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

It's been rough for my truck the last few weeks,like they're trying to scrape it together.

 

Sounds like a Marlon Special.

 

Delivered a load of hooch today. I have always labored under the impression that you needed a special permit to haul booze, or a hazmat endorsement or something. So either you do not need such things to haul booze OR I just made an illegal delivery.

Got a preload about an hour before I arrived at the receiver. Current assignment is to drop this empty at the Knight yard in Atlanta and pick up a loaded trailer for Hewlitt-Packard in Sandston.

In other news, I now have my fourth DM in six years here at Abilene. My previous DM is being moved to outbound load planning. Apparently one of our previous load planners developed a sudden case of jail and Abilene thought it best to discontinue that relationship. So my old DM is taking over.

New DM is a woman named Dana, and she's new to Abilene and new to being a DM. Seemed nice enough. Told her I'd be happy to provide her whatever info she needs to succeed on the job.

This marks the first time I have ever been assigned a new DM and was actually told about it beforehand. Progress!

 

Well then.

 

After now being on my 16th DM in the 9 years here, DM’s are a dime a dozen. I don’t get to close with any of them, not because I’m antisocial, it’s that there tenure here has told me a DM’s job at Abilene is short lived. Hell, I’d rather be the janitor/grounds keeper, he’s been here longer then me.

 

Subject to change without notice.

 

Sitting in Limon for the weekend being apt complex manager can only unload this furniture during the week, he didn't want to pay overtime which is understandable. He said Monday at 0900 would be good so Ill be there then. He was real cool about it all and not angry about anything. He actually sounded like he was kind of high on the reefer, LoL! Got them to split the load here in Limon for the miles and put it back on me tomorrow. Will see what they come up with for reload Monday morning. Being in Vail I imagine they will prob send me west to reload unless the find a broker load in the Denver area.

 

Sitting here at the dock in Phlugerville Texas waiting for my receiver to open up so I can get this $14.99 a pound Boars Head ham off my trailer. This was a nice 1425 mile run over the weekend. Outside of the 105 degree temp all through Texas, this was very uneventful.

Now into some discussion on why Abilene has the issues they do. I have a friend that came back to work here 11 months ago. He worked here 7 years ago, and he and I both teamed to Edmonton Alberta together right before Christmas that year.

He called me and told me he sold his house in Vermont, and was buying one in SC to be close to our new Savannah yard and that he was promised a M-F off on weekends job running short haul freight. That whole plan lasted for about 2 months, and since then it’s gone straight down the toilette.

Why? Because as usual, this company hires inexperienced 20 something’s to run a terminal and can’t plan their way out of a wet paper bag. It turned out to be nothing but lies, constant misplanning and catering to drivers that cannot and will not do the job. It’s the same adage of the monkeys running the zoo. So he has given them every opportunity to work with him for the reasons they promised, but finally put his notice in. He cleaned out the truck over the weekend and is dropping it off at the yard in Savannah this morning.

This is not something new. One of my trainees I had 4 years ago, Van, had been going through the same thing in West Memphis. After 3 years of running local work there, he too quit because of the piss poor operations run by the WM group.

I’m not going into a long dissertation on the ill’s of this company, it’s useless, there’s plenty. They see problems, have a big turnover in operations, get new people in, and it’s the same poop. I’m sure one day it will be straightened out, more than likely after I’m long gone. My observation? As long as they have wannabe drivers looking for a new career after being a barista at Starbucks, not able to attract seasoned, safe drivers that understand this industry, they will put these drivers on the road and deal with them at a reduced wage. I see it as if you throw enough excrement on the wall something will stick.

One observation I noticed Saturday when I stayed at the WM yard for my break, that has me still scratching my head, goes right to load planning.

