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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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220413 IA-AR 2 RV's heading to AR - Springdale & Conway ... spending the night at Joplin MO 5:30 AM (?) the alarm goes off. We want to make sure we are at the office at 8 AM so we get headed down the road. Breakfast, not a 'good food' day but what there is is good. (No bacon or ring sausage) We are going to be a few minutes early but we still do not stop for gas, we want to get rolling. 1st stop - the office. There is a line waiting for the window to open. A couple of people do get the office side's attention but it is in regarding things the office already knows about. One person got rear ended last night while they were stopped (I didn't hear if they were in the RV at the time or not) The other person had the top of their RV lifted off. Not sure exactly what happened because their info isn't adding up because I likely do not have all the info. But they were leaving out last night and trying to stay out of the tornado warning area. But the wind still got them and opened the top of the pop-up RV, but not the way it was supposed to be opened. Weather was the main reason we did not head out last night, we likely would have stayed right in the line of the storm. And hours ahead of time you do not know where the line of the storm is. 8 AM comes and goes and no one comes to help, finally the yard person hands out two peoples paperwork ... "What about us?" Sorry, they do not see our paperwork (It would have been nice if they had said that before handing paperwork to those at the end of the line) Finally someone at a desk admits they have our paperwork and gives us our keys so we can do our inspections. WOW ... wow. There is an area in our lot where a river must run through it. It looks like the water washed all the dirt away from the tires and then the tires sank into those holes. Like putting a rock on the beach and watching the sand wash away around it from the waves. We do our inspections and go back to the office. It has been an hour and our paperwork still is not done. Today is Wednesday, we called in on this trip 48 hours ago. Besides talking to the driver who lost their top, I also talked to two other drivers. One just came back from Conway ( :( 'our' other RV) and the other is heading to Springdale today. Might see him tomorrow. Did not ask either how they got out of there. A couple of the drivers were complaining this AM. One was complaining about the fuel pay, BB commented to him once but what she said didn't seem to sink in so she said no more. The other person was upset because he had heard differently than what the office is paying extra on the trips. We both have fuel but low ranges. We chance it. I've noticed this a few places. Big four wheel drivers all hooked up ready to go. Between Forest City and the freeway there is one farm that has four 'new' four wheel drives hooked up ready to go. That is a lot of money. I've seen quite a few with 2 and 3 four wheel drivers ready to go. 2nd stop is in Williams for fuel at the Pilot. I come in under 30 miles range, BB had quite a bit more. But we both had enough for the first 70 miles. 3rd stop is in Osceola at the Arby's for lunch. It is snowing :) Forecast for Minot this AM is still up to 3 feet before this stops. 4th stop is the Pilot at Kearny for fuel. I only put in $10 to get to Nevada safely instead of with the low fuel light on. We have driven 60 mph a lot of today because of the wind. It also helps on the fuel. But my range would change if we start driving 65 mph instead of 60 mph. Arby's in Kearny is burnt down, or burnt off. The roof part is gone. From here I call my drop again and get a real person. And I also call and get our AC set up to be installed on Monday as that is one day we will be home. No issues with KC traffic. 5th stop is the Pilot in Nevada for fuel. I do the math and 11 gallons should get me to the airport tomorrow. I will need to add more to get to my drop if my range does not go up. But my pump stops at 9 gallons and it acts like it is full when I try to put more it. But as I head out, I see that I am only at 3/4 ?? Long enough day, we decide to stop in Joplin. 6th and final stop is the Comfort Inn in Joplin. From here we walk a block down and get pizza from Old Chicago. It is a good thing we didn't stop any sooner, we do not have a lot of time to spare tomorrow and still make my delivery. We will be up again at 5:30. We have about an hour and a half to BB's drop so any further would not have gained us anything either at the other end of the day. ... Late in the day I got a call about other work I do in the spring time. Usually it is slow here, this year there are 350 RV's on the board and a whole bunch we can see that are waiting to get moved to our lot when there is room. Load board US - 609 IA - 351/350 Plan is to drop at 9 AM, hopefully be rolling again by 10 AM. From there it is four hours with stops to the airport to pick up the car, so that makes 2 PM. Another hour including fueling to get back to my drop at 3 PM and they close at 4 PM. The next day is Good Friday, I did not ask if they were open ... 