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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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Trip 45 - New Kenworth - Cement Truck ... to Phoenix, AZ Trip 45b - Used car ... from Tucson to Houston, TX Dispatch first wanted me to leave Monday and take a garbage truck to Spokane. I told them 'No,' but I could leave Tuesday with it if they could get someone else to move it this far on Monday ... A few hours later they took me up on my offer and said the other driver would like to leave at 5 AM. Due to a trip to the ER, I had to let dispatch know that I wouldn't be able to take the run ... by the time dispatch closed, I still didn't know if I was going or staying. But dispatch didn't find anyone to replace me, I found this out when the other driver I was to run with called to change our dispatch time from 5 AM to 8 AM ... seems he had a little fender bender and wanted dispatch to look at the truck before we left. 6/29/04 - Had a bunch of stuff I didn't get done yesterday so I was running a little late this AM ... that and I guessed it would take dispatch a while to decide what to do with the truck. I was right ... I was about a half hour late and they hadn't looked at the truck yet ... someone else's had broke down in the driveway between the office and the truck and that's all the farther they had gotten ... five hours later that truck was still sitting there. They guy driving this cement truck was supposed to drop a second driver a couple of hours down the road ... to pick up another truck which had broken down. Dispatch has to call the boss for a ruling on the damage to the garbage truck ... it's going to get repaired here and I'm supposed to go pick him up from the shop once they get an estimate ... he ends up at the wrong shop and they send him to right one and dispatch gives me a map from the computer to find the place. I question it at the time ... it's not where I though he was going ... a few miles down the road I call dispatch again ... "are you sure these are the right directions, I think I've been in that area before and it's a residential area." ... yep, they're sure ... I'm not ... Found the address, a '50 style rambler with a single garage ... so I head off to where I think I'm supposed to be ... can't reach the guy who's driving the truck ... dispatch is now NA and everyone else in the office is clue-less. I get in the general area and the numbers don't match up, I finally spot a post office and ask if they have heard of this place ... I went right past it a couple of blocks back. Not only was the map I was given of the wrong city, it also was the wrong building number ... only sent me 50 miles out of my way, in my car, my gas. It's going to take days to repair this truck, so dispatch has offered us a couple of garbage trucks going to Phoenix that were just picked up this AM ... there was a third truck to go with us, but it broke down a mile from the customer where it was picked up ... by now we were putting odds on weather both these trucks would make it 1,800 miles, going to want to stick together. Instead of 5 AM dispatch to Spokane, we are now heading out to Phoenix at 1 PM. Turns out the run is only 1,700 miles, the computer cuts 100 miles off by getting off the interstate and putting us on 2 lane highways ... I found this out AFTER I had decided to take the option where I pay for the fuel, I had thought we would be going through Oklahoma City where fuel at Flyin J was $1.42 a gallon, now I'm not sure I made the right choice. At first the other driver takes the same as I do ... then before we pull out of the drive way goes back in and changes his mind ... plays it safe with the boss paying the fuel. He's not in a real good mood ... he has to pay the $250 deductible on his little accident yesterday. We now have the option on most runs ... get a flat per mile rate and have the boss pay the fuel or get a larger per mile amount and pay the fuel ourselves. But we have to decide BEFORE we pick up the truck. I base my choice on three things ... 1) do I start with a tank full of fuel? Yes... 2) fuel price? Going south it will be less than the DOT average ... 3) miles on truck ... Most of these trucks get better milage once they have a 1,000 miles on them. This one only had 105, but it was a 1,700 mile trip so by the end of the trip I should be getting good milage ... ) Bonus - this was a stick shift. The trip takes us down I-35 ... been there a few times ... at the Boondocks Flying J I see another cement truck, and when we pull into a truck stop in MO two cement trucks from another drive-a-way pulled in right behind us ... think they were going to Topeka, they had turned down runs going to AZ but it would have cut into their 4th of July weekend. We were both in agreement to stop by dark, I had thought we'd be past Kansas City but by the time we fueled in Kerney, MO it was dark enough that we walked next door to the Econo Lodge and checked in ... And then walked back to the truckstop for a bite to eat ... decided to try something different and ordered the meat loaf ... not one of my better choices ... should have gone with breakfast. 