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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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210308 NC-KS 2 RV's to Greer SC (delivered) 1 tree truck to Olathe KS ... spending the night at Whitsett NC Alarm at 6 AM central time, 7 local. We watch the NC board for anything new, but nothing. Breakfast was juice and a pastry, BB had fruit. When we go to pull out, BB is honking at me. I thought she didn't think I would fit under the overhang. I finally stopped, she was reminding me to check out :) We make it to the fuel stop a few miles down the road. When BB is done, she parks hers and we go to the airport. Small, not very busy airport so no problem. We've done this before. Another mile and I am back at the drop. The 1st person in line has brought in two travel trailers. The 2nd person has the same model as BB. Finally someone comes over and says they will get to us when they can, but they also have to move trailers when called. Soon someone else pulls in behind me, and then BB arrives. Finally someone does come and starts checking the travel trailers. This person has said it takes about 30 minutes per unit to inspect. At that rate I would be done in two hours, BB in three hours. Then someone else comes and starts checking the motorhomes. No driver issues with either BB's or mine when we were at the drop. Signed clear. I logged an hour and a half at the drop. They didn't want me to leave my RV there with no one around, so I waited until BB arrived and then walked back to the gas station where we had fueled and BB had left the rental car. ... and we had lots of time to talk. The 1st driver works for three different companies but this is his first RV. Not impressed with the money. Later when all four of us drivers were talking, we got on fuel. This 1st driver said he thought our company should just pay actual fuel instead of paying us and then we pay for the fuel. Because he just 'lost money' on fuel for his RV. That got the conversation going. BB had the exact same RV as him and she made $40 on fuel on a two day trip. And he lost money? The 4th driver was very much in favor of how things are now. He said he has driven 55 mph if that's what it takes. He has made $100's of dollars on some trips (as have I, but I didn't put a number on it) Afterword we were talking about it. The 4th driver and I have been doing this almost 18 years each. Drivers who don't know how to make money are not going to last that long. The 1st driver lives an hour north of here and had his daughter waiting for him. The 4th driver lives in FL and had left his car in Shelby (an hour from here) because he had just taken a truck to MN :( We were an hour down the road when I realized that we were going past Shelby and could have offered him a drive, instead he took an Uber. I was thinking Shelby was south of us, and we were going to be heading North. Not sure how Shelby NC would be sought of Greer SC but that is what was stuck in my head ... so he had to pay for a 60 mile Uber ride. 4th driver said he is off for at least a week. His Mom turns 100 on St Patrick's Day. As we are standing around, local (for here) dispatch adds two trucks heading to KS. I grab one. Then when we are leaving, BB needs to change the rental car drop location. $200 ??? Drop charge ??? She calls the location she rented from. Yes, that is correct. BB doesn't often answer the phone but a call came in just a minute later and she figured she should answer. Someone else in the rental car office knew how to change the location without the drop charge. And they took the initiative to call us. Once BB had seen the drop charge would be $200, we got off and the next exit and drove back to the 1st truck stop. We didn't want to be too far away from the airport if we needed to switch cars. Actually switching cars was not an option. This is the only company in the state that seems to be doing one ways right now. So our next trip may not be to NC unless we have cars lined up before we take the run. Or we just use the truck we pick up and go back to the original pickup location so it is a local, not a one way rental. But that would likely be 100's of miles on the truck. Once that is all taken care of we have about four hours up to the next truck. If we had gone to Selma again it would have only been an hour ... but they didn't have any cars. One stop at a rest area near Thomasville. We were just to the location in Creedmoor so it goes quicker. Dispatch had told us to make sure our truck number was correct. And we did notice a few where the 2nd set of numbers were exactly the same. Different kind of truck and the only way to open the side panels is to lift the dump box. So we fit one we can in one small panel and the bigger luggage goes in the truck on the passenger side. With BB sitting in the middle. Everything checks out, we are in, out and fueled in about an hour. BB had given me verbal directions on where the rental car place was, but didn't mention one street :) I still found it. Less than an hour down the road