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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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210121`IA-UT 2 RV's to Draper UT ... spending the night at home Called in this AM when the office opened and got two RV's to Draper. We asked for the two 'hot' ones as those are the ones that are already sold. But they 'suggested' we take an older trip that has been sitting out f=there almost a month. The only downside to taking the older ones are that the price of fuel has gone up and we will get paid based on what the price of fuel was a month ago. They also mentioned 'no-tow' units. Nope. I know the ones they were talking about and we don't make money on those even at current fuel prices. We take them sometimes because usually we are heading to a round trip. This time we are not. That was the first five minutes of our day. After that I have spent most of the day working on the website where these trip notes are stored. And there is still a lot of work to do. Today I was getting the last six months current and then adding pictures to the web pages. How I am doing the pages changes from month to month so at some point I want to make things more consistent. I also found places where either my cut and paste didn't work or my mind just trailed off leaving a partial sentence. :) Plan is to pull out tomorrow AM between 7 - 7:30. That should get us to Omaha, then Laramie and SLC. It was actually $5 cheaper to get a car for 3 days instead of 2 days. We may end up doing a 300 mile trip when we get back if the load board is still full. Load board US - 257 IA - 123 MN - 2 WI - 6 210122`IA-UT 2 RV's to Draper UT ... spending the night in Lincoln NE 6 AM alarm. Leaving the house by 7:30. -0- but our 20 year old van started. (and the doors opened) 'Rush hour' traffic isn't anymore. Sailed through at the posted. 1st stop was in Owatonna at Burger King for breakfast, two croissants and an OJ. 2nd stop was Kwik Star for fuel in Forest City. I like to leave any car on full this time of the year. 3rd stop was the office / lot to pick up our RV's. It looks like there are about 100 more RV's sitting on the shippers side of the street. Seems to be where they park them if the customer isn't ready or if they are waiting on one final part. So we should have more soon. A few people picking up RV's this AM including two semi's. My RV was easy to find. They put an orange card in the window with the unit number on it. Except my RV had sat in the sun so long that the card was more white than orange. Sitting there for just about 4 weeks waiting for a driver. Pay shows it. My fuel pay is $.13 a mile less than BB's because fuel has gone up that much in four weeks. And no extra fuel on board. I think there is only one type of RV here that has a nut and bolt where you attach the license plate. Most of them we are screwing into plastic that has stripped out because the mfg had their air pressure set too high. Today BB had one that was stripped out so she had to attach her plate with only one screw. Holding so far. No issues and we are ready to go by 11 AM. Then a half hour drive to Clear Lake for fuel 4th stop in Clear Lake at the Flying J / Subway for fuel and food. Everyone else in town had gas for $1.99 except Flying J, theirs was three cents more. And we get a three cent discount. So no cheaper, not higher. We fuel there so that we can eat at the same place. It is up to 10 degrees above zero, but no one else was eating in Subway so we did eat inside. There were a few customers waiting to order but everyone had masks on today. Roads are clear but we can see where people have been in the ditch since or during the last snow. 5th stop is the rest area near Ankeny. 6th stop is the rest area near Adair. By the time we get to Adair we decide we will have enough time to make it past Omaha and get to Lincoln. We had been looking at other options in Omaha as the motel we used to stay at will not allow anything heaver than cars in there lot now. We will miss the good Mexican food next door. Omaha. One of the exits was closed do to an accident so traffic came to a stop. Gawking? Or people just don't know what to do when they can't exit. As soon as we pass the exit traffic was back to normal. 7th stop is at the QT in Gretna for fuel. It may have been cheaper somewhere else but this is where we stop and we are creatures of habit. From here BB makes a motel reservation. It looks like we lost about 15 minutes because of the gawkers slow down but it will still be light when we get to the motel. We had waited to book our motel because it looked like there may be snow around Lincoln but it stayed south. We are also watching the weather to stay ahead of the storm tomorrow and then come in behind the storm in WY. I don't remember what we are watching for in UT. Today BB gets the 'truck must enter' at the scale but I didn't. Someone has to be watching the traffic because these are RV's under 10,000# so they shouldn't even trip the sign. But is someone is watching they can see we are running on transporter plates and placards. 