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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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210620 CA-SC 1 bus heading to Spartanburg SC ... spending the night at Duncan SC Day off, I can not deliver until Monday. No alarm. Even though we bought breakfast last night, I walked down to the breakfast area to see what they had. The only breakfast items where yogurt and pastries. They were only supposed to be open until 9 AM and I was a minute or so late. That is 8 AM my time and we hadn't set the alarm. It wasn't raining around noon so we decided to walk to Pilot. One big issue. The Greyhound had just pulled in for lunch. So about 50 people walked in ahead of us. Most not wearing masks. We decided to walk across the freeway again to QT. BB had wanted QT originally but didn't walk that far because the forecast is still for rain. When we got to QT, the food area that had been open yesterday was boarded off. They are remodeling. So BB got her pop and we walked back to the Hardee's that is next door to the hotel. Just in time too. The staff was just locking the doors. There were only two people working and they could not keep up to both the counter and the drive thru. As we walked past the bus we noticed the sleeping bag was still there. Soaked. We still don't know if someone/something was in it. It rained off and on most of the day. Other than the one walk we sat on the computer all day. I had time to label all my photo's back to Feb that I hadn't had time to do before. The evening meal was leftovers. The bottom of the food container was tinfoil and the top was thin plastic. The thin plastic melted from the hot food :( 210621 NC-KY 1 bus heading to Spartanburg SC (delivered) 1 van heading to Corbin KY (delivered) ... spending the night at Lexington KY Breakfast - we ate what we had purchased on Saturday. We are ready to pull out at 7:30 local. We had noticed yesterday that where the sleeping bag was by the building the two stacks of pallets that were there were now gone. No idea why they were there in the first place. Today when we were leaving there was a person standing by the back door. At first I thought maybe it was someone who had come to check on the building but 15 minutes later they were still standing there looking at what ever was in their hand. The truck behind us was facing the opposite direction as my bus and they made a u-turn to head out of the parking lot. We also made a u-turn to head out of the lot. This driveway is much better, no dragging the bottom. The same clerk was there this AM as checked us in on Saturday. I asked about the former Waffle House next door. He thought it had closed in 2016, right about the 1st time we came down to this area. So it may have still been open or still had signage then. 1st stop - one block from the hotel. The truck wash. No one in line. Easy job. We drove in rain and then it rained on it when it sat. 2nd stop was the rental car place in Spartansburg. It was about 10 miles away. This one is in a strip mall and at 8:30 AM there is plenty of room to park. I have written down the next streets I need to take and have looked at the map. But still I miss my final turn. I end up turning around in a church parking lot. 3rd stop is at the drop. The mechanic is there but the boss isn't yet, so I wait. The boss does show up almost right away and I am in and out in less than 15 minutes. My fuel gauge had been showing 15/16 in the hotel this AM and now it is barely over 1/2. I also did stick the tank when I was at the rental car place but I haven't found anywhere to park that is flat. When I stuck it, it was below where it should have been. I had called from the rental car place and gotten a trip to IL. Dispatch said any new orders for that location usually come in about two in the afternoon. So we take what there is now. We've been this route a few times, but BB does not have the map software on and we miss the turn. It may add another mile the way we went. 4th stop - Murphy gas station in Shelby for the rest room. We didn't fuel the car as we planned on being back. This station just opened and it is only a block from the shipper. On these trucks it will help. The first thing I look for is the keys in the box. None of the numbers match. Then I remember they leave the keys in the trucks. These keys are for some trucks that did not fit in the 'bull pen.' Even before I looked for the keys I noticed that my truck likely was not there. My truck was supposed to have a trailer. None here do. A person from the office had come out to help someone who's truck was behind a truck that wouldn't start. I told him my issue and he said he would help, as soon as he