and we are at a Comfort Inn. Once we check in we walk across the street to Zaxby's for food. Chicken fingers again for me, salad for BB. After we left Zaxby's, we couldn't get back in the side door at the hotel ... if we had, I wouldn't have gotten my cookies. They had forgot to put them in our order and the followed us across the street to give them to us. Load board. US - 377 IA - 191 MN -0- WI - 23 KS -0- As of now, we have a rental car home from KS. The cheapest car, by half, was at the airport. That adds about 40 miles to our trip, but worth it. And as of now, we are planning on picking up the car Thursday AM before we drop. Then head back out again. If something shows up out of KS or MO that works, we could head anywhere. We don't need to be back for two weeks yet. 210309 NC-KS 1 tree truck to Olathe KS ... spending the night at Lexington KY Opps Alarm goes off at 6 AM local. Breakfast at 7. Nuke a sandwich, plus yogurt or fruit. Right as I am shutting down the computer, BB asks how many hours I can drive today ... so I check. Opps (And now when I am writing this, Opps again) The 7:30 AM Opps. I only have 8-1/2 hours I can run today. Most of the 500 miles today are hills and curves. This truck will not maintain 65 mph. As we go past the airport in Winston-Salem we see 6-8 airplanes parked on the runway. They were there last week too. But they are too far away to see what airline / company they are for. 1st stop is in Lambsburg at the Loves for fuel. And BB bought a seat cushion. 2nd stop is the travel plaza in Beckley for food and break. Quiznos is still closed so we eat at Sbarro's. We eat outside at tables, so I also buy water rather than walking back to the truck to get some of ours. Food is baked Ziti. This trip we are paying cash for tolls. The I-Pass does not work well under the big steel grid. Last trip we had stopped in Nitro at the Pilot for fuel. As we were getting close today we jokingly said we should do that again. As we went past that exit, we saw that traffic was backed up the freeway exit, down the street and into the Pilot lot. If we had gotten off and needed to stay in line, it could have easily been a half hour before we got to the Pilot lot. No more. If we need fuel we will stop an exit back and fuel at the Sheetz. No discount, but we could get us enough fuel to get to our next stop. 3rd stop again is for fuel. This time at Catlettsburg at the Flying J. By now we know we are not going to make it the 500 miles today, we are going to make just over 400. We have to cross a few scales today but didn't have to visit the inside of the scale house. At the last scale, the truck ahead of us had to exit to the scale, but got the bypass lane past the scale house. THEN he got flagged over. So he turns right enough to clear our lane, but is completely blocking the weigh lane. And he parks there. Parking is a marked area in a different place by the scale house. That will be an interesting conversation. 4th and final stop is the Comfort Inn in Lexington. We walk next door to Cracker Barrel for food. It is only 4 PM and we are out of hours. Tomorrow will be a long day to make up for the hours we didn't drive tonight. 2nd OPPS. I use a log software to check my log every night. Now as I was writing this up, I looked at a different screen of the log software ... and Opps. Manually, I had mis-calculated. I had three more hours we could have drove tonight. :( ... now we still have a long day tomorrow and no reason for it. Load board US - 404 IA - 177 MN - 2 WI - 19 We / BB watched the load board as we traveled. There have been more good runs out of NC. Not great, but good. Pairs of trips going to VA and MO. Also trucks going to IL and IN. But nothing out of KS or MO. So the plan is, we will stay on schedule and pick up our rental car at the airport at 8 AM, drop the truck at 9 AM. Then eight hours home, so we should be home shortly after dark. Spend the night at home. Then head out on a similar trip again on Friday and back the following Friday. And then stay home for ... Checking the I-80 weather. Chains required at Donners Pass by Reno and closed to high profile vehicles in WY. Covid - some are predicting that cases will start spiking in April again. So we still are not wanting to spend any time vacationing. 210310 NC-KS 1 tree truck to Olathe KS ... spending the night at Kansas City MO We need to remember to ask for a room NOT facing the freeway. At times it sounded like the window was open, and the only thing between our hotel and the freeway is one row of cars. I heard them because I was awake, BB was awake because she heard them. Breakfast. Nuke sandwich and juice. Little cups of juice. I just grabbed two. One was cranberry juice which I try to remember not to drink and the other was condensed apple juice. It was pretty thick. Pulled out at 7:30 local, the sun was already up. 1st stop is an hour down the road at Simpsonville KY at a TA for fuel. Cheapest we were going to find today so we made an extra stop. 2nd stop was in Dale IN at a rest area. 3rd stop was at the TA in Mt Vernon. 