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

Our cohort Sean, who’s been here 22 years is getting $450 to sit in Edmonton Alberta until Tuesday. They somehow were caught off guard when he called in empty yesterday.

 

Do not for one instance care, or give a rats ### about their fuel prices. I was in the WM yard last Saturday, and in my hour of boredom, went and checked the loads on the yard. 6 loads sitting there were all picked up at Cycleup in Savannah going to various parts of South Texas. They sent them to the WM yard to drop, all were drop and hook 24/7 and all were out of route buy a couple of hundred miles. Why? To save fuel? Or to listen to drivers threaten to quit because they want to be home on the weekends, don’t go to Texas, or just plain doing what they want to?

Fuel to high? Freight dropped off? Get rid of some trucks, with the amount of trucks sitting, it’s apparent they can’t keep them rolling. And with the damaged equipment, they’d probably save money. Get rid of the 50 trucks you added to the fleet when things were good 18 months ago. This way you can keep the rest running.

I emptied out last Monday in Pflugerville, they deadheaded me 275 miles to Laredo to pick up my load. 22 boxes on 2 pallets, 875 pounds, and brought it 1700 miles back to Richmond. Want to maximize the revenue? Find more LTL freight for the truck. I have no problem chasing pickups to fill the trailer. Why not? Because the kids in the office don’t think outside the box.

Higher ups? I’m thinking they should be replaced as well. The last true trucking person they hired was Don Higgins, when he passed it’s been all shift managers at Popeyes or former Baristas at Starbucks, get a day of training, then have to listen to me when I call in asking for a load that everyone knew when I was going to be empty 6 days ago when I loaded.

But, in defense of the tightly run operations/planning group, I’m just a truck driver here, not paid to think. I love being planned and dispatched by kids 25 years old, no transportation experience, and no CDL. I get ill everytime I get empty. Thank God I work now just for insurance, if it was money, I’d have left years ago.

Its not just the price of fuel. People aren’t buying goods. Have you noticed the Boars Head trailers aren’t leaving as full as they use to be? My wife and I are consumers like the rest of us. In my house, all our cold cuts are Boars Head, at $14.99 a pound for ham, she said no more. I get it. Not that we can’t afford it, but she’s the one that does the food shopping, and if she says no, then I’m relegated to eating Oscar Mayer.

I understand the company needs to put parameters in place, but don’t tell me (not you) that it’s because fuel is too high. It’s much more then just fuel. Maybe they should look at all the money they’re throwing into these buildings. Those nice fancy floors they put in the shop garages? Very expensive. I know, I have the same floor in my 3 car garage at the house.

One last thing, the 2nd quarter ended on the 30th, Knight/Swift being a publicly traded corporation will be posting their financials very shortly. I’ll be very curious to see how they did. The first quarter financials showed that after the last light bill was paid, the last oil change done, and the last lawsuit settled, they had a net profit of $208 million dollars. If, with the cost of fuel, they have a net profit for the 2nd quarter, then the fuel price hadn’t really impacted them.

 

Maybe if they stopped loading dry freight on the reefers and not getting them empty, they wouldn’t need to deadhead a truck 495 miles just to drop off and empty reefer.

 

Right now it’s the same as it was 9 years ago. That’s one thing I appreciate here. I watch everything I’m owed very carefully. The very few mistakes made over the last 9 years have been corrected the same day it was discovered. Not saying it won’t change, but for now, it’s good.