6/30/04 - Breakfast at the motel was going to be a cup of juice ... but it burned my mouth before I got a mouthful ... left the clerk know that it was most likely starting to ferment ... a couple of minutes later I saw him walking something out to the dumpster ... had the other driver worried, he downed a whole cup in one gulp ... Not a great day yesterday, only did 420 miles out of 1,750 ... that leaves 600 + for each of the next two days. Had wanted to get past KC last night to avoid rush hour ... instead we headed into the heart of it, luckily we planned on going through downtown ... after we were past the exit, I heard on the radio that I-435 southbound had two lanes closed. No problems, within an hour we had covered 50 miles ... not bad. Yesterday was my turn to lead, today the other driver is in the lead and makes his first wrong turn / exit at Wichita ... gets off the tollway an exit too early then goes to to the booth to ask if he could turn around ... wrong choice. Once you are to the booth you must pay and re-enter ... there was plenty of room to turn before the toll booth ... oh well ... Next problem was, we planned on filling again in Wichita, but finding a station was harder than we thought ... we both thought we'd find a truck stop 'down the road' ... until his tank showed empty and after about 15 minutes decided to go back to the last town to a small service station that had diesel. I told him I'd wait where I was ... until I started backing my truck around ... then mine gauge was bouncing down to 'E' also ... we may have made it to the next truck stop but you never know how much in the tank is 'usable fuel.' US 54 ... been this route before heading to Liberal, KS ... this time we only have to pass through Liberal ... because there was no way out of Liberal, I had thought it was a small town, it had at least 12 motels on the US 54 ... nothing personal, but why would anyone want to stay in Liberal? ... this was the first place where I had to drive through water that was over a foot deep on the street ... (I had a BIG truck ... so I made waves) ... we had just gotten dumped on fairly good, helps keep the bugs off the windshield. Somewhere out here in these wide open spaces on the two lane, we got behind a guy in a pickup pulling a fifth wheel trailer with a couple of garbage boxes that would fit on a pickup sized truck ... we followed him for miles, and miles ... finally the other guy passed, or tried too ... as soon as he got in the other lane I didn't think he was going to make it. Must have been what the on coming motorcycle thought too ... he was shaking his fist at ME ?? I finally passed the guy in the next town ... found out later that the guy had speed up as soon as our driver got along side and wouldn't back off even with the traffic coming ... By now dispatch has offered us run from Tucson to Houston, but hasn't given us all the details. We have to stop to call as cell phones don't work very well in western KS ... or most of the rest of this trip. Dispatch is gone and no one else knows enough for us to decide if we want the run. We stop for fuel again in Hooker, OK ... fuel wasn't much cheaper that KS, doesn't look like I was going to make any big amounts on this run. Not sure what town is at the TX / NM border, or was ... a ghost town from the 50's or 60's ... down to one truckstop / restaurant. Just as it was getting dark we hit bugs ... swarms ... like gnats, the other driver thought they were Mayflies ... big, wings would stick to the window ... Texhoma, OK ... it used to be a town ... lots of vacant buildings, still some streets, not sure if anything is down them or they just don't overgrow very fast in this climate. Somewhere just north of Tucumacari, we stop at a roadside cafe ... the other driver used to run over the road and had past this place many times and wanted to give it a try ... I'm thinking he'll now pass it a few more times, service was slow and food was nothing to brag about. It was right next door to a motel, so we ask the cashier where a good place to stay would be ... heading south ... she didn't mention the one next door instead said there was just about every kind down on I-40 at Tucumcari. By now it was well past dark and the western sky was putting on quite a light show for us ... a blinding light show at times, but the rain held off until later. We stopped at the first motel in Tucumcari we saw ... ma / pa place ... we could see a few more ma / pa places from the parking lot as well as the Motel 6 and a Comfort Inn, but as long as we were already stopped we asked the price ... $29 total ... how could we go wrong??? Well ... had we been a little more awake we would have gone right back to the office the minute we got to our room and told them we wanted a different room or our money back ... our 'non smoking' room had hunks of ash laying all over the bathroom floor, as well as a tub that still had tooth paste and used bar of soap and who knows what else in it ... I said I wouldn't be taking a shower tonight ... Must have been tired ... there was a T-storm rolling, somebody's base rumbling in the parking lot, and we at a corner of US 54 with a stop light ... trucks would be idling down and starting out ... and I didn't hear a thing all night. 7/1/04 - The first thing I hear in the morning is the shower, the other driver decided to do some maid work and clean the shower ... 