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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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.. the trip continues from HERE 220215 NC-KS 1 tree truck to Olathe KS ... spending the night at Lebanon TN Breakfast - for me. The rest of the ice cream and the rest of the cookies :) I thought we might get going earlier today by not going down to get breakfast but that really didn't save any time. 1st stop was for fuel in Spartansburg at a QT/Quik Trip. Somewhere this AM BB and I got to talking about loosing it, our minds. Being forgetful. Then she tells me that yesterday I went into a closed scale. I can't place it or know how I did it. I try to be 100% focused when I get close to a scale. Maybe it said OPEN when I could see it and not when she could? I did follow another truck in ??? 2nd stop was the shipper in Shelby. The lot is almost empty today, other days we have to move trucks to get at ours. Today they are are all single deep with open spots. All checks good, and today we have a locked area to put our luggage. 3rd stop is the Murphy gas station two blocks away. Some days these trucks are on fumes. Today I have a range of 57 miles but the cheapest fuel is right here. BB heads to the airport as soon as I am ready to leave the shipper. At the station all islands are full with people backing in and out of spots because of the crowd. I have a big truck so I sit by the end and wait ... After a while the person gets out of their car and starts to pump fuel. ??? But all I can do is wait. When I do get to the pump I have to pay inside before fueling. Lucky for me this person will turn the pump on without me telling them how much fuel I want. I have no idea, the tank does not say and I just picked the truck up two blocks ago. $130 of fuel my first fill. 42 gallons. Lots of road construction in SC. About 20 miles between here and Greer. But first I have 10 miles of narrow roads to get to the freeway, my 'lane assist' was on almost constantly. Just before I got to the freeway I caught up to a semi, then I followed him onto the freeway. When that semi got close to the 55 mph speed limit through road construction he was hitting the breaks. So me and another truck followed him for 20 miles. Concrete median barriers on both sides for most of the way. I was just fine. BB had returned the rental car and was waiting by the time I got to the airport. 4th stop is back to Schlotzsky's. Today the drive through was not backed up onto the street. Not quite. Not when we were in line. But we did have to wait in the drive through line to get to where there was one open spot that we could park. A line both inside and out. They did something wrong with my sandwich today. Too much meat and it didn't taste right. Good, but not right. We sat outside, alone. The inside was packed. Forgot to mention. Last night when I went to BJ's. I could only see one empty table and at least two groups were waiting. Packed. Not too much concern for Covid anymore. Coming through road construction we see a cop with a truck pulled over right before the scale. Neither of us saw any sign that said the scale was open or closed, but it was open so we went in. Had we not been following another truck we might not have noticed it. 5th stop is the NC rest area near Waynesville. While we were there my current dispatcher called. They were asking about damage I did to someone else's truck. No. I don't think so. The customer now claims, a week later, that I hit someone else's truck in the lot and are filing a claim. We will see where this goes. I sent them pictures later tonight of what my truck looked like. No damage to my truck, not sure how I damaged the other one ??? I did have one drive that we were coming up on that was all over the road before we got up to them. Then when we were almost ready to pass he came over with all left tires in our lane so I blew the horn. He drifted back in his lane but I didn't have a good feeling. But then the 3rd left lane opened up and I was able to get around him. Still all over the road as far as I could see him. The only other driver of note was the one who wouldn't let me pass. He'd be riding his breaks at 60 mph and when I tried to pass at 65 mph going up a hill, he'd pace me and then get ahead of me. Finally there were trucks needing to merge in and I was blocking him from getting in the left lane so he had to back off. After that he passed me and I never saw him again. 