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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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201110 IA-CA 2 RV's to Rancho Cucamonga CA ... spending the night at Barstow CA Breakfast was a sealed bag lunch. A carton of juice, an apple, a muffin and breakfast bar. At least it wasn't Hostess treats :) We left one of the apples, we'll be crossing into CA today and no fruit allowed in. We left out at 7:30 local. Frost on the windows. With a little windshield washer and a lot of defrost we did not have to scrape. BB did scrape the head lights and tail lights. Some people who walked out ahead of us had shorts and no jackets. We had heavy jackets and caps and long pants. But no long johns yet. The trees still have leaves on them and everything was hanging full of snow. Pretty. A few miles into AZ we have to cross the scale. NM and AZ have people at a window we need to talk to when we enter. They used to ask to see drivers paperwork. The driver had to hand them their 'book' opened to the correct page. Not today, what ever they wanted to see was shown through the window. Same with us. And we are clear. Shortly after we pull out of the scale I happen to see a cop coming up behind us. He gets about by BB and on go the lights, but it was a truck he was after, not BB. She could tell that from where she / he was, but I couldn't. Fuel in Holbrook was $1.75, we should have stopped. 1st stop was in Winslow at the Flying J. BB decides to fuel, I don't. She pays $2. Just as we are ready to leave, one of our buses pulls in. I change directions and pull up along side of them. They are on the phone but finally look my way and open the door. They are headed to Pittsburg with the Port Authority buses that we saw yesterday. 2nd stop is in Williams at the Pilot for fuel and food. We both fuel. This should be our last fuel. I am about 10 miles short on range but should gain that if we loose the wind. Food is at Carl Jr's. We eat outside. Too much food, they use 1/3 lb burgers instead of 1/4 lb. I threw part of it away. We have pretty much lost the headwind finally. Casino's in AZ are closed also. 3rd stop is a rest break at the Petro on the east side of Kingman. We see both delivery van and an RV transporters in the lot. I had called the bus dispatcher at noon but he didn't answer so I call again from here. I ask 'do you need a bus driver.' "YES." No 'we'll see / call me back.' Then he asks if I would be willing to drive a truck to Houston instead. If there isn't a bus. It is a new tree truck pulling a chipper. 'Yes, I have done a couple for the NC dispatcher.' So either way we should have a run out of Livermore tomorrow. After we pull back on the freeway we see two more of his buses. One is a 'WeGo,' from what I could find on the web it is a Nashville bus. The other one was another pink bus. Crossing into CA we have to stop for the fruit inspection. Usually we just get waved on, today the guy has one question for me. "How much a mile do you get paid to move these?" :) 4th stop is at the Essex rest area in CA. BB makes a reservation for tonight. We will not make it to Rancho Cucamonga tonight. Shortly after we are back on the freeway the road construction sign says '60 mph.' That was it, two signs within a few feet. After that we could see where the speed limit signs had been, the 'radar enforced' part was left up but not speed limit sign. Not for the next 25 or so miles. And we were (likely) the only ones driving the supposed speed limit. 4:30 and it was getting dark. Good thing BB can see in the dark now. This AM we were ready to go earlier but decided to wait to our standard 7:30 to leave. An extra 15 minutes of daylight would have been good. 5th and final stop is at the Comfort Inn in Barstow. Not sure why sometimes we stay here and other times we stay at the Quality Inn. Tonight the Comfort is well over $100. After we check in we go walk. We haven't decided where to eat but we have lots of choices. The only thing that is out is the Black Bear, because it is across the freeway and BB is hungry NOW. There is about 20 places to eat within about a half mile. There is an Outlet Mall here, used to be another one, but that is empty but still standing. We end up at Panda. This one we can order inside. I don't think they even have a drive thru. Five people at a time inside so there is a line outside. We thought it would be quick but they are running out of food and both BB and I have to wait until the next batch of food is done. We did walk past an In-and-Out. But we had a burger for lunch and we will have an In-and-Out after we deliver tomorrow. I liked the Panda, BB didn't. I liked it because I could taste the food without it burning my taste buds. She didn't like it because it did not