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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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1 - New Bus 20180211 - CA-LA Good news. The ice warning that was for this morning has shrunk and we shouldn't hit ice until Dallas. One phone is routing us one way and the other another. We take the route BB's phone says because there is a truckstop with a good price on fuel. BUT that is when things don't go so well. I've had this company card for two plus years but never used it. Not sure what the answer's are to their security questions ... PIN, truck #, etc. And after three times it locks you out. So now I am locked out and don't want to deal with it until Monday. So I ended up paying $.15 more a gallon than I could have if I hadn't tried to use the company card. But we were here and I didn't want to stop again. So ended up putting in enough fuel to get to where we will stop tonight. That will bypass the cheaper fuel we were going to buy later today. Once we are back on the road I asked where the next turn was, we had already past it. It wasn't my suggested route so I had not looked at the details on this one. But I knew that if we kept going we would hit Dallas/Ft Worth in about 20 miles and we did. We also hit the weather. Half a dozen major accidents from the ice. Semi's, cars lots of them near bridges which freeze faster. Spent a good part of the day going 20-35. Haven't seen the daily total for accidents yet. Bus was still iced up when we stopped tonight and the ice hasn't gotten here yet. We got ahead of it about the last hour of the day. That first stop was at a Loves in Rhome, then we stopped for lunch at a Country Pride/TA in Terrell for lunch. Had the buffet, all was good. We had pulled off the interstate earlier at a TA but all it had was fast food so we kept going. Walking was quite icy and the ice pellets were hitting hard when we walked in. It had past by the time we came back out but we caught up to it quickly. Decided I wanted to stay on this side of Shreveport instead of back tracking to fuel and the wash so we ended up in Marshall at a Comfort Inn. We checked in, and by the time we got back down to get the rest of our bags it was sleeting. Can't leave any bags in the bus because we can't lock it so it takes two trips. Tomorrow/Monday I will call and see what are all the numbers I need to use this card. So that may delay how early we get going in the morning. Checked through all my old paperwork tonight to see if I could find any numbers, didn't find anything. Kansas City is about 10 hours from Monroe so we won't likely make it that far, quite a few miles of non-freeway to start with. 20180212 - CA-LA Food was great last night, but maybe too much of it? Neither one of us slept very good. First call was to the office to find out why I couldn't use my company fueling card. We got that cleared up right away, just more numbers to remember. Half hour down the road we stop and fuel at a Loves in Goodwood. A few miles later we stop and have the bus washed in Shrevport at the Blue Beacon. It needed it. It was still hanging with ice this AM so it hadn't warmed up overnight. For some reason the GPS would not route us to the Hertz the way we wanted to go, so we ignored it. Leaving the Hertz wasn't so easy, major road with just a stop sign for me. Finally got across and to delivery. Only two turns so no notes needed. Found the guy to check me out/in, he brought out a whole crew. Two issues, no key for the computer area ... didn't know I was supposed to have one. Also the low DEF light came on after I did the final fuel five miles back. They did have me take the plastic off the glass so I put that in the car, didn't see another place to put it outside. They said another driver had dropped already this AM, they took him to the bus station and from there he was going to Dallas to fly back to CA. I'm clear. We go to the closest Burger King for lunch to go. Nothing good on the board so we are heading home. A couple hours down the road, six units show up from NC going to CA. Too bad we either hadn't headed that way or had a bus to Atlanta. No big dump of orders from IA yet. Stopped in Monticello at a Velaro for a rest stop. All back roads until we get to Little Rock. Past Monticello I noticed a car crossing the highway ahead of me at a high speed so I slowed expecting a stop sign. Nope. Someone had run their stop sign at about 60 mph about two blocks before we got to the intersection. We can't get to the freeway soon enough. No sooner do we get to the freeway and we see where someone lost one of the big round hay bales right in the travel lane ... We make one more stop at a rest area near London, AR before we get to Fort Smith. We stop at D's for food. Little mom and pop place. Food was good, we had the buffet. Down side was someone was there with their younger kid who would scream. Think it was a medical issue, didn't seem to be a discipline problem. Quality Inn for the night. We have about 600 miles to Forest City, by then it will be dark