8th and final stop is the Quality Inn in Lincoln. As soon as we check in, we order food from Cracker Barrell. Friday night and the place is packed. Not sure wearing your mask for the 10 minutes before you get your food is doing anyone any good. Ours was to-go. Load board US - 224 IA - 124 MN -0- WI - 5 On the way to pick up our RV"s this AM we talked about doing a couple of RV's to WI when we got back. But tonight the last of those RV's are gone. The shortest pair of no-tows now is Rockwell TX, a three day run and we have one day before we want to be home. Someone posted on FB that Hertz has cars for $10 a day from the west coast. That is unusual. But we looked at it and the cars are from specific locations to specific locations and MSP is not one of the locations. We would have to drop somewhere else and get a 2nd car coming home. Worth it, if they are still there when / if we end up on the west coast without work. 7 trucks in SLC ... going to Portland OR. Nothing coming back to the midwest, Yet. 210123`IA-UT 2 RV's to Draper UT ... spending the night in Cheyenne WY Shut down because of weather ... again. Breakfast was grab and leave. No eating in the breakfast area, but most of the food was the usual, minus the hot food. So for me it was yogurt and juice. We pull out at 7:30 AM, right at sun up. 1st stop is at the rest area near Grand Island. 2nd stop is in Cozad at Burger King for food. No indoor seating so we stand and eat outside in the 20 degree weather. It doesn't take long. 3rd stop is in Ogallala for fuel at Walmart. Gas is cheaper at Big Dog but we have never fueled there. Gas was also cheaper at Casey's and I almost went there until I realized it is a different grade. We have seen a few transporters today. Mostly my company. Surprising that we saw close to a 100 transporters pulling travel trailers. Today we only saw a couple of travel trailers. From my company, we saw another RV a couple of times, a semi tractor, and a semi hauling a bus. 4th stop is at the rest area near Sidney. When we get to the state line, we see a half dozen tree trucks. I was hoping they would not get to the POE ahead of us. They don't. 5th stop is near Burns at the POE / Port of Entry for permits. While we are there, I look at their weather report. Road is wet to Laramie. BB looks at the weather and road reports. The road is wet AND slippery. And she looks at the motel in Laramie to make sure they have rooms but doesn't make a reservation. ??? Usually we do make a reservation from our last stop before we shut down. As we are sitting there at the POE I see some of the tree trucks pull through the POE. Then one gets flagged in. Later I realize that I should not have seen the tree trucks going through the POE. EVERYONE has to stop and go inside. They didn't. I am guessing that is why the one got pulled in. Later I see one on the freeway heading back to the POE, but no way of knowing it was the same one. As soon as we start to pull out, it starts to snow. As soon as we are fully back on the highway, BB starts to blink her headlights at me so I pull off at the next exit a mile down the road. She looks at the weather again, it looks like the weather may move off. But we decide to stop in Cheyenne five miles down the road. The snow picks up and I end up driving well under the speed limit the rest of the way. As we are pulling from I-80 onto I-25 before the motel, there are three cars in the ditch. Within the hour, I-80 is closed. 300 of the 350 miles from Cheyenne to UT are now closed in at least one direction. Some places it is closed in both directions. The forecast had been for storms tomorrow near Rawlins, not all of WY. 6th and final stop was the Quality Inn in Cheyenne. We looked at the Comfort Inn but it was over $100 tonight. As soon as we checked in, we order food from The Philly Shop. Last time we drove an RV to pick up our order. With todays roads, we ordered delivery. They said it would take an hour, so we had time to walk across the street to the Flying J to get pop ... and change for a tip. As soon as we are back in the room, the delivery is there. And I can put the tip on the charge even though they had taken my payment over the phone. Philly's were as good as last time. We are glad we got off the road when we did. It likely would have taken hours to get to the next town, Laramie, where everyone would have to exit the freeway because it is closed. And by then the hotels would be full. It pays to be cautious. We checked into the motel at about 3:15 local time. They closed I-80 at 4:26. So whatever happened to close the road would have happened while we were on it. That stretch takes an hour to drive in good weather. At 45 mph it would take at least two hours. And if you are at a dead stop for an hour or two ??? The road closed at 4:30, at 8:30, we can still see traffic stopped on the freeway via the traffic cams. They have been there four hours and are still Now we will wait until daylight. And for the roads to open. We have four days to play with before it effects our appointments Load board - SAT US - 215 IA - 103 MN -0- WI - 5 As of 9 PM, the estimated time to re-open I-80 is now at 12 noon tomorrow and the traffic camera's now show an empty road. 210124`IA-UT 2 RV's to Draper UT ... spending the night in Rock Springs WY 7 AM local, we are up. The roads are still closed. No changes since last night. Expected opening time, 12 noon. 7:30 AM - All roads are open, no restrictions. So we eat breakfast. No hot food, but I have two yogurts and what is left from last nights Cini-bun. 8:15 local - we are ready to leave. Two other transporters are parked next to us. One of the drivers is by his truck so I say Hi. I have never heard of that transport company. Likely because it is him and one other driver. And they only move tree trucks. What they can't move, we get. Most of the road wasn't too bad from Cheynne to Laramie. Fog was more of an issue for the first half of the trip. So mostly under the speed limit. Variable speed limit was 65 by we were going 55 mph. Some were going less. 1st stop is in Laramie at the Flying J for fuel. We should have looked at the prices online again this AM. Where we stop for diesel had gas for $.10 less than Flying J today. That is