have enough kick. Got a surprise today. I got a safety bonus. It's been a while as we haven't been working and there were no safety meetings. Not sure when BB got her last bonus. We have to drive 2,000+ (?) miles a month and she often doesn't. Like this trip is 1,800 and I will likely move something else but she is often just along for the ride after the first leg. 80 miles left to delivery. We both looked at the maps so we know where to turn, where to fuel, where to drop. BB will park her RV at the rental car place, follow me down to my drop and then we go back to pick up her RV. The rental car is only 2 miles from the drop. I've looked at my DOT hours and I will run out if I pick up a bus or truck tomorrow night. If I can wait to pick up until Thursday I will be OK without a shut down day. Being tomorrow is Wednesday, there is a good chance I will get a bus to the midwest. The main drivers are not going to want to do a 2,000 mile run and have to sit Sunday (without pay) for a Monday delivery. No problem for me, as I will need a shut down day because I have just driven 2,000 miles to get here. We'll know tomorrow. Load board US - 163 IA - 17 MN - 4 WI - 1 Right now there is a 'tractor' out of TX coming back to CA. Less than 100 miles on either end between drop and next pick up. I'd have to call, but not likely it would still be there next week. If I do the truck to Houston I would likely deliver on Monday. At this point we have no reason to come back to the MN cold. Keep us south of the snow line. The route for the tree truck would take us back through Rancho Cucamonga to I-10, then take I-10 all the way from LA to Houston. 201111 IA-CA 2 RV's to Rancho Cucamonga CA (both delivered) ... spending the night at Livermore CA We are heading to Houston ... with a truck, tomorrow. Today's breakfast was the same as before Covid. Except you had to say what you wanted and they would hand it to you, but same selection. BB was up an hour before the alarm would have gone off. She is still on 'home' time. Today we get going at 7 AM instead of 7:30. 60 miles to go this AM. When I went to check out this AM they had issues. Luckily the boss was there and saw what the issue was. The desk clerk last night had just used the credit card of file, I had not given her mine. And the card on file has an expired date. No issue if you know what you are looking at. If this is rush hour traffic in LA, they won't need to build any more roads for quite a few years. We were going close to the posted the whole 60 miles. A lot of down hill this AM. I didn't even try to keep the RPS's down. Cruise had the speed at 65 mph but the RPS's were at 4,000. Google Maps :( On our phones, when you zoom in the detail gets better, but the highway numbers stay the same size. Small. I had written down 5b and it was exit 58. Luckily I had written down the name too. And I could have told by how long it would take to get there. 1st stop was a Shell station for final fuel. Small place. Likely won't stop here again. Also, my on my 1st pump it wouldn't accept which grade of fuel I wanted. I guess I had to hit the button harder than the half a dozen times I did. So I moved pumps. Now my credit card wouldn't work so I had to go inside. Nice people. One came out to check on me after I moved pumps. Understood what was going on and got me going. Only opps was I didn't ask for a receipt at the pump. The one I got inside did not have the price and gallons on it so I had to write that info in. 2nd stop was the rental car place a few blocks away. After BB picked up the car, we loaded what we could from the RV's to the car. 3rd stop was the drop 2 miles away from the rental car place. Different routine but nice people. We left my RV and went back to pick up BB's. Now we wait. It took about 45 minutes to inspect mine. About the same to do BB's but the times mostly overlapped. They are picky. They noted a lot of issues at first I didn't think anything of them, too minor. But then I talked to claims and from now on I will just be taking pictures of any notes the customer makes of anything on the outside of the RV. This time it was 'scratches.' Some places I could find them, others I just took a picture of the area. Also both RV's at chips in the windshield. Those we found. Pin sized, but they were there. Same type scratches on BB's RV. Making calls and taking pictures took some extra time before we were ready to go. 4th stop. Just a half a block down the street from the dealer was another gas station. Next time we will likely stop here. This time BB wanted to be fueled before we picked up the rental car. Now that we know the area, we may do it different. Today we stop here leaving town for BB to use the restroom. 