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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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Trip 29 - New GMC - Refer ... to Dover, DE Trip 29b - Used Ford - Refer ... from Baltimore, MD Things are ... slow, they put me on a 'list' but I am called to run ... just won't be sure where until I get to the office. 1/9/04 - Most trucks are now being moved the day they are released by the shipper. I have agreed to go ... ?anywhere? ... so I am one of the one who comes in to pickup a truck ... they have moved the shuttle to our customer back by an hour so that the office knows where the trucks are going before we pick them up. Not all drivers are happy with the current 'flying blind' so neither is dispatch. Only five trucks are being released today but we end up with only four drivers, the fifth driver refuses all the runs available ... within the hour, we are notified that two of the five trucks will not be ready ... Another driver doesn't like the new options ... not sure why dispatch doesn't just back off everything for a day ??? I had been offered a truck to IN, but asked for something with more miles ... Dover? "Sure." This one was sitting because it wasn't to be delivered until Tuesday (today is Friday) ... but I offered to find my own ride to the bus depot and not rely on the customer so the truck was mine. Now with all the changes, I'm waiting to see what happens next ... I offer to still do the IN because everyone else is turning them down ... finally after sitting a couple of hours a truck becomes available at another customer a couple hours away ... and I'm the only one still close enough to get it off their lot before they close for the weekend. Now I have to scramble and park this truck that I've already signed for, grab a used vehicle from our remote lot and get to the customer ... at least I'll make a couple of bucks today, moving trucks. But instead of being back home by 2 PM, it ends up being after 8 PM ... my house is 'almost' on my route out of town, so I had decided not to leave until Saturday. They finally find someone to run the truck I'm grabbing, so I can share motels on the way out ... AND we will share a truck coming back ... always better than paying for the ride home. 1/10/04 - The other driver was going to call me when he was ready this AM ... he thought 9-10 AM ... he finally calls at 11, and is two hours from where his truck is. Oh well, we should still make good time ... wishful thinking. He calls again three hours later with questions on his truck (not sure where he spent the extra hour.) ... I had planned my departure to match up with his, but ended up trying to sleep an hour and a half in my truck waiting for him. Ouch, the new 11 hours doesn't do you much good if you don't use it ... I was running with one of those drivers who avoids Chicago at (almost) all costs ... prefers to take I-39 south to Bloomington/Normal ... but by the time we met up, he had already found he was only getting about 4 mpg on this truck, so convincing him to go thorough Chicago wasn't too hard ... but we were still going to go 60 miles out of our way to avoid the IN/OH/PA toll roads. We hadn't started until after noon so we were good to go at least until midnight, or longer ... had hoped we'd get East of Indy before we shut down, and this guy claimed he was ready to run all night ... But ... at Lebanon, IN stop at the Flying-J and he asks about cheep places to stay ... and the clerk gave him a coupon to stay next door at the Ramada for $44 after taxes ... so we stopped. AND this is the guy who wanted to drive ... "as fast as these rigs will go" ... ended up barely going the speed limit ... The first day was uneventful, other than being delay because of the other driver ... 1/10/04 - This other driver sounded like he was going to be up and ready to run long before our ten hours were up ... not the case ... when it's 'almost' time to roll, he decides he wants breakfast at the hotel restaurant ... the Pumpernickel Restaurant ... claimed he liked pumpernickel ... started bugging the staff for some bread. First they claimed it was only served at night, but before long someone brought him a loaf ... made his day ... and he left a tip to let them know. I had seen this guy once before and knew he liked to talk ... an understatement. Says he's an author ... sounds like it when he talks ... seems like a whole lot of this tales start out with ... "I was thinking (or planning) of doing .... No, I did ...." Not sure if he can't tell the difference between reality and the stories in his mind, or if he's just making it all up ... When we finally check out, we are well over our 10 hours off (and under our 11 hours driving yesterday) ... is going to make for a long day ... I would much prefer to start at 5 - 7 in the