We have a customer in Savannah that loads a boatload of our trailers. It all goes to Dollar General DC’s throughout the country. During my daily walk Saturday after parking, I went and checked all the bill boxes just to see where the freight is going and who the shippers were. Thankfully, 95% of the loads were our customers. Here is something I can’t get out of my head. These Dollar loads that originate in Savannah, sitting in the WM yard, are out of route going to the final destination. The ones I saw firsthand were going to Houston, San Antonio, Odessa and Longview. Can someone explain to me, why, with these simple drop and hook loads at the final consignee, that are 24/7 drops, are sitting on the WM yard? Out of route? This is what bothers me. Not that I really give 2 poops, but really, just because the multi billion dollar company can afford that, it’s still piss poor planning. With knowing exactly how our freight winds up being late out of 2 different terminals, this in a nutshell is what’s wrong with this company. I guarantee that if they had more then former Barista’s and shift managers from Popeyes working here, they could change this around very quickly. Just like I say whenever I see our junk pile of equipment at the yard, operations people are no different, you get what you pay for.

 

Oh, one other thing. Abilene deems me an unsafe driver. I lost out on my monthly safety bonus last month because I went 10 over in Utah once. So it cost me $362. I’m fighting them on their verbiage in the letter announcing the parameters and how it’s presented. 10 over to them is based on the company speed limit, not the posted speed limit. Their way I was doing 81 in a 71, Utah says on their sign I was doing 81 in an 80. So, by missing out of the bonus, not getting so much as an email/QC/text or phone call, I’m deemed unsafe, yes, me, the one that has given this company. 9 years of service, 1.3 million accident free miles, no tickets, and bring to the table 43 years and 4 million safe miles with only one ticket in that time. Look out motoring public, there’s a loose cannon driving this Abilene truck sharing the highways with you. Trust me, the money isn’t the issue, the way they presented it is though.

 

Sadly, this is everywhere, not just Abilene.

I grew up in a world where you got a job and you worked at a company and it was a career and they valued your loyalty and your seniority and your institutional knowledge. And you retired from that company and they gave you a watch and a pension. That was the American Dream, that was what I grew up chasing.

But somewhere down the line, a bunch of bean counters realized that we can fire the guy that's been here 30 years and we can replace him with someone fresh out of college who will do work that's adequate for our purposes. He won't be as good as the guy we just fired, but he'll be fine. And he'll work for 25% less money, so we can save 0.04% on our payroll every month and kick that money upstairs to the upper management.

And then a bunch of other bean counters figured that, hey, we don't have to break the bank when we give out raises. We can give out 2%-3% a year, every year, just to keep up with COLA and inflation. Which put employees in a position that if they were struggling to meet the bills and needed more money, they could make more money by quitting and going to a new company. Because a new company can hire you new off the streets for a salary that your employers can't match, because giving you a 5% or 6% raise violates company policy.

I used to work for an internet company. I was a manager. Had a staff of eight. The eight people that worked for me were getting drastically underpaid compared to their counterparts elsewhere in the industry. Each one of them could've quit the job, gone to literally any other company, and instantly gotten a 30% raise. So I brought this to the attention of our HR department in an attempt to get their salaries adjusted. Because I liked 'em and they were great employees who did a good job and I didn't want to lose them.

And it was a fight getting their salaries brought up to the industry standard. Why? Because that would've meant they were getting a raise far in excess of what the company guidelines allowed for. HR was only allowed to give them a max raise of 5% annually, and here I was stumping for a 30% raise.

And the kicker was that HR and the company would've absolutely paid a new hire the exact salary I was asking for. Because that wouldn't have shown up in their books as a 30% raise. But they dug in their freakin' heels at the thought of paying employees already on their payroll the same money.

I did, eventually, win that fight, but it took about six months.

So the corporations and the HR departments and the accounting departments for every major company in America have created an atmosphere where job hopping is rewarded and loyalty is punished and new hires who don't know anything are better than old hands who do because the companies don't gotta pay 'em as much money.

I wish we could go back to the old way, but that ship has sailed.