5th stop was a In-and-Out Burger, still in Rancho Cucamonga. Each got a double double. Not the easiest to eat in the car but I had put my jacket down as a bib and it was a good thing I did. CA-210, I-210, I-5. Almost missed the turn again near Burkley. The four main lanes of highway keep going straight and two new lanes are the exit lanes. This time it was much easier to get over with a car than it was one time in rush hour with a 60 foot bus :) Local dispatch called but I was driving and didn't pick up. I had planned on calling them back when we stopped at a rest area. But an hour later they call again so BB puts them on speaker phone so I can talk to them. Nice local run to IA but I am in CA. Maybe next time. Usually I have been calling the bus dispatcher as soon as I drop. But he was sure he had something so I was going to call him when he usually knows about buses. But an hour before that he is calling me. That does not happen often. I'm getting a tree truck to Houston TX. AND he asks if I will be picking it up tomorrow. Yes. I was going to ask it could wait until tomorrow. All sounds good. BB is writing down what we need to know. Only miss one question. How much fuel to leave in the unit. I will have to call sometime in the next two days. By not leaving tonight, I will have enough hours to make it to Houston without a shut down. 5th and final stops are in Livermore. 1st we stop at Jimmy Johns and then the Quality Inn for the night. Plan had been to stop in Santa Nella where we usually stop leaving town. Motels are cheaper there. But we looked at the one here in Livermore and it was $50 less than what we have paid sometimes. And it is about 2 miles from our pickup in the AM. Rental car has to be back by 8:30 so we will be up and going early. Lots of time to look at options and make plans. At first it didn't look like we would make much (any) money on this next leg, but we usually do a 'worst case scenario. Biggest problem is that we are three days from home when we drop. It's nice when we are a day or less. Also cars out of TX are almost as bad as out of Seattle. Not cheap. Right now there is a truck out of Dallas coming back to WI. Hopefully something different by Monday. Got the news today that another friend of the family has died. He was 91. He grew up about 3 miles from my Dad, so his parents knew my grand parents. He knew my parents. Their kids knew us, our kids played with his grandkids when they were young. Loadboard US - 170 IA - 16 MN - 5 WI - 3 35 out of TX, but TX is a big state and only one is going over a 1,000 miles. The one to WI. 201112 CA-TX It's past midnight home time. We are safe in Indio. No issues, just a long day. NOTE: It is now two days later and I am trying to remember. Breakfast was someone handing us the food we ask for. No hot food, but food. I hadn't asked what time the customer opens, but we head out at 7:30 and get to the customer a couple of minutes later. 1st stop. Pick up location. Dispatch had given me a truck number and mine was first in a line of four trucks. As soon we were looking at the truck someone from the shop walked over and said they could bring us the keys but we would have to wait until 8 to get the paperwork. We are doing the inspection when the shipper drives in, they talk to us briefly and then park and go get the paperwork. We are done with the inspection when she comes back out so I sign and we are almost ready to go. We can't get any of the storage doors to open. The shipping person noticed there were not locks on some of the doors so then we got talking. Everything is locked by a master lock. The other locks are 'just for show.' The other locks are real locks, but even if you get them open, you can't get in the truck without opening the master. They also said it is locked because every storage area is full. And there is stuff in the back of the truck that can't be secured (and that is where our luggage goes this AM. We hope it doesn't rain) The truck is new. The wood chipper behind it is used. It no longer meets CA standards so they are shipping it out of state instead of junking it. I had looked the night before on how to get from the pick up location to the rental car drop and even wrote myself some notes. I got lost. Not really lost, just not where I wanted to be. We have been in this area enough I knew where I was. Looking now, two days later I see where I missed my turn. And it was in my notes. Opps. Any ways I ended up back at the motel before I found a place to turn around. Then I let BB know I was now on my way. She switched sides of the road so it was easier for me to pick her up and we headed out of town on a different street. All of this added about another 2-3 miles. So more frustrating than anything. Traffic wasn't bad leaving town this time of the AM. I get up to 60 mph and think that I will save some money of fuel if I keep it there. Then I remember, I am a truck. Speed limit for trucks in CA is 55 mph. Guess I am forced to save money. And I may have been the only truck on the freeway that was going 55 mph. For 550 miles. 