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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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211008 MN-MN 1 pickup to Shakopee MN (delivered) 1 trash truck to Proctor MN (delivered) ... spending the night at home We were up at our usual time, but it was raining today so we didn't take a walk. So with no walk we could have gotten going at 8 AM but still waiting until 9 AM. Also I hadn't wanted to get going too early so IF there was new work that showed up that we could print paperwork before we left. The new work that we were waiting for showed up a little after 8 AM, but none of it was of interest to us. So today we have one 44 mile trip. I suggest we pack our overnight bags, BB starts to and then puts it back. We have too much to get done at home so we will not (?) be taking any trips that require staying overnight. (hmmm) We head out at 9 AM and get as far as North St Paul and my local dispatcher calls. They want to know if I can go to Proctor today? BB and I say a couple of things to each other and say 'OK.' As soon as we hang up we realize we don't know where the truck is picking up and how late the drop closes. So I call back. The trip is picking up in Dodge Center (90 miles south) and we don't know the close time. I explain that I am in the middle of something else but we can do the trip. We make a U-turn at the next exit and head back to their office. 1st stop - Dispatch office - As I walk in the office another person in the office is walking my paperwork to the dispatcher. Then I realize there is only one dispatcher today instead of three. Before I get out of the office, BB is calling me on the phone saying it isn't going to work but by then I already have the paperwork. Lots of second guessing ourselves over the next half hour, decisions made on the fly are not always the best ones. 2nd stop, Maplewood - it is in our home stopping grounds so we know the area. We pull in to the address but do not see any trucks. A semi has pulled in ahead of us with the company name on it so we park near him and ask. He directs us to two other people near by. They point to a lone pick-up in a field, the field has been worked up except for a few feet around the fence line. I walk the block plus to get to the truck, I am not going to drive back there. There is a backhoe, a dozer, a semi and a truck inside the fence. It looks like the area may have just been leveled off after storing dirt? Or maybe digging out an old trash pile? I don't ask. A semi is close by and they didn't leave very deep ruts so I just put the pickup in drive and go for it. It gets a little rough in spots but I'm not going to slow down once I am moving. I'm out :) of the dirt and on the blacktop. I pull up near the people who had pointed out my truck so they can clean out some of the remaining things. This one has a fuel tank in the back but that stays. We do a quick inspection and GO. We are now committed to just getting both trips done. We could have had dispatch fax the paperwork to the next shipper, that would have saved us a half to an hour of valuable time. Truck routes, with both trips today I need to stay off of I-35E. Basic Google says I-35E is the shortest or quickest route and I am DOT in both trucks. 3rd stop - Shakopee - Third time this week. I know the routine but this inspector needs the account number also. Glad I have it, makes things go faster. BB has stopped for fuel but we still get their at about the same time. Our 'I'm here' texts cross ... Things are looking better now, we have made good time on the first trip but it is still going to be a long day. We hadn't calculated the extra three hours to go to Dodge Center and back. We were thinking the trip would start somewhere in the metro and heading north. 4th stop - Kwik Trip in Owatonna for food and restroom. Today we don't even want to spend time waiting for 'fast food.' That's OK with me, it's been a long time since I have had one of their rib sandwiches. 5th stop - the 2nd shipper in Dodge Center. As I walk in the person behind the glass tells me where to find my keys. There are others in the lock box but she knows which one I am here for. The lot is less than half full and then I see the name on the truck. That makes it much easier to find. Used? I was wondering about that ... We do our inspection and at some point I realize something is not right. We are not supposed to talk to any one here, ALL communication is supposed to be with our company dispatcher only. But a driver see's me and stops (I didn't wave him down, more like I was sitting there with my hands in the air, confused?) So he stops and comes over and looks at the truck, and he calls an inspector. Neither can help so I call dispatch. Then another yard person stops and looks at the truck. Then I talk to the dispatcher again ... who stresses 'we go through the proper channels.' FINALLY I get the OK from the office to run with the truck. I'm OK with that, they just have their rules we are supposed to follow. Somewhere in this timeline dispatch seemed surprised I was just in Dodge Center now. Doing the math, if dispatch would have had to find someone else, that could have taken an hour. Then the drivers usually take an hour to get ready and get there ... it would have been pretty close to the same time as we are here now. 6 PM close at the drop. When we took the trip I thought we MIGHT be able to get it to Proctor by 4 PM. Later we were thinking it might be 8 PM at the drop. Now after finishing trip one, for the other company, and the delay here it is going to be tight. 64 mph. And all the mapping software we use is set for 70 ... and it will be rush hour on a Friday night heading north. Fun. 6th stop - Rest area near Finlayson. I have no good idea of how many miles I have left to go so I call the drop to let them know I am coming but don't know when I'll be there. They say they will let the shop know to have someone wait. About a mile from the exit we hit fog. At some places it is down to a car length or less. And I don't know the area, only kind of. And I have not looked at any maps so I am going from memory of past trips in the area. Luckily one of those trips was a week or two ago when we drove from Duluth to Hill City. 7th stop - drop in Proctor. It is still before 6 PM because the drivers were just starting to back their trucks into the sheds. One person walked over to help. Once I gave him the inspection paperwork he did an actual inspection, that was after he had already signed the other two documents. Next time I looked around, all the trucks were parked in the sheds and the other drivers were gone. Our contact says the truck was just sent down to Dodge Center on Tuesday ... so this is the one we had seen on the load board for a couple of days. I could have moved it twice, once for each company :) We were in and out in about 10 minutes. It was now a few minutes after 6 PM. We had made it, but now we have another 2-3 hours home ... in the dark. And we now rarely drive in the dark anymore. The fog is still as thick as it was starting back, but we now knew where we were going and how far the fog would last. 8th stop was in Cloquet for food. There were signs on the freeway so we knew there was food at this exit and we were just going to stop at one of the first places. One of those first places was Erberts and Gerberts and they had not been listed on the signs. But :( they are out of my sandwich. One of the help was giving us a long story about not being able to get ingredients and now that they can get them again the price has gone up so they need to re-price their sandwiches ... We each got a sandwich and a cookie. I drove the 1st hour plus. Somewhere after dark there was a deer grazing in the cut grass in the six feet that was mowed next to the road. A few miles later there was a huge fresh blood splat on the highway. But no close calls for us 9th stop in North Branch at the Kwik Trip for fuel, restroom stop and driver switch. BB will drive the last hour home so I can take a phone call. When we head past Wyoming, the Dead End Haunted Hayride is in full swing. (It isn't until the next day I realize that Halloween is only three weeks away) 10th and final stop is home. Just under 12 hours. So it wasn't that long of a day. It was the pressure of the rush, the deadlines and the dark that made it a long day. Sometime during the day there was a IA to Duluth trip on the load board and it was dated yesterday. So someone must have taken it right away so we hadn't seen it and then backed out. If we had seen it would would have done one leisurely trip to Duluth starting last night and been home by mid-afternoon, if we didn't hang out in Duluth for the day. Load board US - 133 IA - 47/45 MN -0- WI - 13 We are likely going to be doing things differently when we are staying local if things are still as they are now. The short trip today paid five times what my local company would have paid me. Their longer local trips are paying half again as much. But for the long haul I do want to stay with the local company so I will likely go back to being a 'quarter end' driver. Off for the next week? As of now, but life is subject to change. |
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