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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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.. the trip continues from HERE 220901 IA-CA 2 RV's to Fremont CA (delivered) ... spending the night at Livermore CA No alarm. We are two hours time difference and we aren't going to pull out until 8:30 local. Breakfast, eggs, sausage ... and a piece of French toast. They had time cut in strips and I took one strip with syrup. And as usual I put my glass of juice on my plate ... not realizing that the syrup would form a pool around my glass ... until I tried to take my glass off the plate and left a trail across the table. And somehow with the suction from picking up my glass I ended up with syrup on my glasses. By the time we pull out at 8:30 there is not much for traffic, for CA. There is still enough to slow us down in a few places and it takes an extra half hour to get to Fremont. 1st stop - Shell in Fremont. When we pulled in I was wondering what was wrong with this place. 32 pumps and no one there. A few minutes later every pump was full, mostly with Amazon trucks and so was every parking spot. It must have been breaktime. :( I got to the station with a range of 120 miles. That is 10 gallons. I need to leave some, I'm not going to arrive on 'E,' but that is a little much at $6 a gallon. And at $6 a gallon I only put in about three gallons, not likely enough to get the low fuel light to go off it I had come in on 'E.' After that we stashed one RV at a mall area and headed a few miles down the road to get our rental car. As I am coming back I go past the place where we dropped our rental RV's a year or so ago. No wonder this area looked familiar. 2nd stop - the drop. I get there at 12 noon and they are gone to lunch. We get to wait. BB picked up the rental car and then drove to the mall and switched out for her RV. When she gets to the drop she realizes she has left her paperwork in the rental car and starts walking back to get her paperwork. Half way across the lot she yells back to me ... I might as well bring the car too ... not just the paperwork. ??? yeah ??? Between their lunch and the time it took to inspect, we were there for two hours. There was one other driver that dropped and was gone before they even started on mine. Somehow they did BB's 1st. I did talk to that driver outside but once inside he never said a word to us even when he walked away from where we both were sitting. Just before we left there was another driver with our company that arrived and he was in a rush to catch a plane. We didn't talk to him or offer him a ride. I did talk to one of the sales people a little. When I got there a customer wanted to look inside and this sales person said no way. It has not been inspected yet. But later some people were looking in BB's RV and they said sales had told them to 'just go ahead and look at them.' ??? Maybe ??? BB usually doesn't say much but she said it was not the dealers RV until the dealer signs for it (and BB hadn't given them permission to be in it) ... when I was talking to the sales person, they said a lot of people had ordered these small RV's when there was not any in stock. Now a year later they are available for $20,000 more than they had agreed to. So some are backing out (maybe because of the economy?) I asked how far behind the shipper was and they wouldn't say. But they said they were behind ... and I said good, then I will have a job for a while. When we are done, we need to get release numbers. Now we have a new program that will only allow us to get those numbers while we are at the GPS address of the drop. BB has been getting release numbers a different way for years but this is new ... and doesn't work. So I have to call dispatch. They insist it is supposed to work, I have no idea what they are talking about because I have never seen it. The company claims to be going paperless but with this shipper we still get a dozen sheets of paper at pick up. BB's not happy, I'm not happy. I'm just trying to stay civil enough that they do not fire me. Before when I was using programs that didn't work it was because that was my job. Test programs. Now I need to do it for free and no one is interested in correcting what is wrong. They do give us release numbers and we will likely call in for them until they won't give us trips. We'll see. When we used to go to the companies safety meetings, we were the young people. This non-working technology is going to thin the hurd. Next up, I call the local dispatcher but it goes to voicemail. It is now 2 PM local and we have not eaten yet. We had the half mile to In-n-Out Burgers. I do reach dispatch and he says call back in a half hour. After we are done eating I call back, this time he says he will call me when he knows something. We decide to drive up to Livermore, we will be heading that direction anyway. We drive past the shipper and there are 100's of buses that are done/almost done. But most are going to be local, short trips. We then head to the outlet mall where we hang out waiting for work. Finally after two hours of waiting I call the dispatcher back. He had forgotten about me. He already has too many people in hotels and isn't going to pay for anyone else to sit for the weekend. ... and waiting for him, we forgot that the other west coast dispatch was closing also. We had been looking at doing some local work but were delayed two