3rd stop (after picking up BB) was at a rest area near Wesly. Today wasn't the ideal way to run. Three of the legs were over 3 hours each. We usually like to stop every two hours, sometimes every 100-120 miles. Today at 55 mph we were doing 150 mile legs. That is just how the stops worked out and we needed to make time so didn't split the long legs. 4th stop is in Lost Hills for food and fuel. When we pulled off the freeway we saw that the AmPm / Arco was $.06 cheaper so we headed there. This place also has the largest, and usually empty, parking lot. The Arco's in CA are debit only. Fine. AFTER I swipe my card it says there were be a $.35 fee added to the transaction. ??? So there goes my savings, or at least some of it. And then BB decides she would rather have Arby's than DQ so we go across the street and park and walk into Loves. One plus. Arby's has one table outside so we didn't have to eat at the truck today. While I am stopped I call for my AZ and NM permits. Then I call the dispatcher to let him know I did the pickup and ask how much fuel to leave in the truck. It was full at pick up. But I only need to leave 1/4 of a tank so that will help on our bottom line. We have to cross a few weigh scales in CA but they have 'empty' lanes so I use those. I'm not really 'empty' and they can see the red safety cones inside my truck. But no one flags me in. Once we get to the hills by LA the engine really down shifts. It wants to run at 4,000 rpms. I don't want it to. And it doesn't do anything good to my fuel mileage either. 5th stop is in Lebec part way up the hill at a rest area. Coming down I have to use the breaks a couple of times. The truck hold me for a while at 10 mph over the cruise speed but then it starts tac'ing out at over 4,000 rpms. 6th stop - through 999,999 stop were on I-210/CA-210 :) Miles and miles of stop and go. Lots of standstill. Lots of 10 mph or less. The only plus is that I am not blocking traffic by going the speed limit. Somewhere while traffic was going 10-20 miles an hour, there were a couple of cars, convertibles, that we noticed where the drivers were holding both hand above their windshields as they were driving. Waving to the music or something. Then about 10 miles down the road we see one of those cars on the side of the road with a couple of other cars. Crashed. Opps. Maybe hands on the wheel when moving is a good idea. We should have timed it. From where CA-134 joins on the west end until we crossed the I-15, traffic was mostly stop and roll. Sometimes six lanes of it. Not at all like a couple of days ago when I commented LA won't need any new freeways for a while. I'm guessing on that stretch we averaged about 15 mph. The sun was going down, it set, last light, all dark, on that stretch. We will be looking for options if we have to go that route again. 7th stop. We stop at the 1st rest area on I-10. BB uses the restroom, I call the hotel about truck parking. And I check the lights on my chipper I am pulling. I can not see it other than if there is a shadow. It was only a few miles from the rest area to the motel, but long enough for BB to look at the reviews. Now she looks at the reviews. And as I am signaling we are deciding if we should stay, the last review says 'stay away.' We do. On to Indio another 60 miles down the road and it is already hours after dark. 8th stop There is food along the highway other places but there is one burger place at a gas station at our exit. It is late and we don't want any extra stops. Sign says open, but building is closed. Tonight it is shelf food at the AmPm. BB gets a salad, I get two rib sandwiches because they are on sale 2 for something. 9th and final stop is the Quality Inn in Indio. As we get there I realize we have been here before, cars park in the center of the building. I didn't remember the truck parking outside of the building. I had thought of this place before as we were driving, but nothing BB said fit. The 'inside' is full, but lots of parking on the outside and on the street. I hadn't wanted to park next to the road with my load, but that is what was open. We check in, we eat, I get my permits printed. I re-do my log book. My log showed I was over my daily hours. But that was because I started my day on Pacific time and ended on Central time. We always have to log on home / Central time. Still a long day but I was not over my hours. By now it was after 10 PM local, midnight home time. Didn't take time to look at the loadboard. 