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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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.. the trip continues from HERE 220114 MN-IL 1 trash truck to Wheeling IL (delivered) ... spending the night at DeForest WI Breakfast, not sure why but we have to ask the front desk for any sandwiches to nuke. The rest of the stuff is sitting out. 7:30 AM and I am out the door. ICE. I call BB and let her know, she will be leaving sometime later. I get BB's placards mounted inside my truck, the tape does not stick to the windows so I use extra tape and hang it from the frame. A few turns down city streets and I am at my first fuel stop. By the time I am done fueling it is after 8 AM so I call my dispatcher. Four items this AM. I couldn't do my checking because dispatch had done something wrong in the computer. And I asked which location is the drop, they say the address on the shippers paperwork has been closed 'for years.' They have no answer on why they wanted me to fuel 90 miles out of route, I can fuel at the customers property. And I told them I lost my placard in case anyone contacts them when finding it. I did not ask about which route I should take, so I am going 'my way.' 1st stop is in La Crosse at the Kwik Trip fueling station. Fueling station only. No store. It is part of a huge Kwik Trip complex that includes a warehouse, training center, bakery, etc. Eight fuel island that all have CNG, some have LNG, gas, diesel. I don't see her, but BB pulls onto the cross street right behind me as I am leaving town. Today I am the one driving faster. As soon as the traffic clears, I am doing 60 mph. BB keeps it at 50-55 mph until we have the first 40 miles behind us. Then the roads start to clear and I finally set the cruise. 2nd stop is in Lake Mills at another Kwik Trip. BB has stopped a few times but still pulls in right behind me. I fuel again, I am down to about 1/2 a tank. Coming through Milwaukee I am in the center lane when I see a hammer in my lane, in line for my tires. I have no where to swerve, there is traffic on both sides of me. So I hit and and hopefully did not throw it. Within just the last couple of nights I was looking at some 'bad driver' video's online and one was of a driver who stopped on a city street, got out and threw a hammer at the car behind him, breaking their windshield. I am always very away of what and how tires can throw debris we hit on the roadway. 3rd stop is for fuel, outside the fence at the drops property. Or not. I had found the fueling station listed online on a CNG site, and looked at it on Google maps. But I don't see it now. So I find place to park and call the number on my paperwork. No name is listed on my paperwork and the phone is automated. So I enter the 1st extension listed, then the 2nd, 3rd ... after six try's and no answer at any of them I decide to walk to the building. I needed to find where to fuel before I could deliver and then where to deliver. I walk in the closest building and into the first office, I don't get much for straight answers but the person follows me outside. We have talked for a bit before I finally realize that this guy is willing to sign for this truck, right here on the street with no fuel added. I give him the paperwork to start signing while I call dispatch and explain the situation. I am good to drop. Kind of caught me off guard so I didn't have my stuff packed or cleaned out. I'm doing that while the guy is checking and he is ready to drive away so I have him hand me the last of my stuff. Later I realize that I didn't take any final pictures. But I do have signed paperwork. I'm a block away from the original address so I call BB to find out where she is. As often, we get on some side tangent and I finally say I have to hang up, my hands are freezing. I hadn't put my gloves on, I just grabbed everything and started walking. Local dispatch calls sometime during all this so I let it go to voicemail. When I listen to it I find out they want me to do local work yet today. Nope, and I am not going to tell them that I am in Chicago (where they had a trip for me to go) I just call back and say I am NA. We try to get my paperwork sent in but we don't have a way to write on a screenshot of our tolls on our phones so we need to wait until this evening when I can do it on my laptop in paint. Still in Wheeling we stop at a Jimmy Johns for food, it is 2 PM so we order the Slim Jim's. Baskin Robins/Duncan Donuts is next door be I just get a cookie from JJ instead. Our plan is to head ... back the way we came. It will be tomorrow before we are near Tomah and need to decide if we are going home or back out on the road. 4th stop is in DeForest at the Comfort Inn. Masks are required in this county again. I had texted my brother earlier about his favorite food in the Nook as there is one in town. He told me and when I said where we were ... he said they closed an hour ago. Opps, hadn't looked at that. Both BB and I were looking at their online menu when he said that. So we order from the 'family restaurant' instead. French Dip for me. Good food. They forgot to send ketchup for BB's fries so she wasn't happy about that, her wrap was good though. I also got a piece of blueberry cheesecake. That was good too. Load baord US - 299 IA - 83/79 They did put some CA trips out there but one at a time and none that we can tie together. If we do not leave tomorrow we will not go to CA until next month. There are a few pairs of trips but none that pay. Cars out of Bozeman are $225 a day instead of the usual $100. The other locations aren't any better. Two possible trips are taking one RV to Minot and following in our car. The other is taking another trash truck, this one to Lincoln. We have been looking at that one before but with the storm coming in we didn't want to take it then. It is still there. It is shorter than the ND trip but it will be closer to our auction trucks that no one but me seems to be interested in. Or we may just go home for the weekend. LOG 7:30 - La Crosse