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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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220323 MN-MO 1 tanker heading to Bridgeton MO ... spending the night at North Liberty IA Breakfast - I was going to go for the yogurt but then I saw bacon, so I had eggs, bacon and papaya juice. We left out about 7:30. When we left there was a car transporter parked in the middle of the lot, I'm guessing they had been parked next to other trucks and the other truck had already left (or I hope so) 1st stop is home. We had a couple of things to pick up. We were in and out in under five minutes. 2nd stop was the office in Lake Elmo. Dispatchers were all in a meeting but that was over before I could figure out all of my paperwork so no time wasted because of them, just because of me. 3rd stop was the shipper in Plymouth. The usual guy I see had his door shut so I went to the next door. They found my keys right away this time and sent me outside to find my truck. Small not so not an issue. I pulled it outside the gate so that BB could help me inspect it. No issues. Before I leave, I do see the first person I had been looking for, he is on a forklift. I'm guessing they have not found a replacement for the guy who's last day was the last time I was here. 4th stop - Holiday - for fuel - I thought the gauge said I had a range of 100 miles but it was only showing 1/8th of a tank. It wasn't until I was moving that I realized the 'range' was above the '100' I had been looking at. My range was 11 miles. Luckily there is a fuel station right across the highway, even if it does only have one diesel pump. This is another one of those that need to be scaled full of fuel so I just put enough fuel in here to get to the truckstop 20 miles down the road where there is also a scale. 5th stop - Honey Baked Ham - Burnsville. - BB had felt in the way at the shipper so she had left before I did and then I went and fueled so she had gone and ordered food before I got there. Nice big parking lot here, strip mall with only a couple of stores still open. We see lots of people come and park and stay in their cars and then leave again. Alone time? I had the chicken salad and BB had the classic ham. 6th stop is the Flying J another 20 miles down the road near Northfield. No line. I fueled and then scaled. Today I remember all my receipts. Back at the Holiday my range was 11 miles. I put in five gallons to get it up to 29 miles, so I added two more gallons and it went up to 59 miles. Which is what I need, 59 miles. As soon as I start moving the range goes up. 20 miles later it is up to almost 200 miles. Now here at the Flying J, once the tank is full it is showing a range of 880 miles. The highest I saw it was around 1,050 and that was after driving 60 miles. Even when the gauge is down to a half a tank it still thinks the range should be 550 miles. Even though I have only driven 240 miles on the top half. 7th stop is the Loves in Floyd. For a rest break. There is one RV parked there, the driver seems to sleeping in the drivers seat. Here we decide that it will be 10 hours plus when we get to North Liberty. The next hotel is an hour further down the road. 8th stop is the Comfort Inn in North Liberty. Once we check in, we DRIVE to the Arbey's next door. Only the drive thru is open. We got our correct food today. There is more food, but it is another mile away and then we would have to agree on something else. Load board US - 638 IA - 392/390 Our plan is to deliver tomorrow, mid-day. From there it is seven hours back to IA. If we push we could make it all the way and have all day Friday to deliver an RV. Or there is a 'tractor' a few miles from the drop heading to IL. If it wasn't a tractor, I might be more interested. And it is the RV dispatcher who has the tractor. (So they will know I am working, but not moving RV's) LOG 7:30 - Black River Falls WI - Comfort Inn - leave hotel 9:00 - home 10:30 - Plymouth MN - shipper/pickup truck 11:15 - Plymouth MN - Holiday Inn - fuel 12:00 - Burnsville MN - Honey Baked Ham - food 1:00 - Northfield MN - Flying J - fuel/scale 3:00 - Floyd IA - Loves - break 5:30 - North Liberty IA - Comfort Inn 5:45 - North Liberty IA - Arbey's 220324 MN-MO 1 tanker heading to Bridgeton MO (delivered) ... spending the night at Waterloo IA Breakfast - Grab and go. We grabbed a burrito and after some digging, found a yogurt that was not peach. Orange juice was good, what was supposed to be apple was water. No one around to complain to. We leave out at 7:30 AM, it is still raining. I notice this AM that I have two marker lights out. BB stops in Mount Pleasant for cheap fuel. I do 160 miles before I stop for fuel. I think I may know the issue of my 'range' being over 1,000 miles. ... IF the computer thinks the tank is 100 gallons, instead of 40 gallons, then 1,000 miles is close for a full tank, 500 miles for a half a tank, etc. Which is what it seems to be showing. I looked online and Google just wants to show pictures of trucks, not the display. 