was done with the first problem. When he was done, he took a picture of my truck number from my bill of lading and sent it to someone in the office. That truck left Sunday. ??? I call dispatch, they call the office here and get the same answer. Now I have a dilemma. My company will pay me for showing up for a truck that is not there. Or, I can take a 2nd truck going in the same direction ... that will pay less than the show up pay. Working should pay more than not working. I came out OK :) Instead of taking a truck and trailer 600 miles, I am taking a passenger van 200 miles. Huge difference in pay. There only was one passenger van there, the only one I have ever seen there. And by the date it looked like it had been there for three weeks. No one else wanted it. But it was right on our route and we were already standing there. The lot was so full that we had to move three other trucks to get to the van. In all three the fuel was flat on 'E.' That is why the new Murphy will be nice. My van is on 1/3. That was good, too bad it didn't work out the way I planned. While I was sitting there doing my paperwork another of the shippers employees came to move the 'dead' truck and had to jump it again. Glad it wasn't mine. 5th stop - still in Shelby. Arby's we ordered inside and ate in the car. BB left 1st and after she left I noticed a mask where she had parked ... I had just lost mine so I stopped again and picked it up. Still haven't found mine so I'm guessing this one was mine. Before we get on I-40 there is road construction, and a scale. I don't need to cross the scales as I am under 10,000#'s today. But I am where I let a truck coming off the scale go in front of me. A wide load. And he takes up both lanes for the next 10+ miles. One car was ahead of me and that car was following the pilot car about a half a car length off his bumper for many miles. Three other cars were able to get ahead of me because the semi next to me wasn't always tailgating. One of those cars finally got tired of being behind the truck so he passed the pilot car on the shoulder. ... and got about three trucks ahead of us before being stopped by traffic. Traffic was bumper to bumper ahead or behind the wide load. Three hours down the road and I see cheap fuel. 6th stop is at a 'Wiggle's' ??? for fuel. i was down to an 1/8th of a tank with 100 miles to go. I put in 10 gallons. The van doesn't say what range I have or what mpg I am getting. I see that BB had just texted me. We are within a few miles of each other, she is at a rest area. 7th stop at the first rest area in KY. BB gets there a couple of minutes after I do. We'll meet again at the drop. I needed to stop here to look at the drop. I usually look at my drop on my laptop but I am picking up and dropping on the same day. I write down the road but do not look at the areal photos. I find all the right roads, but not the drop. I know when I get to a main highway I have gone to far. So I pull off into a car dealers lot to look again. And it starts to dump rain. I had remembered one cross street before the drop, but that road crosses the street I am on three times in a couple of miles. Now that I have looked, I head back. Then I turn into a business because I think I have gone too far again. I have. I am a half mile from the drop. 8th stop - Finally the drop. There is a sign on the fence but it has been raining too hard to see that far from the road. And the drop is up on the hill so all that I see is the driveaway. As I get to the drop it is dumping again. All the employees are standing in the shop waiting for the rain to let up so they can leave. I call my contact to tell him I am here. He is not here, he says he will be here in 10 minutes. So I wait, the rain finally lets up and I walk to the shop and talk to the person who seems the most interested. But he is too southern to really understand a lot of what he is saying. Rain almost quits so I get my plate off and grab my bag. Finally there is only one person left and me. THEN that last person asks if I am waiting for a ride. No, I am waiting for my contact so he can sign. This guy says he can sign, so he does. And I leave, the guy locks up behind me. ??? Dispatch from my local company calls. They have a trip from ND to MI for me. 9th stop - Philly's - before we go in, I call dispatch back to find out more about the truck. It is a tractor, the ones I won't drive. So that was a shorter conversation. BB thought to ask about that, I was only thinking about doing another long trip after being gone the last three weeks. The Philly's ... were not that good. Too much bread and not enough liquid. Mayo? Onions? No enough of something. They didn't taste bad, just not right. 