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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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210118`CA-CO 1 bus to Denver CO (delivered) ... spending the night at Gothenburg NE Breakfast was in a bag. One bagel, one cup of fruit and one yogurt. (plus I added some leftover bacon to the meal) Before we get to the freeway, there was a round-about. I wait for my turn, and then get off on the wrong street. Guess I just like going around them. Found a place to turn around and got back on the round-about. 50 miles and we are at the rental car place. I drop BB and then head into city streets. One row of cars on each side of the street, so if you aren't staying long ... you just park in the middle of the street. 1st street had a car in the center of it so I went to the next street. That had a delivery truck in it, but I figured it would be moving. I didn't realize that there was no place on the whole street when people could meet. Luckily the truck was further down the street than I thought and I turned before meeting it. It wasn't the same with the car. That was still sitting there. 1st stop was the TA in Commerce City for fuel. I decided to put in 15 gallons even though my math said I needed 12. And I was way over when I stuck the tank afterwards. 2nd stop was at the edge of the TA at the Blue Beacon truck wash. Only six trucks ahead of me and it still took an hour and a half. It only takes about five minutes to do mine. The guy behind me in line, his truck died. It was a straight truck and after a while six people from the truck wash came out and pushed the truck far enough out of the way that other trucks could get past. Only two trucks got past before he got it started and got in line. While we were there, BB found me and carried all of our stuff to the car so that is done before the drop. 3rd stop was the drop in Denver. I call the phone number on my paperwork and no one answers, and no one answers when I hit '0.' I walk the lot and don't find anyone. Finally BB calls and says that she has found another of our drivers and he has someone coming over. And the come to my bus, not his. He has to drive his bus to mine. Didn't know until last night at the motel when we checked in that today was a holiday. But everyone here knew it, and had the day off. The people who are inspecting our buses are from the office across the street. As I was walking around looking for someone I saw a lot of buses that had been brought in and still had the plastic on and/or still had the shippers paperwork in the window. The other driver was looking for a ride to his motel 'by the airport.' We have been trying to keep our distance from others, but I guessed it was only 10 miles or so. And it would have been, IF he had given me the address. After we get near the airport he says we are heading to the wrong one. So instead of the 10 miles that it should have been, it was 25 miles ... and an extra half hour to get out of town. Lots of stories. He had been with this company 10 years. He'd taken a leave from here to work local during Covid because there wasn't enough work. But got fired from that company because of something he said on FB. 4th stop - After we drop him we do a quick stop at Flying J for the rest room. We have stayed at the same motel as he was, must have been on one of our other company trips. We haven't done any Denver trips with this company. ... the other company. We are still on their emailing list after four years. Today we get an email that they have adjusted their driver required at to notify corp of any speed over 80 mph. Yes 80 is to fast, but I don't like being tracked. Seems like our being the nice guy cost us an hour plus today. We aren't likely to make it to Lexington tonight. And we will have to be running until after dark to make it home in two days. 5th stop is in Brighton at Arby's. 1st we had planned on stopping at Loves because I knew where it was. Then BB looked online and we would be passing a Chic-fil-A first so we planned on stopping there. Until we saw the drive-thru line was backed up out onto the street and we were coming from the wrong direction. So we drove two doors down to Arby's. By the time we left, I'm not sure Arby's was faster. This Arby's no longer has the Philly's. :( So now I am down to a Gyro or Rueben. 6th stop was in Crook for the rest room. Sinclair. 7th and final stop was Gothenburg at the Quality Inn for the night and the Nebraska Barn for food. Food is OK. The other close food was two pizza places and Chesters Chicken. We ended up driving until after dark in hopes of making it home tomorrow night without another nights motel. We have appt's on April 1 so we have about 10 days to fit in another trip. We have started doing the math. But not enough time to get to the west coast for a bus and back. Load board US - 265 IA - 116 MN -0- WI - 5 IA load board had gotten down below 100 before they started adding new ones. 210119`CA-CO 1 bus to Denver CO (delivered) ... spending the night at Garner IA Shut down because of weather again :( Alarm goes off at 6 AM ... and 6:10 :) The breakfast area was full, but ours was grab and go. When I tried the juice machine someone sitting told me it wasn't working. And I replied something about that it likely wasn't turned on. Before I could go and find the staff, they were on their way out of the kitchen. They had heard us. Yes, one switch and the juice machine was on. Orange guava juice. I filled two cups, then when I got to the car I had no where to put them. So I dumped 'sink water' out of a bottle and poured in the juice. I also finished off the bacon from Wendover from a couple of days ago (and six hours later I haven't gotten food poisoning yet) plus a hard boiled egg and yogurt from this morning. 