1st I put in a couple of gallons of fuel so I would for sure make it to MO, then we ate at Popeye's. We thought it would be faster than walking next door to Freddies and waiting for them to cook a burger. It was. As we walked up, someone in the back asked us what we wanted. When we got to the cashier, they asked my name. I said I hadn't ordered yet. "Yes you have." By the time I had paid, our food was sitting there waiting for us. The crew in Holbrook AZ could take some tips from this place. Instead of walking back to our truck, we found a table against the building that was mostly out of the wind. But I hadn't grabbed a water so I went inside and bought more water. And ... I wanted 4 chicken fingers. But I had a choice of 3 or 6 so I went with the six. Too much food so I ate four and threw the others away. Next time BB and I may split a six piece, her sandwich was too much food also. Yesterday we averaged 51 mph. We don't do too much better today. Every hill I am loosing speed and not enough speed to pass so I pull out and give it a try and then pull back in behind them. 4th stop was again for fuel. This time at a TA in Foristell. I guessed I would need 43 gallons. Only 39 fit, I wasn't thinking of that, we could have stopped further down the road. 5th stop was Boonville at a rest area. We are still debating how far to go tonight. In a few miles it will be our 500 for a normal day. But we have enough daylight to get to Kansas City. We know there is truck parking here. If we go to KC, we will wait and make a reservation once we are parked in their lot. We end up going on to KC. 6th and final stop is the Sleep Inn in Kansas City. There is room, but there must be a lot of park and fly people who leave their cars here. And the cars are parked at random, but we did find a place to park so we are here to stay. There is a Waffle House a block away but we order online from Cracker Barrell. As we are ready to walk out the door to go get our food, BB looks online to see the temp. And sees it is raining. But we start walking anyways at is barely a mist. A block away and we see lightning. Almost constant lightning. Not sure why we didn't turn around immediately and drive over but we didn't. We walk the almost half mile in the lightning. We pick up our food and come back out and it is pouring. And still almost constant lightning. So we sat on one of their 'Do Not Use' chairs and waited. Do we call a cab? Or the hotel shuttle? Or walk? We finally decided to eat, so I went back in to buy bottled water ... the cashier asked why I didn't just open my mouth and look up? Besides the lightning and rain, there was hail and wind. By the time BB was done with her food, I was half done with mine which is normal. And it was done raining and any lightning was off in the distance so we walked back to the hotel and I finished eating here. Just looked at my paperwork and it says I need to deliver the truck on 1/4. Some of these type of trucks we deliver on an 1/8th or just so the low fuel light is not on. So now I will be buy fuel at full price instead of discounted. Load board US - 456 IA - 203 MN - 10 WI - 20 NC - 24 There are still two no-tow RV's heading down to Selma NC that we plan on trying to grab tomorrow AM. We would leave out on Friday and do this all over again. NC has been putting out a lot of trips. There had been 2 pickups to AR but now one is gone. There are still 2 to VA and 2 to FL (but we don't have time for that right now) Those will be gone and there should be more by the time we get there. There are still all three trucks in WI that I wouldn't mind moving but no time. If do this same round trip again, we don't have any time now to move anything extra on the way back home. Plan for tomorrow is to drop BB at the airport at 8 AM and be to the drop at 9. From there it is 8 hours home, plus stops. So some time around dark we should be home. For the night. A week from Monday we plan on working for my local company for a week before doing more for this company. I expect that IA will still have over 100 trips in two weeks when we are ready to run again. Not sure when we are going to be taking any time off. 210311 NC-KS 1 tree truck to Olathe KS (delivered) 2 RV's to Mocksville, NC ... spending the night at home Breakfast. In a bag. One apple, one yogurt and a pastry. There were not many rooms left last night when we reserved a room but there is no one around for a three floor hotel. I'm wondering if things are so slow that the cleaning crew does not come in every day?? We pull out at 7:15 and head to the airport. We've been here before but she has the directions on. This airport has a little turn off by each rental car company for the car carriers that come in. One of them was empty so there is where I pulled out of the traffic lane to drop BB off. (Later she tells me that was the wrong place, we'll try a closer place next time) I found / looked at my paperwork last night and found I am supposed to leave 1/4 of a tank of fuel, not just 1/8 of a tank. So this AM I am watching to see how many miles I have left to go when it drops below the 1/4 mark. Last night I had guessed I would be putting in 7 gallons. But today the gauge doesn't drop below 1/4 until I should only need 2 gallons. But when I stop, I still put in 6 gallons. At a Casey's in Lenexa. 