morning and not run until midnight - two at night. Another uneventful day ... did see a couple of Amish buggy's Sunday afternoon ... one was passing the other on the overpass, and a car was waiting to pass them both. Later in the day we stopped at the rest where I think they caught the DC sniper ... been here a couple of times, didn't realize this was the location. My goal was to get past Baltimore and Annapolis yet tonight ... didn't want to deal with Monday morning rush hour and we had the hours ... plan was to stop just over the bridge ... but when we got over the bridge everything looked ... pricey. Once we got a couple of miles away there weren't any more motels ... so we kept driving ... and driving. It amazes me, all this talk of 'urban sprawl' and here we are between Baltimore and the coast, where the white man has been living for well over 200 years and its all farmland. I know there are motels by Dover by that is past my drop ... we do end up going about five plus miles past my drop before finding a motel ... one that had the 'Vancancy' sign still lit at two in the morning ... a Budget Inn ... an awful steep price for the room ... put it this way, neither of us truck drivers was going to shower at this place ... you know how picky us drivers are. (Now that I'm home, I looked up the hotels by the bay ... <> $100 ... and this old place only cost us half of that.) 1/11/04 - Monday AM - I had told dispatch I would be sitting on the customers door this AM, if I could have found a motel closer I would have ... left it there last night and walked over this AM ... instead we are five plus miles away and 'can't' move until 11 AM. If I had known what the other driver was up to, would have, could have kept it all completely legal ... if we had dropped my truck after breakfast ... oh well. The SMYRNA DINER ... more great food ... breakfast again, plenty of help and a good crowd ... same location for over 50 years (and maybe some of the same help) ... interesting sign on the door ... "Sorry, we are no longer open 24-7 ... Can't keep staff ... new hours are 6 AM to 10 PM." Forney's Too! even has a replica of it in there "Hometowne Collection." Again, we are not leaving until well after our 10 hours off ... need to head back to Baltimore and drop the other drivers truck and pickup our ride home at the same location. Two hours back through Annapolis and we were ready to start our trip home. Or so we thought ... the good news was this truck had been on the road today or yesterday (there was still lots of ice in the box) ... but it was well used ... like most of these, between 150,000 and 200,000 miles ... lots of body damage but it started right off ... did notice a loose wire ... was for the gauge that told us if the brake fluid was low ... "nothing to worry about." I had backed the truck out of its stall so we could get a good look at it for our inspection and left it run ... a good 15 - 20 minutes, hoping it would be warm inside when we good going ... remember they were having their 'cold snap,' setting record lows ... 9 - 18 below (warm days some winters where I come from.) Anyhow we got going with the other guy driving, I was on the phone talking to family when he said "This truck isn't going anywhere, look at is smoke." I didn't think it was any big deal, it had power unlike the one I brought home from Houston, but when he told me he couldn't see the cars behind him I looked again ... he was right, we couldn't see the back of the truck ... time to call dispatch. "These truck are old ... call us back if it's still smoking in an hour." By the time we found fuel the truck was no longer making a scene. Two nights in a motel, a couple of meals and now a couple of hours in the truck with this driver ... silence was a rare commodity. He wanted to drive to start with ... finally gave it up right at dark ... about the time we realized we didn't have any dash lights. We had decided to go north to Phily to bypass a few of the 'mountain passes' ... then talked to a driver at a rest area who advised us to take I-70, not I-80 ... best to stay south of the snow line as far as can, so we did. This was going to be one long ride ... the drivers where we picked up at warned us that this truck would only do 50 ... we did get a little more a couple of times, but then it would drop to 25-30 mph on the hills ... an awful lot of miles with the flashers on ... good thing there was not a lot of traffic ... then we got to the tunnel ... just as we enter ... Zoom ... a truck sails by ... almost ... and then pulls over. I hit the wall ... our tires bounced off the wall ... somehow we managed to avoid him ... he was driving with both right tires in our lane, BEFORE he started changing lanes. That got the adrenaline pumping ... a few seconds later a highway patrol went by ... "Hey, we ought to turn this guy