6th stop is the Loves near Lenoir TN for cheaper fuel. 7th and final stop is the Comfort Inn in Lebanon. O'Charley's is just across the parking lot so we got food from there. I got a French Dip and Potato soup. Good, more than I needed. Load board US - 503 IA - 236/235 Tomorrow - The weather channel is saying 8-12 inches of snow on Wednesday night into Thursday in Kansas City. We can't make delivery (unless we leave tomorrow at 4 AM) before that. So BB is looking at a whole bunch of what if's. Then she looks at the national weather forecast. They say they don't know how much or where the storm is going to track. So we will wait and see. No plan for a next trip yet. Once we drop, it will take us almost 24 hours to get back to MN and drop the rental and then back to IA. Lots of work and the total numbers will keep going up until the end of the month. LOG 7:00 - Leave Comfort Inn - Irmo SC 8:00 - Spartansburg SC - Quik Trip - fuel 9:00 - Shelby NC - shipper 9:45 - Shelby NC - Murphy Gas 11:00 - GSP Airport SC - pick up BB 11:15 - Greer SC - Schlotzsky's Deli 1:30 - Waynesville NC - rest area 3:30 - Lenoir TN - Loves 5:45 - Lebanon TN - Comfort Inn 6:30 - Lebanon TN - O'Charley's 220216 NC-KS 1 tree truck to Olathe KS ... spending the night at Olathe KS Breakfast - Both BB and I had breakfast today. Eggs, sausage and juice. We leave the hotel at 7:15, a few minutes earlier than usual. Google Maps showed it was a few minutes quicker to avoid Nashville so we followed the other route. Getting on that road took a while but the road was wide open once we were on it. That was about 8 AM. Road construction was supposed to start at 9 AM with lane closures. So narrow window to get through. 1st stop was the welcome center in Oak Grove KY for a rest room break 2nd stop was for fuel in Paducah at the 5 Star. Gas was four cents cheaper at Walmart but it would have been harder to get to and to get in and out of. 3rd stop was in Mount Vernon for food. Plan had been Arby's but then we thought of Steak and Shake. As BB was looking it up, she saw that there is now a McCallister's next to it. So McCallister's it was. BB ordered online so the food was ready when we got there. No tables outdoors so we stood by our truck. It was close to 60 degrees here today. No five second rule when you are standing in the parking lot eating :( 4th stop was past St Louis at Wright City, a rest area. 5th stop was for fuel in Boonville at Pilot. My mileage has been going down most of the day. We did have a nice tail wind for about 40 miles. Other than that it has been a stiff cross wind. Strong enough that it is kicking off my cruise. And on the Ford's, the truck has to be re-started to re-set the cruise. After stopping here it did not re-set so I may need to call dispatch before I deliver. Not sure if the no-cruise light is a a warning light to the delivering company. 6th and final stop was the Holiday Inn in Olathe. Once we are in we order sandwiches online at Joe's BBQ across the parking lot. Our other choice was Johnny's Italian. But we thought that would be too much food. BB spent a lot of time looking for a hotel. She wanted one with laundry, she wanted a Choice brand hotel, she wanted one with food near. This one does not have laundry and is not a Choice. But it is close to the rental car which is important if we do get much snow. We are now less than 10 miles from the drop and 'should?,' maybe, be on the south edge of the snow. We have a new hotel app that we have been looking at and one hotel in the area was about 1/3 of this hotel but we are not sure we are comfortable with using a 3rd party app. Yet. Forecast is still for snow overnight. We will decide what to do in the AM. Rental car is for noon but hopefully we can change that if needed. Load board US - 527 IA - 265/262 NC now has two trucks to MN :( and we are in KS. One of the CA RV's we were looking at was taken early AM, but by close of day there is two again. There are also two RV's going to FL but we can not find a rental car to get us out of FL yet. We can call on work for Friday in the AM tomorrow. It will take us most of the day to get the rental car back to MN. LOG 7:15 - Leave Comfort Inn - Lebanon TN 8:45 - Oak Grove KY - rest area 10:15 - Peducah KY - 5 Stars - fuel 12:00 - Mount Vernon IL - McCallister's Deli 2:30 - Wright City MO - rest area 4:15 - Boonsville MO - Pilot - fuel 6:15 - Olathe KS - Holiday Inn 6:45 - Olathe KS - Joes BBQ 220217 NC-KS 1 tree truck to Olathe KS ... spending the night at Olathe KS Up before 6 AM