so we'll do the rest Wednesday morning. Plan is to stop home, check on the house, get the mail. And we are ready to go. We have enough time to do one more trip before my DOT test and party on Saturday. Then we may be able to do another short one before we have to be back to watch some grandchildren. But first they need to put something good on the board. We are looking for SW California. :) If they don't put anything going there by Friday we will go somewhere else. Still wind warnings in WY. We made more in two weeks this month than we did all last month. And that was before we found out about the company discounts on fuel. 20180213 - CA-LA Older notes ... coming across the southern states somewhere we saw a cloud of dusk I thought was coming from someone driving down a dirt road. Turns out it was from a train car leaking something. I had thought of calling, but up ahead there was a crew working on a switch, I'm guessing they would notice when they got covered with whatever it was. Got going shortly after daylight. From the motel it was a U-turn onto the street and then the freeway. Stay in the merge lane and we went from I-40 to I-49 and that took us all the way to Kansas City. All the freeway still isn't done but almost. When I started going this route it was a narrow two lane road amongst the hillbilliest. First stop was at Bentonville at a Walmart / Murphy for fuel. Lots of Walmarts in AR ;) Gas was $2.25, other places at the exit were $2.45 and more as we head north. Somewhere today there was a cop that came up behind me, pulled out to pass and then stayed right there. I had to pass someone, so I got in front of him and then back in my own lane. He followed, and followed ... for maybe 10 plus miles before he finally pulled off. And he was following close, not back in the distance. At times, I'd have gotten a ticket for following someone that close. A couple of hours later we stop at a Pilot in Nevada, MO for a rest stop and buy some juice. Too early to eat so we stop again in an hour at Benton at a Jimmy Johns. Seems there was only one Honeybaked in KC and we were not going to be going close to it. We got through KC without slow downs. We stop again in Lamoni, IA at a rest area, and then we also got through Des Moines without slowdowns. We won't get our car picked up and to a motel before dark so we stop in Clear Lake, first for fuel at Pilot. Then at an Asian place for food ... including left overs. And then to the Microtel for the night. Good food and it looks like we will be home to eat them. Nothing good on the board from IA, they should have dumped 100+ by now. We'll wait. 32 out of NC, where were they when we sat down there for part of the month of January ... Guess we need to sit down there in February instead. Plan for now is to wait for something going to southern CA until Friday. If still nothing, we will head to the SE instead. Another couple of surprises. Someone runs a fuel report for us once a day so now we have all the details, but someone is charging us an extra $1.25 for something. I'll need to check that out. And I got paid an extra $100 for transportation that no one told me about. Hmm. Back in the cold ... ready to leave. 20180214 - CA-LA As we were sitting eating breakfast near the lobby, a call come in to the front desk. Someone had forgotten their log book in their room. My first thought was ... 'if you'd quit talking and let the person off the phone, they could go check.' Your log book is supposed to be updated every time you start or stop, I'm wondering how they got down the road without noticing ... Nice heavy frost this AM, welcome back to the midwest. Interstate was closed in WY to campers, etc again this AM. Pretty sure we won't be going that way any time soon. Before we got to the lot in Forest City we could see rows and rows of RV's waiting to be moved the final block to our lot. So there should be a dump of 100+ any day now. Car started right off, no issues. Headed to the airport in MN. BB had the rental and called me just as I was looking at my phone in Fort Snelling. I have a list now of graves I want to take pictures of ... if / when I get time. No deep snow to shovel in the drive but no one has been shoveling for the mail man. Prior neighbor used to snow blow it out for everyone. Three mail boxes but no one has been doing it so BB and I spend an hour plus chopping ice. Nice day for it. We got our 1099's and now have spent hours trying to be my records to match. All three companies were wrong to start with. Got the local one to match to the penny. Then emailed the place we quit and they sent me a pay statement that included non-1099 pay also, but we got the statement to match to the penny but are still off on the 1099 by less than $10. Same with the third company, after hours we are off by less than $10. But it took hours of looking at anything that didn't look correct. Found a couple of things that made the numbers further off before we got it right. Dispatch never did dump a huge number of RV's today. That's OK, we can sit a day ... so by noon tomorrow ;) |
