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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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210316 NC-IN 1 Semi tractor to Indianapolis IN (delivered) ... spending the night at Walcott IA ... late night. I didn't even look at the load board for daily numbers. This is being written up a day later. Breakfast. We could look at everything but could not touch. BB didn't realize it was don't touch ANYTHING before she put bread in the toaster. The way it was laid out, the hot food was past the rest of the food in a smaller 'room.' But the rules applied to everywhere. I got an omelette, sausage, yogurt and the first juice I have had in days that tasted good. Rolling at 6:30 / 7:30 local. The two lane road was OK today, we did see a couple of places where someone had driven off the road, but none looked recent. OHIO Somewhere there the shoulder of the road was washed away. The highway dept put up concrete barriers right next to the hole. I would have thought they would have left a little more space ... 1st stop is a rest area near Ray OH 2nd stop is a TA near Lewisburg OH. We had planned this stop in case I needed more fuel. I don't, yet. But dispatch has finally gotten corrected paperwork for me. So I had to have it sent to me. But I can not email to them for security reasons. I have to set up my phone so I can send it right to their printer. I gave them my phone and they did it for me. 3rd stop is at a Pilot for fuel. By now I have getting 10 mpg. I have put in 70 gallons of fuel so I should be able to get 700 miles. Also when the fuel gauge got down to 1/8th, I should have 37 gallons left in my tank. At 10 mpg, that is 370. At that point I had 170 miles left to go. So 200 miles to spare. Still, I stopped and put in four more gallons 10 miles before the drop. I'm guessing I left this truck with more fuel than any other truck this location received. Today it was raining so I found out a couple of things. 1st, when I left in the AM, I realized the cruise doesn't work with the headlights on. When it started raining, I realized the cruise doesn't work with the wipers on either. Even if you don't have the lights on. Safety? Or a mal-function? INDIANA 4th stop is at the rental car place a couple of blocks off the freeway. I park on the street and BB goes in. We are running an hour and half late so it should be quick. (?) Nope, we waited an hour for them to wash and clean the car. And to go fuel it. They went to fuel it and came back with 3/8 of a tank. They did knock a few $ off because they up graded the car to a larger car with worth mileage. Another four miles down the road and we / I am at the drop. Luckily the road grader that showed on the 2019 map view was still sitting there :) The number on the building was wrong, but I found the right person. Then he wanted me to park the truck between the two previous trucks. I got it close enough. He walked around it once and signed off. Then he went to his office and made copies. BB had remembered the correct street numbers, but in the wrong order. She did get there before I was ready to go. Still nothing new on the load board so we are heading home. Before we leave town, we head to the Burger King. But we miss guessed where the drive way was. But we were next to a McDonalds so we ate there. Long wait at the drive thru, we should have gone to a gas station and got shelve food. I-465 had a back up on the on coming lane, traffic was backed up for about five miles. Our side was clear. 5th stop was at the Pilot in Crawfordsville for fuel. ILLINOIS Somewhere dispatch called from my local company, but by the time I called back they had given the trip away. It was for tomorrow and we will not be home. But I will be looking for work next week. 6th stop was in Galesburg at the Taco Bell. We don't think that this was here when we used to stop at the motel next door. IOWA 7th and final stop was at the Comfort Inn for the night. We had hoped to get further, but the cruise was set at the speed limit but each stop took too long. The rental car stop cost us big time. We got into our room after 8 PM. I spent a few minutes looking at birthday wishes online and then it was 9 PM, and the alarm will go off at 5 AM. Load board - unknown 210317 NC-IN 1 Semi tractor to Indianapolis IN (delivered) ... spending the night at home Alarm at 5 AM, rolling before 6 AM. The person at the front desk this AM was s-l-o-w. One person ahead of me so I knew it was going to be a while. It is still dark. It has been a long time since I have driven in the dark, in the rain / fog. But it will be light soon. 1st stop is the Burger King in Cedar Rapids for breakfast. I end up with 2 croissants because they are two for one. We stopped here as I wanted to call billing about my last trip. A few minutes after we sent in the paperwork, I realize that I have forgotten to include my tolls so we re-send it. I didn't get any clear answers. But after more thinking about it, I realized the odds were good that I would be getting paid for the tolls. 