WI - leave Comfort Inn 7:45 - La Crosse WI - fuel at the Kwik Trip alternative fueling station 11:00 - Lake Mills WI - fuel at Kwik Trip 1:15 - Wheeling IL - Arrive at drop 4:15 - DeForest WI - Arrive at Comfort Inn 5:30 - DeForest WI - PU food from DeForest Family Restaurant 220115 MN-IL 1 trash truck to Wheeling IL (delivered) ... spending the night at home BB was up a little after 4 AM, I crawled out at 6 AM. The alarm did not go off until 6:30. We spent most of the time talking about which trip to take. There are a lot of options but once we start looking at the money most don't pay. Most trips we are looking at should take a half a day and we have a day and a half. 79 There are two trips on the load board boing to Bozeman that have been out there for three weeks. We have looked at them often but rental cars have gone up again. Finally this AM I am looking at it again and think I have figured out how to do the trip. I missed something but talking about it, BB looks at the rental car price with our discount. Usually our discount is about 10-20%. For this one it is 50%. She reserves us a car. We grab our usual breakfast. Now that we have picked a trip, we are ready to leave as soon as we can call dispatch at 8 AM. 8 AM comes and I call, no answer so I re-dial. After I re-dial about 10 times we decide we need to get going to stay on schedule. I finally had texted the terminal manager asking if they were open today. Usually they will only not be open on Saturday if there are les than 10 trips on the loadboard, and then they will take the trips off the loadboard for the weekend. Last night they were still putting new trips on the load board right up to 5 PM. And the load board ended at 79, a long way from -0-. Today we decide to take I-90 where I-90 and I-94 split. We haven't heard from dispatch and I have seen before that they are giving out trips even when the office is closed. And it will get us closer to Dodge Center if we choose that route. 1st stop is the rest area by Sparta. Neither of us had noticed the east bound rest area yesterday but I remember stopping at it in the past. So today we are looking for it. Today it isn't snowing and we both can look. We see ... where it was, it has been completely removed. BB keeps dialing at random times but still no answer. Finally I get a reply to my text 'Closed, snowed in.' Too bad, we were going to take a couple of trips that were 'hot' and had been on the load board for three weeks. There was a break in the weather so it wouldn't have been below zero when we delivered. Not sure if we will still be interested in it on money. We had also talked about doing the Lincoln NE trip that we had looked at earlier. Now we talk about it again. But we finally rule that out because of the ride. I generally stay away from the trash trucks completely and doing two back to back trips is likely not a good idea. Later in the day we walk about it again when we see a couple of trash trucks in transport. 2nd stop is at a Loves in St Charles because I see that gas is $.20 less than most places, and I am down to a range of 40 miles. We did see two enclosed Amish buggies today, one up close as we pulled off to go to Loves. Before Rochester we decide we are just going to head home, for now. 3rd stop was in Rochester at Erbert & Gerbert's. BB wanted a Firehouse Sub but there was an issue with the website or the sandwich was out of season. So we went t Erbert's instead. She was planning on ordering online 'when we got closer.' We got really close, I think we were in the parking lot when she realized that she had forgotten to order online. A few people ahead of us but not bad. I tried their featured Philly instead of my usual and it wasn't that good. Back to my favorite. 4th stop was home. The first thing I do is get a ride down to the repair shop and pickup the car going to the graveyard. The battery is only two weeks old and is still able to start the car even though it isn't being re-charged. Also there is no power steering because of the issue but there is no traffic so I am able to get it the mile plus home and parked. Now it can sit here until someone hauls it away. Later our family needs a ride to get their 'new' car. New to them. They looked at one car in person and took the deal. After driving 'crash' for a few years they are not too picky. It has wheels and runs, I'll take it. :) We are not sure what we are doing Monday yet. We may get in position tomorrow by staying at a hotel closer to our next trip. Someone finally took the Lincoln truck we had looked at so that is not an option for Monday. Most likely we will do some more auction trucks. The shipper put out eight three days ago, I took two, someone else took one so five are still there. We could get our first one moved by the time anyone else puts any new trips out. We may even do two, or all five if nothing else shows up. LOG 8:15 - Leave Comfort Inn in DeForest WI 10:00 - Sparta WI - rest area 11:15 - St Charles MN - Loves for fuel 11:45 - Rochester MN - Erbert & Gerbert's 2:00 - home 220116 MN-IL ... spending the night at Albert Lea MN We didn't have any plans for today, we just sort of floated though the day. Finally about 2 PM I decided I would switch out the new battery from the car going to the graveyard. But no wrenches I could find would fit. So I went and bought a new set of wrenches that didn't work. So finally I just used a vise grip. But all that took an hour and now we will be running after dark if we want to get to Worthington. So we re-route and head to Worthington via Albert Lea and stop there. IF all of the Worthington trips are gone, we are still closer the RV's. 1st stop is our usual in Owatonna for gas at the Fleet Farm. 2nd and final stop is our hotel in Comfort Inn. After an hour in the hotel we walk next door to the truckstop and get their idea of 'food to go.' We pick what we want and they dish it up. Right now we are watching for trips to the SE. Weather to the west is still unstable but to the SE it should be cleared by the time we get there. Or we will just stay here. |