looking out the window. It is already snowing so the forecast was correct. No chance of getting delivered before the storm hits. Breakfast - Western omelettes and bacon, plus good juice and yogert. At 8 AM we call in for the two CA trips we have been watching. I get put on hold and by the time I am talking to dispatch the trips we want are gone. Dispatch tries to talk us into something else but we aren't sure we can make it back today so we do not want to commit to anything. Also we like to do all our math before taking a trip, not do it on the fly because someone offered the trip. We watch the weather both on TV and out the window. Early on I call the front desk and ask for a late check out. The storm looks like it should wind down by 2 PM. But the latest checkout they can give us is 12 noon. So I say 'OK, if you need to kick us out, we will just sit in your parking lot until the roads are clear.' About 10 minutes later the front desk calls us back. We can stay as long as we need, they will put the room 'out of service' so that it does not need to be cleaned today. :) About noon I watch a car trying to come up the exit ramp from the freeway. It can go backwards but as soon as it goes forward it spins and slides sideways. This went on for a while and then all I could see is the top foot of the car, and now it is out of sight. I assume it was sliding sideways down the freeway side of the ramp. That was it. We are staying another night. BB made a new reservation and I called the drop. The drop is fine with getting the truck tomorrow ... and tells me about their truck that did not make it in one piece and took weeks to get parts to get fixed. The forecast has been showing the snow will move out about 3 PM and that has not changed all day. But reports are saying that KC normally gets 18 inches of snow per year. They have gotten over 6 inches in the last 12 hours so this is not something they are prepared for. Once the snow moved out the sun came out, but now we had changed all of our plans. 100+ semi's and cars were involved in a pileup in IL from the same storm. And now I see that our midwestern terminals are closed until further notice. We spend a lot of time looking for the right trip. Now we are back to rental cars being NA or two/three times what we can pay and still make money. Finally at about 6:30 we decide it is time to eat, we have looked at a lot of places but we will be walking so we want something close. We go for Johnny's Italian at the hotel next door. We try ordering online and we have to go through a third party ordering system which we will not do. So I call. Finally on the 3rd call someone finally answer's and puts me on hold. After 7 minutes on hold we decide to walk over. We get there and they tell us they are closing at 7 PM, it is now 6:57. When we tell them we would like to order to go they agree to take our order. It takes about a half hour for us to get our food. Two other tables must have just been ordering when we got there based on when they got their food. A few others came in, tried to come in but not a big crowd. Food was good. We ordered lasagna, it came with salad which BB wanted. I ordered a side of soup. Plus we ordered a desert. Load board US - 565 IA - 287 Plans for tomorrow are now to pick up the rental car about 10 AM, drop by 11 AM. On a good day, it is about six hours back to Forest City, which will be about 5 PM. We could be to Albert Lea by 6 PM. Then on Saturday it would take us another five hours to drop the car and get back to Forest City. So it will be sometime after noon on Saturday when we head out to ... somewhere. 220218 NC-KS 1 tree truck to Olathe KS (delivered) 2 RV's to El Cajon CA (Saturday) ... spending the night at Albert Lea MN Breakfast - not the same spread as yesterday so I just had yogurt and juice. Today both of us called in to try to get the trips we wanted. We got them, but because they are not 'no-two' we will be getting $300 less than if we had gotten the two trips that were available yesterday. We are going to El Cajon and we are going the southern route. We had talked about leaving out early this AM, we could get the car at 7 AM and the drop was also open at 7 AM but BB is watching the traffic cams and the roads are still not great. We have the rental car for 10 AM so we head out to pick it up at that time. The sun is up and the snow is melting in places. Streets are still bad. Unless the hard pack has started to break up so the blacktop is heating the snow, the roads are still bad. The couple of miles to the rental car are slow, it is hard to tell where the roads are. The plan had been to pull in the back driveway and drive thru the parking lot at the rental car place. 