in" ... but being in a tunnel we had no phone service and by now both the truck and the patrol were long gone ... we did try to call but we didn't have enough info for them to go on ... wasn't a name on the trailer, only a number partially hidden by the lock bars ... and because you are coming up a hill AND around a corner when you enter the tunnel, there was no way the patrol could have seen what happened ... That would would have made the news ... we would have shut that tunnel down for hours. We did catch up to the patrol an hour down the road ... for a minute we thought he was waiting for us so that he could find the truck we called in ... nope, he had his eye on a pickup and a trailer with no tail lights. By now it had started to snow ... even when we weren't going up hill we weren't doing the speed limit ... this was going to be a long ride home. We decided when we got within 11 hours / miles of home, we'd shut down (An idea that will cost me later) ... settled on a motel by Kirksville ... right on the freeway, sort of ... right on the freeway, but you need to go about a mile down a road that needs more than a little repair and at one point has a one lane bridge ... this motel cost us about $30 ... and had heat ... nice place called the "Regal Inn." 1/12/04 - By now I should know what's coming ... about the time I'm itching to get rolling, he decides to go for breakfast ... IF there's a next time, I'll make sure I ask the breakfast plans, and get moving so we are on the road after 10 hours. I waited to start the truck until we were ready to leave ... didn't want to smoke out the neighbors ... but it didn't happen, it purred like a new truck ... no idea what yesterday was about. Breakfast was at Flying J's ... just wasn't hungry this AM ... only a couple eggs and toast ... and again, well over our 10 hour off before we roll. I could fill a couple long pages with the stories I heard ... By chance we were running low on fuel by Lebanon, IN ... the other driver had lost a receipt from our stop a couple of days ago and now he could 'try' and get a copy ... maybe they could find it by his truck number ...Nope ... they were able to find it by his 'frequent fuelers' card number ... but he had forgotten to use his card for the oil he purchased so he is out that $15. Now is where I realize we should have driven longer last night (and started earlier EVERY day of this trip) ... dispatch has a truck for me to bring to the office when we drop this truck ... I 'could' be over on hours, but not on miles ... so I can still make it look good ;) Again he want's to go around Chicago ... I-80 to I-39 ... it would cost us an hour plus, I talk him out of it. We made the right choice, rush hour through IL and we did it in under three hours ... not everyone was so lucky. Just as we got to the I-80 / I-294 split, traffic slowed and then we saw why ... on the I-80 section a car was split wide open, no cops on the seen ... it had JUST happened ... I-80 would be shut down for hours ... We stop at a rest area north of Chicago for a quick break and to switch drivers again ... the place was almost empty and we got talking to another driver ... walking out he saw what we were driving and asked if there was any food in it ... yes there still was, one box that was frozen in ... neither of us wanted it, didn't know how long it had been frozen there ... The other driver hopped up in the back to grab the stuff out of the box ... but it was soft. "Sorry" we told him. "Hey, I grew up in the ghetto, there isn't a whole lot I can't eat ..." ... so we handed out about a dozen items ... I'm sure it made his day ... some day I'll get some fresh stuff as a bonus in one of these trucks to take home. ... again we hit snow ... about an hour from our drop ... It's been a ruff ride for my co-driver ... he's told me more than a few times to slow down ... we finally make it, lucky dispatch planned ahead and had my fuel in my truck ... there is no-one open in this town after midnight ... welcome to small town America. Another hour of 'snow' driving and we finally drove out of it ... I park the truck at the office and as I'm walking to the front of the building I wake the neighbor guard dog who starts barking ... as I look over to spot him, I can't see the dog ... but I see a squad following me through our lot ... finally as I am trying to open our lock box she gets out of the car and asks why I'm here / what I'm doing ... then for ID ... I'm clean so she lets me go on my way ... Third time in three months I've been stopped by the cops, over my hours ... and they haven't asked to see a log book ... Doubt my luck will hold ... I can't afford to keep running like this ... A little good news ... this truck had a stick shift and we got around 12 mpg ... beats the 4 the other driver claimed he was getting on the trip out. |