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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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Trip 71 - New GMC - Class C Refer ... to Indianapolis, IN Trip 71b - Used IH - Box Truck Chicago, IL ... to Des Moines, IA Trip 71c - Used IH - Class B Refer from Des Moines, IA No long runs avail for Weds, so spent the day moving local trucks ... dispatch had mentioned this run to me earlier and then said it was on hold waiting for another truck to run with it. Once I agreed to do the move, I got a call back about doing a second and then a third leg ... my original plan was to catch the bus if I could get to Indy in a day, if I had to wait until the next day to deliver I would get a rental car ... price was about the same either way. 1/20/05 - Was planning on getting in early this AM to do yesterdays paperwork ... didn't make it. Not a good morning, everyone was running late at home, so so was I. Then on the way to the office almost rear-ended a car in rush hour traffic ... from 60 mph to stopped with only a couple of inches to spare. Then was low on gas but didn't want to cross the street to save only four cents a gallon ... but then found out this gas station had a different brand of ATM that would cost me another $1.75 ... and then my wife calls and tells me that because I used a 'foreign ATM' my bank was also charging me $2.00 ... should have just crossed the street where I knew what I was getting myself into ... By the time I get back to the office after getting my gas and the other driver is there and it's time to go. First words out if his mouth was ... "Let's get the show on the road, I want to be back home by morning ..." 'First' I told him 'this is a multi-leg trip. And second, if we only take the first leg, I'm on a Greyhound home ... am not getting in a rental car after our 14 hours are up.' I had told dispatch that the night before ... If I have to run with someone who wants to turn this into a suicide run I'm not going to take it. At this point the driver is not happy with either me or dispatch ... claims he wasn't told about the second and third legs and dispatch finally says "I don't care if you take it or not." and walks back into the office. The driver does end up taking it and we have to guess / estimate when we will be back in Des Moines ... I guess 3 PM Friday ... I also ask about the storm that is supposed to hit Friday ... "It's not here yet" was the response I got. I was wanting to know what our backup plan was ... ... And we're off ... sort of. My truck is at the office, but I have to give him and another driver a ride a couple of miles to pick up the other trucks. One guy is going with me and dropping in Cinci and the other is going somewhere else. The driver that is going with me has a 'Check tranny' light on ... no one at the company seems to know anything about it but after shutting the truck off and re-starting it the light doesn't come back on. My plan was to be home early Friday night and things were looking promising, it was only 8:30 and we already had our paperwork and our trucks. Mine was a propane with a range of about 500 miles, the other was a diesel with a range of about 150 so I suggested we don't run together. He would need to stop more often than I, but when I stop it could take a half hour or more ... and he was known to drive faster than I, so hopefully we end up in Indy about the same time. No stops in my first 300 miles, and I'm at the Flying J in South Beloit ... I have to fuel and the other driver had suggested we meet here so that we don't get to far apart. I call to check up on him, no answer. So I grab a sandwich at Subway ... and wait. After an hour and a half I am wanting to roll so I call dispatch ... NA as often they are ... wanted to know if they had heard from him. Finally after two hours he calls ... he's still an hour behind me. It will take him eight hours to do the run I did in five. He has been having truck problems, that check tranny light from this AM has been coming on and he has been shutting down to let the truck cool ... but now that I know where he is I head out again. Ouch ... I need to look back at my old paperwork ... I think I got took on a recent trip through IL ... The first toll said I owed $2.85 for one of my last trips ... should have been $1.90. I need to re-do the math and see if it now pays to bypass Chicago ... it didn't with the old toll, but they doubled the first of the year. When I'm about 40 miles into IL, the other driver calls and says I should bypass Chicago and stay on I-39 ... wouldn't have had too if I hadn't waited for him for two hours, but now we / I will be hitting Chicago in rush hour ... in the snow. He's got one of those new XM radio's and has been listening to traffic ... road conditions on I-39 will be better than those on I-65 ... guess I should have looked at the weather map at the Flying J ... Even though it was now rush hour and the weather was bad, I was still able to make it from S Beloit to Gary in about 3 hours ... on a good day I can do it in 2-1/2 hours so I consider this another half hour lost because of the other drivers truck. More time lost, by now the road are not good and traffic is running slower than the posted ... only a couple of vehicles in the ditch ... did it non-stop <> 300 miles to Indy. Find the customer on the first try ... no one around, which is what I had expected ... checked in with the other driver ... still two hours away. This is going to hurt, we / I have lost 4-5 hours on the first day. With a couple of hours to kill, I head out to look for food ... don't find anything that looks good. All I find open is some fast food and 'bar and grills.' I head back to the customer, eat another breakfast bar and and lay down in the front seat. A couple of hours later just as I'm sitting up to look at the clock he calls ... he's just about here and he'd like to pick up the rental car yet tonight, deliver his truck in Cinci 120 miles away and be back in Indy before we shut down ... (oh really?) ... I didn't comment, but I was doing the math in my head ... He's getting to Indy after 11 PM, 12 by the time we pick up the car, 2 by the time we drop in Cinci, 4 by the time we're back in Indy ... 5 AM local ... I don't think so. He didn't find my customer by the directions I gave him, so I had to guide him in ... I could see him in the distance ... as I'm standing in front of their building I can see a clock inside ... Indy is on Eastern time, at least in the winter ... as soon as I get in his truck I call Hertz ... they close in 20 minutes. Good enough for me, but he wanted me to see if they'd wait for us ... so I quickly did the math for him ... and we shut down. For some reason both the other driver and dispatch wanted to get the car in Indy and have me follow to Cinci instead of getting a car in Cinci. I had checked so I knew that cars were almost NA in Cinci, but they were available and for only a couple of dollars more than Indy but it would save the 120 in gas ... so it was close to a wash. 1/21/05 - Now new math to worry about ... the original plan was 10 PM - drop in Cinci 9 AM - PU in Cgo 3 PM - drop in Des Moines New 'plan' looks like 8 AM - drop in Cinci 2 PM - PU in Cgo 6 PM - drop in Des Moines I call dispatch as soon as they open to give them the update and save the other third driver from getting to Des Moines too early. I knew where the town was that we were dropping at outside of Cinci but hadn't looked at the map that comes with the paperwork ... so I just follow ... after we go about 5 miles out of town he stops and calls for directions ... and hands me the map. That took me two seconds to see we had gone the wrong direction ... the map showed part of the runways for the Cinci airport and that wasn't out here in the cornfields ... cost us well over a half hour, closer to an hour ... ouch. Dispatch has called and ask if I want to head to Phoenix from IA ... I do, but I haven't been home on the weekend for a while. The other driver does take the run ... it's going to cost him some though. He thought he was heading out yesterday on a day trip and packed nothing ... didn't even bring a bag. Page 2 - The next leg .... |