2nd stop is in Janesville at the Kwik Star / Trip. Fuel range was dropping fast and there aren't many stations in this area. We ended up putting in 9 gallons as a guess to bring the car back on 'E.' The MN Kwik Trips in MN have 'cheap' fuel, so I don't go for the 'cheap' stuff. But BB points out that that is the no ethanol gas. The normal stuff is $.50 cheaper. From here it is non-stop to the lot. When we stopped I saw that I had gotten paid for my trip already. Tolls were paid, but because I dropped at a different location, 20 short of the original drop I got paid $10 less. And even after the 'discounts,' the rental car was still $10 more than the original location. And twice what we normally pay. That is why we are pushing long days to get back in 24 hours. RV dispatch called while I was driving so I didn't talk to them. They are now paying for flights if you will do back to back trips. But we are off for the next week ... or two. 3rd stop is at the Forest City lot. Van starts, we are in and out of the lot in 10 minutes. BB has enough fuel to get to the airport and has just used the rest room so she makes it without a stop. 4th stop MSP. By the time I am on the side street, BB calls me. She is ready to be picked up. No one is at the desk to ask about my lost items. 5th stop is at a Davannis for food and then we head home. Load board US - 415 IA - 188 MN - 6 WI - 6 19 RV's to OR, 9 RV's to WA and 3 to NV. 6 to NC, 3 to SC As of tonight, no plans for thru the weekend, but that could change on a moments notice. Even with only having two legs the second two weeks and being further from home than we would have liked. We still made good money doing the short trips. My guess is because BB is driving all three weeks instead of every other week. Sure. Now that we are home, there is one truck in NC coming right back past my house. And two pickups going to NH and two going to Marion IL and two to Effingham IL. All would have paid better than this truck. 210318 MN No work, no alarm. Last night while heading out the door, our grand daughter who lives with us, fell. So this AM we waited until she was up to find out if we needed to stay close to home. We don't. So I called the local dispatch. The 1st dispatcher I talked to had 'just gotten off the phone' giving another driver the pickup trips that we do with the tankers. :( Then I talked to the 2nd dispatcher who does the buses. No bus. But they did have two trucks heading to the east coast. ??? I had turned down buses going to the east coast, and now they want me to do trucks going even further. The interesting thing is that the bus dispatcher is handling those trips. 1) That means she has fewer buses than the other dispatcher has trucks. 2) We haven't moved trucks out of Rice Lake for years. When I started that location was 90% of our trips. So no work today. Someone at the long haul company has been commenting about the great rates drivers get with the company discount. BB finally looked at it and it looks like they cost about half of what we are paying now. AND we are supposed to be able to drop them near Forest City at another companies office. That part we will have to look closer at. But with cars being half the price, Going to the northwest and northeast now becomes an option. The problem for us is in most area's of the country, this company only has locations at airports. In some cases it would pay for us to rent a car just to get to the airport and get a cheaper car. Or if we are on our 2nd leg and BB is just riding, we could pick up a car before we need it and she could follow. BB had Load board US - 408 IA - 191 MN - 8 WI - 8 Out of NC, only the two pickups going to NH are still on the load board. Out of IA the let the board run down during the day and then after close they added about 40 including one to Duluth. Tuesday we had listened to our company meeting. Now I find out that anyone listening gets credit for a safety meeting. But they go by phone number. BB was the caller, I don't get credit. She may not either as we missed the first few minutes so we will watch to she if she gets credit. 210319 MN Copied from my 'blog' from my birthday, March 16, last year. "8th stop - part 2. Target. The Walmart lot looked like Black Friday. Target wasn't so busy but lots of empty shelves. Before we left home we had been shopping with the intent to stock up. I used to be really good about following the Ready.gov guide lines. Weeks worth of supplies and rotated. But had kind of given that up and wanted to start again. Half way though shopping last time BB decided 'we could do the rest when we got back.' Opps. We should be set OK at home. We don't run on 'E,' but not well stocked on food either. We do have some canned goods that are good for another year or so. We didn't hoard, but we did stock up where we could." March 16 was the last we worked for three months. And one year later we are