201113 CA-TX 1 truck heading to Houston TX ... spending the night at Lordsburg NM Went to bed last night at 10:15 so I stay in bed until after 6:15 to get my eight hours bed time. I'm awake at 4:30. My system is still on home time. Those 1st six hours were the best sleep I have had in a few days. Last night when we checked in, we were told that breakfast was a 'grab bag' so we didn't go down as we have plenty of left overs from prior days grab bags. But when I go back in to check out before we leave, I see that breakfast is everything. And they put it in a bag for you. But by then we have the truck running in the parking lot. I just grab one pack of cookies for later. We head out at 7:30 local. It's been light out for quite a while. I'll pay for that tonight. Yesterday we threw our luggage in the back of the truck but then locked in inside the cab for the overnight. This AM we were able to get everything but the case of water inside the cab. But that means that BB is sitting next to me in the middle instead of next to the door. Not sure we've ever ridden like this before :) 1st stop is the AZ side of the border, Ehrendbrug, for fuel at the Flying J. Gas is $2.05 which is much better than anything has been in CA. And I got there with a range of 40 miles to spare. Our NC dispatcher had put a tanker on the load board this AM out of TX, just a couple of hours from where we will be dropping. It was going from Jacksonville TX to Jacksonville FL. I was calling to see if it was new and when I could put my name on it. Most dispatchers arrange for Monday pickups on Saturday. Truck was new, and will not be ready until Monday ... but. It is going to a port for export and the driver has to have clearance. I don't. But a driver can do a one time clearance but that cost is on the driver. No thanks. That is why I never got that clearance. I think there was a time when my local company would have paid for it. Nope. Just like why I am in no hurry to renew my passport. Those trips are not worth the hassle. I couldn't take the trip and a little while later it was gone from the loadboard. 2nd stop was lunch at the QT (Quick Trip) in Buckeye. Plan had been to go to the Loves. We drove though and there was no place to park without backing. Also the Burger King has no place to turn around. The Burger King even had a sign at the entrance stating that. So we ended up at the new QT across the street. Parked along the curb and bought shelf food and ate at a table outside. The table was a plus the other two didn't have, we would have eaten by our truck. I had two pieces of pizza and BB had a salad. Not a bad salad for shelf food. Not a lot out in this part of AZ so the next two legs of the trip are 150 miles each instead of three 100 mile legs. 3rd stop is at the Pilot in Tucson for fuel. This time the lowest price we see in all AZ, $1.88. While fueling I watch a guy filling gallon jugs of water from a remote faucet, then he put all the jugs in to his two wheel part on the back of his bike. Then walked his bike where ever it was he was going. Homeless person I'm guessing. Yep, dark again before we shut down. Need to, or want to get going earlier tomorrow. 4th and final stop is the Comfort Inn in Lordsburg NM just a quarter mile before the scale. Food was going to be next door at the McDonalds but they are closed. Rumor is that they were not following Covid guidelines. So we have to walk under the freeway and get food to go. Not bad food but I would get something different next time. We both got Mexican and that seems to get cold by the time we walk back. Mine was too spicy ... and when I set down the to-go back the chips dumped all over. We threw the half the bag that spilled on the floor and were only able to eat half of the remaining half. That is how much food we got. During our little walk I was reminded how much the desert cools off after dark and when we got back I decided to grab a jacket from the truck. As I was doing that, a black cat ran across my path ... fitting way to end Friday the 13th. We've stayed at this hotel before. It has a Greyhound building between the motel and McD's. One of the few Greyhound buildings that I know of that are not in major cities. Late again, I'll have to write-up yesterdays trip some other day. Load board US - 171 IA - 12 MN - 3 WI - 8 TX - 18 but only one over 700 miles and the rest are under 500 miles. The last three days there has been something out of TX that looked good, we'll hope they put one more out Monday. We aren't in any rush to come home and if we do we will likely leave again within a day or two. We do not plan on being in town for Thanksgiving (or Christmas/New Years) Covid - for those reading this later. When I started mentioning Covid the deaths in MN were around 10 per day and we were under 'lock down.' Now they are almost 50 a day and it is business as usual. ??? ... the trip continues HERE |