1st stop is the Loves in New London. My first call is to dispatch to find out if I can deliver with marker lights out. They will need to call me back. They call back and ask if I can fix them. I say I will look at the rear one, but I will not climb on top of the truck cab to look at that one. But first I fuel out front and go in and buy DEF in a jug. The truck islands were full and it is a pain to back through the line when trucks are everywhere. And the boss is buying the DEF so I'm not watching the cost as close. I do ask if they have one gallon jugs but they do not, most places do not. I am working on the marker light when BB gets there. I have a general idea of how they are put together so it doesn't take too long. It looks like one didn't get pressed together good enough. I hook it back up and it works. Dispatch calls back and I am OK to deliver as is. I had also emailed dispatch this AM about the scale ticket, it says three places that I am to scale the truck. It doesn't say anywhere what I am to do with the scale ticket. Dispatch replied that the customer gets one copy and dispatch gets the other copy. 2nd stop is the drop. Easy to find. I will have to look in my notes, I have dropped within a few blocks of here before. Someone is waiting for me when I pull in, they do a quick look and sign off. Five minutes or less? BB got a ways behind me somehow so I have to wait for her. This place has a little overhang by the door so I am mostly out of the rain. It has been raining all day and the heaviest was when I was dropping my truck. 3rd stop is a mile away at a Loves. BB needs the restroom and as long as we are stopped we order food at Wendy's. Lots of other food in the area but we are here. Our three options are ... head home ... head to the RV's and take a short trip. ... take a 'tractor' that is a few miles from here to CGO If it hadn't been listed as a tractor, and hadn't been listed by the RV dispatcher I would have called. It would have made this week a good paying week. We are doing OK, but with this company we do not get paid within the hour. We will get paid 4-14 days after we turn in the paperwork, and then we have to be home to cash the paper check. That is not coming at a good time, we need to pay our taxes before we leave on our next road trip. Right now we opt for heading the direction of home and watching the load board. The rental truck dispatcher has not had any trucks in our area for weeks so no help there. BB does the math and the only RV trips that would work would be ones going to MN. All the trips heading to WI are too long. The are six plus hours and we are not going to be at the shipper first thing in the AM unless we run late tonight. So we are heading home ... About five miles from my drop, the freeway lanes where we were a half hour ago are at a standstill. Two fire trucks, lots of cop cars, but with a concrete median we can not see the why. Whatever it is we just missed it, the back up is already for miles. 4th stop is the Flying J in Wayland for the restroom and for fuel. Fuel is $.30 a gallon cheaper where BB fueled this AM but that would mean an extra stop. But it would have saved us another $2.50. 5th stop is the Firehouse Subs in Cedar Rapids. I was thinking of Rochester MN when I agreed to stop there. That location is a block off the freeway, this location is two miles off the freeway. No line at this one but our food was cold. We saw them heat the food but their machines must not have been set correctly. 6th and final stop is the Comfort Inn in Waterloo. We haven't stayed at this location for a few years but tonight it is $20 less than our new location. As soon as we are checked in BB 'drags' me out for a walk. We walk across the street to the mall. It used to have four anchors, it now has an 'At Home' store and about 20 others listed but we couldn't see them from the outside of the building, we did not walk the inside. Could have but didn't. Interesting how some malls were able to 're-invent' themselves and some are not. OPPS. An hour plus after I dropped I remembered that I was supposed to have left the scale ticket with the customer. I did not. So now I will be mailing it in the AM. Rain all day, no snow where we were today. In a few days the grass should be green. Load board US - 586 IA - 364/361 So about 2/3rds of the trips are out of IA. I looked tonight and there are also 20+ trips out of the states of IN, NC, PA, OH and TX. ... for a few minutes there was a truck on the loadboard going to Hartland. The same customer I dropped at on Monday for my other company. I could have done two trips in one week to the same customer :) We do have things to do at home so we most likely will not work Friday or Saturday. If dispatch does not come up with anything else, I have said I will go to Elkhart IN on Sunday. And I may do back to back trips if needed. We will do them, but right now we can not find a rental car so we will be using our own car. A lot of miles but then we can head straight back to IA when we are done with those trips. We want to head to CA but all the good trips are gone. Even if the bad trips that are left we will make more money than heading anywhere else. Because we need to pay our taxes we were talking today about the string of bad trips we have had this year. Hopefully that string is over ?? LOG 7:30 - North Liberty IA - Sleep Inn - leave hotel 10:30 - New London MO - Loves - fuel 12:15 - Bridgeton MO - drop 12:30 - Bridgeton MO - Loves - Wendy's 4:30 - Wayland MO - Flying J - fuel 6:30 - Cedar Rapids IA - Firehouse Subs 7:30 - Waterloo IA - Comfort Inn |