unusual. There was one other RV from our company at the fuel pumps. They had picked up in IN and heading to UT also. Shortly after we got back on the freeway the two drivers from the motel passed us. When we first left Laramie the speed limit was 55 mph but I didn't see a reason for it west bound. The left lane of the east bound was snow packed, but west bound was clear and most places was dry. And then it was not so good. We drove a lot of it at 45 mph. It wasn't white knuckle driving, but it felt better to be driving slow. And in most places those passing were only doing about 10 mph more than the slow lane. W only saw one pick with a trailer in the ditch, but that had traffic stopped and single lane. Almost to Rawlins the road clears and traffic is doing 65 mph. "ROAD CLOSED AHEAD - NO PARKING ON FREEWAY" That was the overhead sign, it didn't say where. We are one exit from our lunch stop. Then I see the traffic stopped beyond our exit. Then I see the cop turning everyone back onto eastbound I-80. The truckstop must be full. There may have been room in the car parking, but we didn't try. Instead we take a snow packed back road heading somewhere the opposite direction. Then I see a semi parked on top of the rail road tracks. I decide now is a good time to stop and look at directions. We don't want to go where the semi did, but the other street will take us to a Burger King we have stopped at before. It is right next to a Walmart where we can park. We could have parked, if we had been there sooner. Lot looks full now. We pull into the Burger King and order food to go. Then park next door at the Comfort Inn in hopes of using their WiFi. Their's needs a password, but we also get the Days Inn WIFi, no password. By the time we walk out of BK, there is someone blocking traffic. There is room for no more trucks at the Walmart. Not sure where they are going to park now. I guess the road had been closed again all the way from Cheyenee to Rock Springs for a while when we were sitting here for lunch. Now that we have been here an hour, the road is now only closed from Rawlins to Rock Springs. Where we need to go. When we pulled out this AM I was thinking we could still get to SLC yet tonight, maybe even by last light. Now we are still in Rawlins with no idea when the crash ahead will be cleared. We stopped in Rawlins at noon local, by the time we finally got stopped. At 1 PM I clicked re-fresh and the roads were open, as fast as we could get our logs current we were heading out. One hour lost, half of it was our lunch break. No one else was moving yet. And two blocks later, neither were we. We got on the freeway and it was still stopped. I guess this is where all the traffic ended up once Walmart was full. They just let them park right in the travel lanes on the freeway. One hour after the roads open, traffic starts to move. From where I am sitting I can see the traffic a mile ahead. Once it starts moving, I thought that it would move, bumper to bumper. It seemed like someone was giving the traffic the OK to move, one truck every five seconds. Not sure if that is what it was, but when we finally started to move, there was a cop driving against traffic coming at us. My guess is that he was there to wake up truckers who were taking advantage of their break. We had briefly talked about driving through town to the next entrance instead of getting on the freeway a block from where we were sitting. We didn't. But that would have put us in front of another 200 or so trucks. And maybe gotten us going a half hour or more sooner. As we do arrive at the exit on that side of town, I notice a tree truck coming down the ramp. Can't be sure it is one of the same ones we have been pacing, but it was the same customer and had a company pickup following it. I'm a little ways behind but as I catch up I notice the chipper the truck is puller is tilting a little to the right. As he pulls on to the shoulder, I see he has a flat tire on the chipper. What a way to start back on the road. Get delayed for two hours because of a road closure and as soon as you move. Flat tire. But because we had been sitting already for two hours, BB was going to need to stop sooner. Traffic mostly moved well until our next stop. Wamsutter at Loves for a restroom break. At Wamsutter, traffic came to a stop again. We were just able to exit without driving on the shoulder. Loves had someone out by the street directing traffic. Their lots were full. But the car lot was not full so no issue for us. Up to this point we had hoped to still make it to Evanston tonight. Before dark. Nope. We call ahead and make a reservation in Rock Springs at the Clarion. While we are at the truck stop I see a van that looks like a transporter. Except there is only blue tape around where a placard should be. As he drives away I see his plate is a transporter. Back on the freeway. It takes us a half hour to go the next three miles. But this time we don't stop. I know because I want to get out and take a picture of the RV's with all the trucks in the background. But we never stop more than a couple of seconds. Right as we start to move, we see two tow trucks pulling partial semi trailers. Then we see a semi axle in the ditch. From there traffic is open. We get to Rock Springs at 4:30 local. Less than one hour before sun set. Evanston would have been two hours. If there were not more accidents. We check in and go to our room. CHIRP ... CHIRP ... CHIRP Another room with a smoke alarm with a dead battery. The front desk sends someone up. This one also has a snap connection if I need to remove it during the night. Once that is taken care of, we go down to order food from the in-house Mexican place. 