1st stop - drop BB off at the rental car - Not everything is plowed so I just parked on the street and let her off. Then I had to take a longer route because trucks are not supposed to be here first of all. And if they are here they are not supposed to take the u-turn needed to get on the next street. And at this point I did not want to as it was hard pack and up hill from a stop sign. Coming up the wider street it was still up hill, but there was a clear spot in the center lane so that is where I headed. Then a car was coming up on my right so I wasn't sure how it would play out but then I got a green arrow so I took a right from the center lane before the car got there and before I came to a stop. Whew. Cross country streets were bad, barely plowed. When I get near the gas station I see another 'no trucks' sign. I'm under 26,000# so I am a 'pickup.' 2nd stop is the Phillips 66 in Olathe. I put in two gallons to keep the low fuel light from coming on. Then I pulled to a clearer part of the parking lot and we moved the luggage from the truck to the rental car. On the way to the drop there was one place where there was a 'truck bugger' that was about knee high on the street. No one was taking it on and then a snow plow came behind me and took care of it. 3rd stop was the drop. I have been here before so I knew the layout. Most of the lot is not plowed so I call my contact. Park it anywhere and bring in the keys. When I went in, he was in a meeting so someone else signed, sight unseen again. Heading home it looks like we missed the 1st sign. We had planned on taking I-435 East but we never saw the sign and BB did not have the GPS on. That would have been a little quicker as I-35 still had some slow downs. 4th stop was at McAlister's Deli in Liberty. BB had ordered ahead so it was grab and go. Good thing as there was a line to order food. By Liberty the roads are clear but wet, we used a lot of washer fluid those first miles. At some point we pass a local cop that is doing under the speed limit. There is one car ahead of me and a pickup behind me when we pass. The car ahead of me slows to the cops speed as soon as he is passed. I know what the speed limit is and I know I am doing it so I keep going. Not too far down the road I see the flashing lights in my rear view. But within seconds I see that he is after the pickup, not me. The pickup wasn't speeding, it was holding with me before we caught up to the police car so they either did something else improper or their plate flagged the cop for some reason. Whew for me :) 5th stop was Osceola for a rest area 6th stop was the WalMart in Ankeny for fuel. Enough cheaper to get off the freeway a ways to get some fuel. From here I called dispatch to get copies of our paperwork so we can get permits. They aren't sure what I am asking so I finally just agree to what they want to do. 7th stop - Dows - rest area - to call for permits. The lines are busy and when I do get someone they take my number to have someone call me back. We realize that is not going to work with me driving and BB does not like taking or making phone calls so she decides to drive. No one calls back so I call again and get a live person. (they are amused by my email address ?? ) So now we are set. 7th stop - Forest City at the shipper to pick up our car. We had thought we would be here before 5 but it is now 5:30. And six office cars are still here, they are still adding trips and even the office extra's are working late. We just grab the car and go. 8th and final stop is Albert Lea at the Comfort Inn. BB starts laundry and I run to get food at the Main Street Family Restaurant. We had ordered ahead online. While there I asked how long they had been open. Three years, minus two shut downs during Covid. That must have been when we had stayed at the attached Quality Inn because the Comfort Inn was closed. Load board US - 567 IA - 300/297 LOG 9:45 - Olathe KS - Leave Holiday Inn 10:00 - Olathe KS - Avis - drop BB 10:30 Olathe KS - Phillips 66 - fuel 10:45 - Olathe KS - drop 12:00 - Liberty MO - McAlister's Deli 2:15 - Osceola IA - rest area 3:15 - Ankeny IA - Murphy Express - fuel 4:15 - Dows IA - rest area 5:15 - Forest City IA - shipper - pickup car 6:15 - Albert Lea MN - Comfort Inn 7:00 - Albert Lea MN - Main St Family Restaurant |