2nd stop is the drop in Olathe. I park. Small lot so it takes a while to get straight into a spot. And not very straight at that. By the time I get out of my truck, BB is there. We get all of our stuff unloaded and put in the car before I go in to get signed off on. At this place someone does come out and do a walk around. Sounds like they had one come in with the overhead bucket damaged :( But I get signed off clear. And my fuel was just over where it should be. The fuel gauge had gone up quite a bit when I fueled but came back down when I started moving. As I am in the office, I overhear a phone call where they are asking about someone's drivers license. "Do not ask for a copy, we need you to see their driver's license." When I was in the office the 2nd time ... "No, he does not have a drivers license." When BB picked up the car, they asked what kind she wanted. BB said not the larger ones as we have lots of miles to go. So they 'gave' us a half a tank of fuel for taking a mini van they wanted off their lot. WHAT ??? When I come back from getting my signatures, BB tells me our next trips are gone. Neither one of us mentioned or thought about calling in this AM to get those trips. We were supposed to do that at 8 AM. It was now 9 AM when BB realized we hadn't called and that they were gone. Old age is rough. We head out. It is after rush hour so no slow downs. We talk about a lot of other options and finally decide to take two going to Mocksville. It has a lot to do with not being able to get rental cars right now. So I pull off at a exit ramp and make the call. Then we start looking at 2nd legs, and 3rd legs, and even 4th legs. I finally call on a truck that is listed as 'Cab Chassi,' it turns out to be a tractor with a sleeper. I say I will think about it and call back in the AM. A chassi usually means a tractor cab with nothing on the frame, often not even permanent tail lights or mud flaps. That truck is 25 miles from our drop and it is heading to IN. There is another pickup an hour away to be delivered a few miles from that drop. But by the end of the day the pickup was gone. Our usual trip is just me driving on the 2nd leg so the pickup would have been bonus money. 100 miles down the road and BB needs the restroom. 4th stop is the rest are in IA near Davis City or Lamont (?) Then 30 miles down the road for food. 5th stop is the Arby's in Osceola for food. Now that they have dropped all the good sandwiches, I am not as much of a fan. Now it is a reuben if I am driving and a gyro if I am not. 6th stop is Williams. We need to leave the car on half full and this is where the math says we should fill. Pilot. From here BB sends in the paperwork from my trip. I am paid within the hour. 7th stop is the RV lot in Forest City where I van has been sitting. 8 RV's ready to pull out while we are there, plus four being loaded to be flat bedded out. Still 100's to go. We put our stuff from the rental into the van and BB heads out with me a minute or so behind her. Often I head to the cemetery to take pictures while I wait for BB but tonight it was close to dark and the lighting wouldn't be good. ... and I still don't have my phone so no way for BB to tell me when she is done at the airport so I head to the airport with the intent to circle until she shows up. Today she beat me, she is waiting. Phone. I lasted a week without one. I used BB's to make a couple of work calls but other than that I have been doing without electronics for a week. I'd be fine longer than that. We stop at Tinucci's to get to-go food and walk out one minute before they are to lock the doors. Final stop - Home. Not sure if we would have come all the way home if I hadn't needed to get my phone. No missed calls (other than spam,) one text. Load board US - 465 IA - 193 MN - 4 WI - 22 We may head out as early as 9 AM tomorrow to stay ahead of the weather coming in from WY-CO. We could leave Saturday AM and get there but that would be a push. Plan is to call in the AM and take the truck that is close to our drop. If nothing else shows up close we will leave with just that. After that we are not sure. We may head the couple of hours to Elk Hart for RV's or just head home. If we go to Elk Hart we would take RV's going to WI if they don't add anything new. In WI there are more trucks within an hour of where we would drop the RV's but an hour past the RV's so we would need to get another rental car and at some point all these rental cars make the short trips not worth taking. The trucks in WI are heading to Cannon Falls MN, Fargo ND and Des Moines IA. All close and doable. There is also a truck near Chicago that is coming directly back to the cities which would not require the final rental car or taking a 4th leg. But that is close to a week out and things can and do change. |
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