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

It’s been rather nice only dealing with the occasional hiccup now and then. Only went to eastern PA once so far to get a brief sniff of the NE and while I’m a bit frustrated with my current DM at times, he is my second best DM I’ve had other than Ben when I first got here who was a freaking mind reader and wizard at his job.

so ya, I’ll be in this Red Truck for several more years.

 

Ya, this is my retirement job. I’ll probably slow down a bit and the better half will eventually hop on board after we finish helping family and such. But ya, if the company will let me run light duty, I could see touring the country for the fun of it into retirement.

 

Yep my mother in law's family is from Pea Ridge. Small world!

 

The local Penske had a hiker that worked for them.Finally retired at 86.

 

At my last company, we had Jimmy. Jimmy was the first driver hired in ‘74. Jimmy then was 84, no teeth, smoked one too many cigarettes, drank coffee incessantly. I remember once getting a call from my dispatcher Louis while finishing getting loaded in Santa Nella. “John, meet up with Jimmy at the TA and run back together”. Sure, met Jimmy, got to Reno, fueled and that was the last I saw if Jimmy, I couldn’t keep up with him to save my life. He got back to Scranton 30 hours before I did. Come to find out Jimmy was the only driver in the company that was on paper logs. Jimmy is gone now, but #### that old man could truck. Moral of the story? No teeth, cigarettes and coffee must work.

 

Sitting at the Petro in Florence SC. Got empty this morning with 2 drops around Atlanta then sent here to reload, which took 3.5 hours and blew my 14. I’m dropping this load in the Richmond yard in the morning then starting a reset. Miles have been great these last 2 weeks since coming off hometime. Now it’s time to plan my next 2 weeks and make sure the circus in Richmond understands I need to be home in South Florida for Thanksgiving, by truck and not by plane.

 

Got my pm done and check engine light supposedly fixed. Supposed to grab a load from DSC logistics and run it to Kansas City but they had no trailers to load it. Local dropped a few this afternoon but load pushed out til tomorrow and delivery the 10th. Will see if loaded in the morning.

 

A little birdie left a note in my inbox wondering where I've been, so I figured I would let y'all know that I continue to stride the Earth, inflicting my presence on all and sundry.

Miles have been low for me past couple of weeks due to being sick and then getting some loads with lots of extra time on 'em. But the bad days are the rent you pay for the good days, so I try not to get too worked up about that. Currently sitting at a Wegmans warehouse in Rochester, NY, offloading a single refrigeration unit from Hill-Phoenix. After that, it's off to Batavia to pick up something or other that's going the new Coca-Cola bottling plant in Chester.

Did manage to score a ticket yesterday from the New York State Police for "failure to move over" when driving past a construction vehicle on the shoulder. Already got my legal insurance folks working on that. Last time I got an actual moving violation, the lawyer was able to get the ticket completely dismissed. So hopefully they'll come through again and keep my record squeaky clean.

 

Got to the Richmond circus this morning at 11am. I called on my way in and offered to run this trailer to the customer. All it was was a drop trailer. Was told no, that it was assigned to a local driver to take over there. Oh well, seems pretty dumb to me. But what do I know, I’m paid to drive and not think. We have a full boat of rocket scientists that get paid to figure this poop out.

I’ve been having issues with my QC since leaving the house 2 weeks ago. At least once a day I get a violation warning telling me my last known location wasn’t read and to input it myself. Great, except when I get it, then continue driving for 4 hours, I forgot where I was when alerted, so I put in places like the moon, the Arctic circle, and today I put in the South China Sea off the coast of Vietnam. So I spent the afternoon with safety, then the shop trying to figure out what was wrong. Finally safety threw their hands up and said they had no idea, the shop rebooted it about 10 times to no avail, finally, they put a new system in the truck. All I was concerned about was not blowing the start of my reset. So it’s all good and running correctly. I spent a part of this afternoon with the man in charge of our LTL dock and put my load together with him. Leaving Thursday at o dark thirty for SLC, Seattle, Portland, then 2 drops in Southern California. The 2 drops in California, will be dropped at our Colton yard.

Did my due diligence and checked the weather across 2 different routes. Will need to keep an eye on the weather over this coming weekend.

 

A buddy of mine that just quit here at the circus sent me this picture of him getting ready to unload this morning in La Crosse Wi. Apparently, that’s the extent of swinging doors, and their version of bumping a dock.