10th stop was in Richmond for Culvers. A treat. BB wanted the scoop of the day. When they handed it to us they said 'chocolate.' So I asked if that is what the flavor of the day was. 'Chocolate covered strawberries.' BB doesn't say anything right away so I drive away, then she says there are not any strawberries in it. But doesn't say she wants be to go back so we keep driving. Until we get on the freeway, then she decides she is not going to eat it. 11th stop ... a Culvers in Lexington. Again she want's the flavor of the day, but this time I ask them what the flavor is ... Chocolate ... so we leave. BB finally looks it up on line and sees what 'Chocolate covered strawberries' should look like ... that is what she wanted. Now, a half hour later, she finally eats the chocolate she has ... 12th and final stop, also in Lexington. Comfort Inn. We have stayed here many times. I had not seen this but between the rest area and my drop, BB saw a cow walking down the freeway with a pickup following it. I am pretty sure I would have seen this if it had been there when I went past ??? Load board US - 296 IA - 102 /100 MN - 2 WI - 2 NC - 11 NC only put out semi tractors going to IN. Like the one I did a few months ago. No new tree trucks today. We have the rental car for two more days so we may pick up something else if it is right in route like this one is. 210622 NC-KY 1 van heading to Corbin KY (delivered) ... spending the night at Lexington KY No alarm this AM, but BB was still up at 6:30. I was up shortly after. Breakfast was hot food, but we needed to wear plastic gloves. Gloves but no masks. We had omelettes and sausage. People could eat in the breakfast area but we went back to our room. It look us longer than the usual hour and a half to get out of the hotel. Very 1st stop this AM was a block from the hotel. To get some oil for the rental car. It is past due for an oil change and is just touching the bottom of the dip stick. We are not real picky travelers, we would rather pick up the car when we get there than wait for them to clean it. But they weren't bothering to clean this one. The first thing we noticed was the sand in the trunk. Someone must have had this car to the beach. Nothing new was on the load board so we decided to take the shortest way home even though it has a toll. Lots of freeways we could take to get back home that are all within an hours time. Fairly early in the AM there were two possible trips we could grab. One was a short trip from near Indy up to Chicago. The drop was close to I-80 so it wouldn't add a lot of miles. But it was all back roads, no freeway. The 2nd one was right on our route heading down the freeway to Kansas City. IF everything went like clockwork, and we ran two long days, we could do it without any extra time on the car. Too close, too many things could go wrong so we passed on that one too. Our load board was down for a while and when we looked at it after we past Indy we saw a trip from South Bend to IL. Again, a lot of extra miles for very little money. And when we saw it listed we would now have to back track. By 3 PM it is too late to do anything else without adding days to the rental. We will be heading home. 1st stop today was at the rest area near Henryville just north of Louisville. 2nd stop was McCallisters Deli in Brownsburg. We aren't in a rush and they had outdoor seating so that is where we ate. I hadn't looked at the whole menu and kept changing my mind. And I could have, maybe should have, changed my mind again. I had a while chicken salad croissant sandwich, plus potato salad. And a 'pure cane' lemonaid. I should have just had a cup of soup. 3rd stop a rest area near Oakwood IL 4th stop was a rest area near Gilson IL 5th stop was a Culvers in Moline. This time BB did get the scoop of the day. But it wasn't much better than what she had yesterday, but it was what she ordered. The last two days I have noticed that the Culvers malts no longer have a pile of berries at the bottom when I am done. There is nothing left. They must have cut the fruit per serving in ½ or more. We had planned on running a little later tonight, that is why we stopped for food before we got to a motel. But once back on the freeway we see the clouds and BB checks the weather. Nasty. So we stop at the next hotel and get inside before the rain and possible hail, hit. It looks like waves of storms will keep coming through until after midnight. One plus for this trip, this rental car, is the mileage. We are getting 50 mpg plus. So half as much fuel on a 1,000 mile trip home. This last fuel fill, my range started at 640. The miles driven plus the range has gotten up over 750 miles at times. On a 14 gallon tank. Which is what the gauge is