....

 

Tight lanes, too.

 

Dropped at the yard,and was put on a Groveport run ,supposed to be ready at midnight tonight,get down to Jarrett,at noon,and it's ready,bout fell out on the concrete.

Had to stop by the yard to get trailer tire fixed ,currently in Raphine for the night.

 

I also had a drop on the yard which was followed up with a Jarratt --> Groveport run. I dropped mine on the yard last night, though, which allowed me to get up this morning and complete the trip in one day. Currently parked in the Groveport bobtail area, with a load assignment to pick up at Boars Head New Castle and deliver to Pflugerville, TX on Monday. Whole trip will take around 20 hours of driving, and they've given me 72 hours to do it.

Might call my DM tomorrow and suggest that my time could be more usefully allocated if I drop the load off in West Memphis and get another load instead. Don't need a 34 at the moment.

 

They changed stuff since I was at Damco last. Gotta go inside the wooden booth at the inbound gate and put your license in a holder in front of a camera then somebody talks to you through a speaker snd asks your pickup info then you gotta hold up one of them yellow magnets in front of camera after choosing one from a pile then they tell you where your trailer is. He said my paperwork was at the exit guard shack, I even asked him twice because it used to be at inbound in a basket and he confirmed. I get my empty dropped and loaded one hooked and get to the exit and no paperwork....had to park on the street and wait for someone to find it and bring it to me....when I pulled out of the gate I was waiting for traffic to clear before pulling out onto the street and idiots coming out of the employee lot in their cars were honking and screaming at me to move out of their way....guess they expected me to just pull out in front of all the traffic and cause an accident, they really need to understand we can't accelerate like a car can....I also had to play the home time game on the phone today. Everyone was gone for the day when I got this load assignment so I called first thing this morning to let them know I couldn't make it to Hagerstown, Md and only had enough hours left on my 70 to get to the WM yard Sunday morning. Get off the phone and the load assignment got changed to a drop on the yard. Then later I get a call saying they want me to swap with a team in Phoenix because this load can't be late and take theirs back to Ca which would mean Id have to do a 34 in Ca which would make me miss my Doctor appt next Friday at the Va I scheduled 5 weeks ago and put it in the Qualcomm. I had to explain to my terminal manager in WM three times I couldn't do the swap, she wasn't angry just flustered and worried the load wouldn't get covered when I get to WM. The VA is a pain to schedule at a lot of the times and I was not missing my appt. Finally resent the load to drop in WM. If I still lived in WA no problem but being I moved back to WV it was an issue. I told my DM Wed I what I could do hours wise and reminded her of my home time and Doc appt. I bet somehow I get thrown under the bus since I should have just refused the load.....oh well, stuff was figured out I guess to cover it from WM to MD.

 

Trust me, the worst yard to get any help for hometime is WM. Everything in and out of there is late. They could give a poop about you, me or anyone else. Their sole purpose is to cover late freight. Add to that the quality of workers there, then you have the big picture. They hire people not from trucking, but people who came from a Popeyes as a shift manager, or someone that a week ago was in their parents basement playing video games on their XBox. Sorry if I sound disgruntled, I’m really not. In fact, I happen to still enjoy my job, it’s just the support help they hire is not from trucking, which gives me a daily headache. Like today.

 

True, but being Im assigned to WM I generally don't have an issue getting home from there because there is usually always something going to Wytheville or Ill get a New Castle then gatorade to Wytheville. I usually bobtail to WV from there. I have noticed though that each terminal tends to favor their own drivers assigned there so that could be an issue too. They definitely need to stop hiring anybody off the street for office jobs because it tends to make us drivers want to strangle ppl or in my case make "Gunny Hartman come out to play."

 

So that's what the kids these days are calling it.

 

I used to work for Holland ltl. The worst terminal in our system was Memphis. It chewed up and spit out terminal managers at a rate of several per year. Very poor workers there.