220414 IA-AR 2 RV's heading to AR - (delivered) ... spending the night at West Memphis AR ... another 12+ hour day. Up early today. I wanted to make sure that I was at my drop before 3 PM. If BB's drop took over an hour that could be an issue. Breakfast was real eggs and a sausage, plus a yogurt. Likely a good idea because we seldom know when we are going to eat on drop days. We pull out at 7 AM instead of 7:30. No issues on the AM drive ... 1st stop is a Shell station in Springdale for dealer fuel for BB and hopefully my last fuel. I do the math and I put in enough fuel so that I should have 20 miles extra range. Two blocks down we are at our first drop. 2nd stop is BB's drop in Springdale. The driver we saw before leaving IA is already there and being inspected. We are there before their 9 AM open so that is good to know. Next time we will call and see how soon they 'currently' are inspecting units. We are done and rolling by 9 AM. ?? When I pull out of BB's drop I am showing that I am short on range of my drop, not the 20 miles over that I had thought. ?? Somewhere down the road, I get up to 60 miles range past my drop. Now I am thinking I have left $20 too much fuel in the RV. ?? When I get to final fuel later today I am back to 36 miles from 'E,' that is about as close as I could have guessed it and felt safe. 3rd stop is at a rest area near Knoxville. I make a phone call and find out that my services are not needed for a couple of weeks, until the ground at least thaws. We will see how that plays out. Not a stop ... but I drop BB at the Little Rock Airport to pick up the rental car and head back. This adds about 70 miles to my trip, miles I do not get paid for but have to pay for. Still cheaper than a taxi. 4th stop is the Velaro for final fuel. Small place and as I am pulling across oncoming traffic, someone comes out where I thought was an in, I have to quickly adjust and get out of the way so the car behind me can also clear traffic. ... sitting on the curb is a teen age girl wrapped in a heavy coat (by now it is 70 degrees) :( 5th stop is my drop. We are there over an hour, but it only takes 15 minutes to check mine in. I do talk to another driver who is dropping. He has the usual story. He doesn't make enough money pulling travel trailers to cover his truck payments. He is late again this month ... and he is living on SS. 6th stop is a few blocks away. Freddies. Burger and custard. It looks messy so we sit in the car so I do not have to eat and drive. Another half hour lost. 7th stop is Forrest City at a rest area. BB needs a break and we have talked about a final leg to this trip. We did not have time to do the Nashville to MN trip but there is a shorter one from St Louis to Des Moines. I call dispatch and then the drop. I need to be able to do a Saturday drop and that is not an option. (I may try again tomorrow AM ?) It would only add a few miles to the trip we are doing anyway. Might as well get paid for it. 8th stop is the airport. The recommended way to drop someone off for a rental is go through the short term parking. So I did, but when I try to leave ... my car 'pauses' like the new ones do but then will not restart. I wasn't sure why, because my seat belt was off? because I had opened the door? because ? I ended up having to shut it off and restart it. Then it went and the exit gate was still up. The plan was for me to take this rental to the cell phone lot and BB would pick up the 2nd rental and meet me and then she would return the 1st rental and I would pick her up. She works while I sit :) When she comes to the cell lot she pulls up to the first red Jeep she sees ... and it's not me (so she quickly backs away) What are the changes of two red Jeeps out of twenty cars in a cell phone lot?? Then when BB does return the 1st rental ... she can't find her way out walking :) She calls me and as we talk she finally sees a sign 'to Terminal' so she heads that way instead of finding her way to where I had dropped her off. Not sure how much I covered previous days. We had looked at rental cars for this trip and we could get one out of Little Rock, but had not reserved one. Then we took the trip and those cars were gone. So we finally found a one way from Little Rock to Memphis and then a 2nd one way from Memphis to MSP. We have checked every day and there has not been a change. When we dropped my RV we say a Hertz right across the street from my drop but they did not have any one ways or even local cars for today. All of this cost us a lot of time but not much money. Once I pick up BB at the airport we head ... right into the sun. We had not decided where to spend the night. If we had not had to wait at my drop we would have made it half way to St Louis before shutting down tonight. But now we are looking at another 12 hour