showing 53+ miles per gallon, at 70 mph. Last night we sent in the paperwork for both the bus and the van to billing. We got paid for the van this AM but haven't seen the pay for the bus yet. Load board US - 292 IA - 105 / 103 MN - 2 WI - 1 NC - 4 NC never did add any more trips out of the location I was at so I'm glad I took what I did. They did add more tractors going to Indy like the one I did so that would have been a good option. Good pay too. There is an RV trip to ND which makes the local companies truck more attractive. But it is still a tractor. As of now, we should get home mid afternoon tomorrow. Then we plan on working local on Thursday and Friday and again Monday and Tuesday. It is not often that they have that much local but we will be available. We may also be available again the next Thursday and Friday. We have talked about only doing local for both companies for the next two months. The price of cars and hotels are up and we both have appointments we need to set up. We'll see how that goes. 210623 NC-KY 1 van heading to Corbin KY (delivered) ... spending the night at home Woke up during the night and it sounded like the AC was making a funny noise. Then I realized it was raining. At breakfast it was still raining. Finally something for breakfast here. For over a year this location has not had anything for breakfast. Today we had a choice of a sandwich with meat or without meat. And it came with a muffin. And we also got cups of juice. A little over our usual time and we were back on the road. Where the rain was to have hit the hardest last night there was still water sitting in the ditches. But another couple hours north and some of the corn still looks like onions. 1st stop was in Janesville at a Kwik Star / Kwik Trip to use the restroom. 2nd stop was for fuel at the Pilot. Gas was $.16 cheaper at Pilot. Once we were at the pump, BB wanted me to put in more fuel than I thought we needed so we had a short back and forth. After swiping my card, I was going to select the lowest grade gas ... but the price was wrong. While we were standing there, the price went up by $.16 :( It all adds up when you are putting in 4-1/2 gallons. 3rd stop was the lot to pick up our car in Forest City. The RV's from the employee lot are now in our overflow lot. The couple I talked to was going to BC. One of them was having an issue so they were going to switch for another RV. There are still seven on the board after they left with theirs. The place they are going is a 'burb of Vancouver. Next stop was food in Forest City. The taco and pizza place. Both BB and I got ONE enchilada each. Still a lot of food. We have eaten here before so we knew not to get 2-3 enchiladas. Busy place. The smallest pizza was twice as much or I might have gotten one of those. While here I called local dispatch. The person I talked to today thought the ND truck was a trash truck. That I might do. It helps that my long haul company has an RV to be dropped close to there. It would be more long days but could be done. But, I never got a call back for the ND truck or anything else. No problem, we don't need the work and could use a day off. Four and a half gallons was the correct amount of gas. The gauge was just touching the 3/8th line where it was supposed to be. 50 mpg is twice what BB uses for an estimate so we added a few dollars to our daily total just on the fuel. BB keeps a rolling estimate as we travel. We got home making twice what she estimated when we left CA and three times what we would have made if we had dead headed home from our 1st leg. The daily pay was three times what it would have been, of course when you work more days the total total should go up. 4th stop - Fort Snelling for me, to wait for BB to drop the car at MSP. No one was at the counter when she dropped and when they did check the car in the messed up on the fuel. They billed us for $90 of fuel because we did not return it on full. We also did not pick it up on full and we have a receipt that shows that. Calls to the agent rolled to corp. And BB was on hold for a half hour the first time and then we were home. She called again later and was also put on hold. So she tried their web site. So far they have sent us a 2nd receipt showing we own the $90 even though she sent pictures of the receipt showing it was not full at pick up. It will get resolved but not sure when. I got paid this AM, those was a 'good run' pay wise. Not the best we have done but also we were did no work for four of those three weeks. There is one truck from MN to MN but I see that it is up by Fargo to the cities. It would work if we hadn't said we were available for the local company. Load board US - 293 IA - 102 / 100 MN - 4 WI - 2 |