still not eating indoors on the road or using public transportation. And the last time we were to the store, they were still out of the Lysol wipes ... it's been a year. (the above was posted in the AM. We went to the store mid-day and our Walmart did have wipes for the 1st time. We haven't been to our grocer yet so we don't know about them) As we are heading to the store, we stop and get our mail. The DMV want's 'proof of citizenship' before I will get my new license. Didn't I have to do that the 1st time? Do they think I gave up my citizenship since then? Any other time it would be no big deal, just double park and run in and drop it off. Now it is either make an appointment or wait in line for what could be hours. If it was the old way, I would have taken care of it today. Then while we are at the store the local dispatch calls while I am in the store. They are giving me all the details of a trip, except the mileage. The mileage was 'over 600.' I am looking now and it is 'over 600' miles, it is 695 miles. 10 hours without traffic or stops. It is now Friday PM. So we would have to leave on Sunday and then drop usually between 8-9 AM. So basically the same trip we just did. This trip is two hours past Indy and the last one had the two hour detour through Forest City to pick up our car. I said no. I hope they don't stop asking. We are available on Monday for local. I will call then. Load board US - 399 IA - 155 MN - 7 WI - 14 There are still 100+ RV's waiting to be moved to the driver lot so I'm guessing dispatch is trying to squeeze out the older ones before loading up the board again. I don't know how many new trips they put out yesterday, but there are now two each going to Manteca which is about a half hour from the buses. And there are also three other sets of two each going to near LA which means we could take the south route and avoid I-80. Plus 22 going to OR, 7 to WA, 5 to NV and 5 to ID. And that is just going west. There are good runs, no-tows, going to FL. And the trip to Duluth is still there. That would be an easy one to do if I wasn't making myself available for the local company. A couple of years ago when BB's Mom died, we already had three well used cars, but we decided to keep her Mom's newer car. We 'sold' one to one grand-daughter with the understanding we would buy it back for the same price when she got a new car. And other car we are just letting another grand-daughter use until she can buy her own car. Buying her own car may just be happening quick. She just got a speeding ticket that could up her insurance by 4-5 times. Another reason is that cars with 2-300,000 on them need to be babied to last, not beat. The good news is that she already has plans to buy a van as soon as some basic work is done on it. Whew ... From the time I was 16 until I was 50 I almost always had one speeding ticket on my three year record. But now that insurance goes up so much and my work would terminate me, I have great incentives to keep a clean record. 210322 MN Monday, I waited until the office had been open for a half hour before I called in. The dispatcher was still 'working on breakdowns' and didn't know if there would be work for today. There never was. Another day of sitting home when we could be working. But the day didn't go to waist, my new computer final was delivered last week so I spent the day loading it will all the video's I have had transferred from tape to CD over the last couple of years. And I finally got my electronic log program updated. At first the update was stuck in pending, so I deleted that and tired a new install. That stayed in pending so I had to contact the supplier of the software and ask for help. Turns out I had too many 'apps' in my pending que to do anything new. After allowing three of the current pending apps to update, I tried the log program again and it did install. All of my work is stored at our company so nothing was lost. It was a above -0- day so we went for a short walk. We were home for four days of just sitting, (and odd jobs.) We don't seem to be able to jump from work to actively doing home stuffs. Load board - weekend US - 399 IA - 167 MN - 7 WI - 13 Load board - Monday US - 340 IA - 132 MN - 5 WI - 12 NC - 13 My guess is that long haul dispatch is still trying to get the older trips moved before loading up the board again. The oldest trips out there have been on the load board for almost six weeks. BB didn't look at the load board at all today, she usually is watching it regardless of if we are sitting or traveling. I looked at it a couple of times. NC had a couple of pickups going to Biloxi MS. Plus a trip to WY plus one each to WI and IL. All the big RV's coming out of IN right now are going to Canada. I don't think the dealer in MN is going to get all of his 17 Rv's by the end of the month. Covid - I am not keeping up on any of it anymore but I did ask yesterday and Sunday's deaths were -0-. But haven't heard any big news about this finally being over. |