1st stop - an hour down the road for fuel. Gas on the right side of the road was $2.56, we drove across the freeway for $2.25 gas. The sun is coming up. 2nd stop was at the Flying J in Avoca for food. Maid Rite is still there. But they are not listed on their main highway sign or any of the billboards. It is something different so we go with that instead of Taco Johns. Not the best choice, the meat is like a sloppy joe without the slop. Lots of it dropped off while I was driving. Onion rings were good. While we were stopped I call my clinic and got an appointment for Feb 1. Same day as BB appointment. So we will need to be back in 10+ days. 3rd stop was at Loves in Ellsworth for the rest room and as long as we were there we put in more gas. $2.12. We had planned on stopping a few more miles down the road, but it turns out that Love's had been cheaper. Lucky. Roads were not bad, but once we got north of Des Moines we were dealing with the cross winds of 40+ so I wasn't using the cruise. BB started debating about going further ... after we past the last motel before Clear Lake. By the time we got to Clear Lake we had decided to pick up the motel tonight and get to Albert Lea and shut down instead of getting home tonight. Then we started driving west from Clear Lake. The road is ice. The winds are high. In places, visibility is near zero. We see a couple places where people have gone in the ditch already. 4th stop - We make it as far as Garner and stop. We pull into the motel and make reservations. When we walk in, we are told that we got the last room. At the Garner Inn and Suites. Once in the motel we order for food and then in 10 minutes we drive down to pick up food. The rental car is supposed to be back by 9:30 AM Wednesday. We might not make it. Not sure we will pull out before daylight with the slick roads. Load board US - 255 IA - 124 MN -0- WI - 4 For a while the board dropped below 100 but then they started adding more RV's. Some of the trips we had looked are gone, we will see what is left on Thursday when we can call in. No reason to call in before that as we won't be able to deliver until Monday. We want to go west again. But the weather is not good for Friday or Saturday ... and will they get the roads clear by Sunday when we get there? 210120`CA-CO 1 bus to Denver CO (delivered) ... spending the night at home We weren't supposed to have to set an alarm for the next two days ? When we go down for breakfast NO ONE is wearing a mask, except us. The breakfast area is full of construction workers, most of the tables are full. None of the staff is wearing masks either. Still, I did have a nuked omolett, but I could see them nuke them in the kitchen and walk them out to the breakfast area. And they were good. Other than that I had yogurt and juice. And we got out of the room by 7:30 but because we had to scrape our car off, we didn't get to Forest City until 8 AM and it is only 10 miles. Van started, and only the one side door was frozen shut so we were able to get our stuff in without too much issue. I didn't see a line of people waiting to get their paperwork, in fact I only saw one other car in the lot and they left without a RV. BB headed out ahead of me, I was still waiting for the window to defrost. Of course, if I had been paying attention I would have noticed that the temp was set to warm, not hot. I finally noticed that half way home. Roads are much better this AM. Only a light coating of ice in places on the highway instead of a thick solid snow pack. And the wind today is more of breeze. Freeway was mostly clear. Yesterday we saw two transporters once we were on I-35, one was a 60 foot bus heading to San Diego and the other was a mixer. I'd like to do one of those 60 footers from MN one trip and then do one from CA down to San Diego the next :) That might confuse the people in San Diego. When we were still on I-80 we saw at least a couple of dozen transporters and closer to 100 towaways pulling travel trailers. Wish I had started counting them in the AM. Next stop for me was Fort Snelling Cemetery to take some pictures while I wait for BB to return the car. I didn't know it at the time, but BB was right behind me when I turned into the cemetery. We don't run together so it is not often we see each other. We ended up getting the car returned within minutes (seconds?) of the return time. But it didn't make any difference. No one was at the desk, so when we got the receipt in the email they just key it in as returned on time. And then home. The side streets to our house were rough, the streets hadn't gotten plowed before people had driven on the wet snow and it froze. But our driveway was mostly good. Nothing I could do about the packed ice. Load board US - 260 IA - 132 MN - 1 WI - 6 Without time to do a return trip, we are looking at anywhere that two 'no-tow's' are going. The no-tow's pay an extra $150 a piece so that is an extra $300 for the two of us. Right now there are 15 different locations, 16 if I want to count the ones to Canada, that have two of the no-tows going to the same place, some of them have 5 going to the same place. Math wise, it looks like we will go to either UT or ID, most miles / cheapest rental cars. Also the worst weather but we are keeping an eye on it. We can call in tomorrow morning and then leave on Friday. Deliver on Monday and be home on Thursday. ... and we will be looking for something right after our appointments heading back out I-80 :) but then we will have six weeks before we need to be home. If we end up sitting in CA, we will be looking for work there ... or not. Looking at the load board tonight, there are five trips that are over 3,000 miles. There had been at least one yesterday out of NC that would have been that long. Todays are all out of MA heading to CA. |