'Thanks' ... now I could take a shower ... office was locked when we were leaving so we couldn't voice our thoughts ... We had done our 650 miles yesterday, so we are down to 650 today ... and we are getting an early start ... early for this trip, 6 AM local, and in a few hours we cross another time zone. We are already in NM and only have AZ left to go ... but it seems to take forever ... when we picked up the trucks on Tuesday, I had thought we'd deliver by noon, ends up it will be after 8 PM ... but ... it's probably not a bad thing that we are taking a break every 2-3 hours ... Our little map from dispatch only shows three roads and no major highways and we didn't look at any atlas' when we had the chance so we are taking a guess ... and FYI, the rest area's in AZ don't have highway maps, not even a big map on the wall ??? We had stopped at a Little America in Flagstaff, but their high class store layout doesn't have maps by the counter so we forgot ... Got to see the smoke from the huge fire that's south of Flagstaff / north of Phoenix ... from miles away the cloud looks similar to the later ones when Mt Saint Helens blew back around 1980 ... somewhere along this stretch of highway the road got so rough that it jumped out of gear ... the engine started to roar, and it took a few seconds before I realized what had happened ... The other driver was in the lead and I was dreading his decision on which way to go when we hit Phoenix ... I wanted to come in on I-10 from far enough east that we wouldn't miss our exit ... he wanted to take a beltway called 101 because there is less traffic, problem would be / and was that when we hit I-10 he didn't know which way to go ... and with a 50-50 chance took the wrong way. We both knew it and got off at the next exit, I wanted to go the correct direction, but he wanted to ASK directions ... so he did (mistake #2) ... instead of getting back on the freeway, we could take a 'shortcut.' Not a problem ... if you were a car and there were no roadwork. First we head down a street clearly marked 'NO TRUCKS' ... so we stop again for directions ... he was asking directions, I just wasn't going any further down this street. He stopped another dozen times in the next hour to get my input on where to turn next ... ended up on one lane gravel roads that, if they hadn't had street signs, I would have thought they were field trails ... we were no longer in town we were out in the cattle lots. DETOUR ... 50-50 chance of picking the right direction, this time we did and found one of the streets we were looking for ... a couple dozen more blocks and we found our drop. We had been told we could drop anytime between 2 AM and midnight ... but the last two guys were just leaving when we got there. One guy was very helpful ... lucky he was there, his boss didn't speak English and his only help was to call and get a phone number for a cab (after the other guy asked him too ...) As of a few months ago, we are no longer supposed to ask or hint for rides ... but with all the problems we had finding this place, I wanted to get somewhere else and they were just leaving ... so I asked for a ride closer to the Interstate or even the closest gas station ... even hinted at money for a ride all the way to the airport (now that I think about it - this guys English was good ... but that doesn't mean he understood any hints) Anyhow they guy does offer us a ride ... and I think we are going as far as the Interstate, then we get on the Interstate ... he drove us as far as he could without going out of his way ... I'm guessing a good 10 miles from our drop, only left 15 more for the cab to take us. Offered the guy gas money a couple of times ... "No ... someday I may need you to give me a ride" ... paying it forward ... After we tipped the cabbie, we found out he had dropped us at the wrong building and we had to walk the rest of the way ... Found out a disadvantage of reserving a car on-line ... our office reserved this one in Phoenix ... only the person who reserved the car can make any changes, even the people at the car agency can't (or so I was told by a couple of different people). But, even though we were now about three hours late, they still had our car ... Tucson here we come ... I had picked up one of those motel coupon books at a truckstop and the first place I see in Tucson is a Ramada for $39 ... including a breakfast bar ... problem is when we got to the exit, I couldn't find it. Completely out of character (maybe because it was now after midnight) I called for directions ... "You got off at the correct exit, now you just need to go 20 MINUTES EAST" ... ahh, no I don't ... so I pulled onto a side street and sort of parked against the center island ... for about 30 seconds until there was lights in my rearview mirror ... red and blue ones ... nice enough guy, he just gave us the impression that this was not the part of town you wanted to be lost in ... he also steered us away from one of the motels that has a large bar / dance area that attracts the younger crowd ... 'if we wanted to get any sleep.' With the cop following us, we ended up at a Days Inn ... $65 ... Ouch, but it was the holiday weekend, very late and we were tired ... we paid it. But paying $65 for this room bothered me more than the $29 we paid for the dirty room last night ... the Tucumcari Hilton ... as the other driver was now referring to it as. Leg 2 - The trip home .... (sort of) Trip 45b - Used car ... from Tucson to Houston, TX |