day and we are still in Memphis. We had looked at picking up the 2nd car, taking both to a close hotel for the night and then dropping the 1st car tomorrow AM. Somewhere we decided against that. Now we just head to the closest hotel. A Clarion. A huge place and almost no cars. We are in an area where most places have barbed wire around them. We thought we had stay here years ago because of all the barbed wire but the layout was not correct. Not this Clarion, but the Travelodge a block away. So we u-turn it and head out. I miss where I should have turned so we take the long way around. Then the computer routes us back to the closest freeway which has an accident on it ... so another u-turn. We now pass the Comfort Inn and Quality Inn. One had a fence requiring it to be opened for each car. Nice area ?? Actually this is a trucking area with dealers and terminals so not sure how bad it is ... compared to other parts of Memphis. BB decides on a Comfort Inn in West Memphis. When we get off we see a sign for Chik-fil-A so we try to follow that and get lost ... 9th stop is the Chik-fil-A 10th and final is the Comfort Inn ... another 12+ hour day. But it has been 70+ degrees and NO SNOW. Load board US - 597 IA - 336/334 (341 in the AM) Most likely we are heading home tomorrow without more work. 850 miles so not likely we will get home without a real push. We will do the final miles on Saturday. Sunday is Easter. Monday is tax day Tuesday is the dentist for both of us. We really do not know what we will do next. CA is always on our radar. But doing that we move 2 RV's in two weeks. We could do shorter trips and move six in that amount of time. 220415 IA-AR 2 RV's heading to AR - (delivered) ... spending the night at Cedar Falls IA From a couple of days ago ... When we were near Nevada, MO we saw a couple of horse pulled buggies. Neither looked like typical Amish buggies are typical Amish dress. But there is an Amish settlement in the area. ... Yesterday between Conway and Little Rock we traveled that stretch three times in a few hours. On the first pass I saw a tire blow, the dust, the rubber flying. On the 2nd pass there was a different truck with two tires on one end of an axle that were flat. On the 3rd pass there was a school bus with a blown front tire. Today ... I was awake at 5:30 but BB was still sleeping ... then BB turned on the light for me at 7:30. I must have been tired. Breakfast. Eggs and (dry) sausage. We head out about 9 AM. 1st stop is Cape Girardeau at a Rhode 10 Truckstop. 2nd stop is for food at McCallesters in Arnold. Easy in and out. BB orders on line, we walk in, grab our food and leave. No contact. Our first idea was to stop at Schlotzsky's but the they were 'temporarily closed.' Easy route. I-55 to STL and then a well known route (for us) from there to Forest City. US-61, which becomes US-218. The main road changes names, those highways do not become the other number. 3rd stop was the Loves in New London because it had been two hours. 4th stop was the WalMart in Hannibal (because someone couldn't wait another 15 minutes until we stopped) for fuel. Fuel here was $.50 less than the Loves in New London. That is worth a 2nd stop. 5th stop is the Pilot in Mount Pleasant because there are no rest area's on this highway. 6th stop is Cedar Falls. First at the Rice House and then to our Comfort Inn for the night. We will try to remember that this food is not that good. We have eaten here before and did not remember for this time :) If we had taken the truck to Des Moines we would have gotten there about 9 PM and they closed at 5 PM. Maybe next time. Load board US - 594 IA - 321/319 We should be home by mid-afternoon tomorrow. We still have not decided what we will do next week. One of the drivers got themselves talked into doing a CA run this week. This AM they were sitting in Little America waiting for the WY roads to re-open ... and Donners Pass was also closed. Not pluses for us wanting to go that way just yet. 220416 IA-AR 2 RV's heading to AR - (delivered) ... spending the night at home Real eggs again for breakfast, makes me not want to eat the instant ones anymore. Slept in late again today, left the hotel at 9 AM. 1st stop was in Clear Lake at the Pilot for car fuel. 2nd stop was at the shippers lot to pick up our car. We could see people moving more RV's into our fenced lot ... they MAY be able to all fit in the lot by weeks end. So we should be down to <> 350 units soon. BB and I have been talking about their 'extra pay,' their new requirements do not add up for us. We are now looking at all trips, not just the oldest trips. As I drove past I the wind/roll over area I could see where some of the trucks had been. And it puts thins in perspective for me. 3rd trip is the airport to return the rental car. 4th stop is home ... for the weekend. Load board US - 574 IA - 308/306 We are going somewhere next week. Tuesday ? Thursday ? But tomorrow is a day off, we may make a decision on Monday. 220418 MN Load board US - 580 IA - 305 |