10 minutes and it was done. I did a quick walk in the parking lot, but now that the sun had set the parking lot was quickly becoming a skating rink. As long as we aren't delayed again tomorrow ... We will still make delivery on the same day. And we will still need the car for the same amount of time. But we will now have one more nights hotel and it is less likely that we will do any more work before the weekend. All this may not have changed anything as once we start heading home we will be behind a storm. I'm not sure we could have gotten ahead of it. So if we hadn't gotten delayed heading west, we would have, and still may, when we head back east. 210125`IA-UT 2 RV's to Draper UT (delivered ?) ... spending the night in Rock Springs WY Delivered? I will post on that tomorrow's post. Breakfast was made order omelets. At 7:30 local we are ready to go. 1st stop is at the Flying J for any final fuel 100 miles down the road. All lanes on the Interstate clear this AM. After driving 45-55 mph for a good part of the day yesterday, I now have enough range to make it to my drop. Plus 5 miles. BB has 50 miles to spare. So I add two gallons to give me 30 spare miles and she doesn't add any fuel. We both wash our mirrors and lights. Not happy with my cruise today. On some units, when you click up or down quickly, your speed goes up or down one mile per hour. Today, on this one, it doesn't. I end up having to turn off the cruise and turn it back on to re-set the speed. And it doesn't hold the speed on hills. I had to use the brakes more times than I have had to lately. 2nd stop is the Hertz in Draper. After we get the car, we move all our luggage from our RV's to the car and then I head to get fuel and BB heads to the dealer. There isn't a gas station close so I have to go two miles past and fuel at a Maverick and then wind my way back on city streets. 3rd stop Maverick for dealer fuel. 4th stop is at the drop. I go and and let the receptionist know I am there, they tell me where to park and wait. "some one will meet you." 15 minutes later, no one has showed up, so I go back in and ask if I can leave the RV there while we go get the 2nd RV? "no, we can't let you do that." So I wait. 1 hour goes past. Then after an hour and a half later someone with a travel trailer arrives to deliver. They have been told the same thing. Now that he is there, BB has lost her place in line. If I can't leave the RV there without me in it, I will use the RV to go and get her RV. We get the 2nd RV and I return and still no one has showed up. The person pulling the travel trailer has been in the office again and again told to wait. Finally the other driver sees someone looking at a different travel trailer (a person I had seen a few times) and goes and talks to him. That person says to go to the shop and ask for ____. After the other driver heads to the shop, I comment to the employee what I was told and he said "And if you do that, enjoy your day here. The people in there don't know #&^*&^. When an inspector does come out, he says he was never told that any RV's were waiting to be inspected (even though we had been to the desk multiple times) I had let the travel trailer person go ahead because he was in front of BB. Once the inspector gets to us, he has us both inspected in 15 minutes. (after the two hour wait) Failure to communicate. Before we went to get the 2nd RV, BB had gone to get us In-n-Out Burgers. Once we are heading out, back on the freeway ... Two overhead signs said 'I-215 two right lanes.' So I take the next exit even though there isn't any signage. It is onto a city street. It seems we have to take at least one wrong turn before we head out of town. As we are trying to get back onto the freeway, BB looks up the correct exit number. Once back on the freeway, I see based on the signs that I want the 2nd exit. So when the right lane is going to exit, I get out of it. Too late I see that because of construction the next two exits have been combined. We missed it. So we will head up to I-15. It adds two miles to our trip. And, over the weekend, it is the only route that the computer would give us. Next stop is the rest area near Echo. From there we have enough time to get back to Rock Springs. An extra hour would have gotten us back to Rawlins. Final stop is the Quality Inn in Rock Springs. Tonight we get the room next to the one we had last night. BB had ordered food online, but after paying it said it would be ready in a half hour. So we went to the motel and checked in first, then drove and picked up our food. As I am picking up the food inside, BB is in the car looking at TripAdvisor to see how this place is rated. We were lucky. It was rated 6 out of 57 food places in town. We were glad it wasn't rated 60 ... out of 57. Food was good. Oriental. We had thought that all our delays would cost us either in motels or car rental. So far it has only delayed us about four hours so we should be home in the evening instead of about noon but on the same day. Up to this point, we were thinking we would be catching up to the storms crossing the plains. Now we aren't so sure. (Instead, something else has come up that MAY effect our plans) The only trucks in UT today were the ones heading to Portland OR so we are rental caring it all the way home. Load board US - 212 IA - 103 MN - 1 WI - 6 WEATHER - The storm in NE is dumping snow today. Road closers are due to accidents. Snow is also forecast in CA, feet. There wouldn't have been any place we could have headed that we wouldn't have hit snow going that direction. Great for skiers, once they can get the roads re-opened. ... the trip continues HERE |