hours at the drop and then this dispatch didn't give us a strait answer until too late. Now we aren't going to try to do any of their trips this time. Instead we will watch to see what shows up tomorrow leaving the area and call the bus dispatcher in the evening. We ate too late today, so for evening food we each had a breakfast bar. BB was trying to figure out where else we could get a car so we do not need to back track on Saturday AM. What she did find was that our route/trip had gone down $100 since she booked it so she rebooked one and canceled the other one. Load board US - 317 IA - 118 If the dispatcher had agreed to pay for our hotels and have us wait, we would have been money ahead waiting. Now we are having to pay our own hotels and we are going to make close to our 'minimum' daily pay. But once we were on our way I was 'talking' to two different drivers who warned me this was going to happen. And it does, once or twice a year. 220902 IA-CA ... spending the night at Livermore CA No work, we are heading home. No reason to get up, nowhere to go. Not much for breakfast at this place. Breakfast area only has one table in the middle of the room and two small ones against the wall that I have never seen used. They are finally back to having hot food. Eggs, sausage and because we are going to be here a while this AM, yogurt. We spend the AM watching the loadboard and looking at emails. We do not request a late checkout today and leave the hotel at 11 AM. We drive by the buses again. Way too many to be able to tell if there are more or less. Then we head to BJ's to eat. We request outside and we are the only ones sitting outside. We notice lots of cobweb's on the other tables and chairs. BB has shrimp and I have chicken and noodles. Then we share one cookie with ice cream. BB only eats a 1/4 and she is full. I don't want to waste good food so I eat the rest of it. It is about a nine inch cookie covered with ice cream and whipped cream. Very good. Before we leave the restaurant BB heads to the restroom. I'm sitting there alone and look at our available work. There is now a truck in CA heading to MN. I call and put it on hold until BB gets back. BB knows where the truck is and it is six plus hours away, there is no way we could pick it up today. I call back to say it is a no-go for us and why. Dispatch offers to call the shipper to see if we can pick it up tomorrow ... but the truck has already been assigned to another driver. :( A couple of hours later I began to realize I should not have eaten the whole thing. I didn't get sick but wasn't feeling real well. First we go and sit at a park across the street from the outlet mall and then when we need to use the restroom we move to the mall parking lot. ... Looking at the timing. IF we had delivered earlier on Thursday, we would have had time to take one of the trucks going to Bakersfield. And we would have gotten to Bakersfield this/Friday AM about the time there was a Bakersfield to Pomona CA trip. And if that had happened we would have been in route to Pomona when the Pomona to MN truck hit the board and may have gotten that ... all would have been good. :) 20/20 hindsight. I had called local dispatch at noon to say we had stayed. I call back at 3 PM to see if there is work, there is not. Dispatch confirms there are likely over 100 buses sitting there. The buses going to one of the locations are actually ready to ship. But the drop will not accept them because they have to room to park them. So 20-50 buses, at a half million plus each just sit at the shipper. I had also called on other work earlier to find out how late I could call them in the evening, after I talked to the local dispatcher. The dispatcher here rarely knows anything before 3 PM local, that is 5 PM home time and 6 PM east coast time where a lot of the dispatchers are. Everyone else is closed by the time I talk to dispatch here and will not open again until Tuesday because of the holiday. We area heading home, we knew that was a chance so that is why we have a rental car set up for the AM. We looked at getting closer to our cheap one-way rental but there was only a $10 difference between hotels there and here so we head back to our known hotel here in Livermore. No work heading back and little chance of getting more work because of the long weekend means we will come in at the bottom of our 'acceptable pay' rate for this trip. It was later when we headed back out for food, one of our choices was Mr Pickle but they had closed at 6 PM. We ended up back at a Cheesestake place we have eaten at before. Good food. This time we split a 10 inch sandwich. That seems to be about the right size. Load board US - 264 IA - 99 There is work near Denver so we are looking at heading via that way home. Tonight it is showing that if we go to Denver the preferred is going via Las Vegas. Something to look at in the AM. Hotel prices in lots of area's this weekend are $300+ or NA/sold out. So we will be making reservations as soon as we have our car and know our timetable. It is about 1,100-1,200 to Denver/Cheyenne, so about two days. We could make it past there if we decide not to take any Denver trucks on Tuesday. We should be dropping the car on Thursday either way. But we have the car for a week so we may do local for a couple of days and use the car we have already paid for. By the time we get back we will not have time to come back out to CA again this month. But we do plan on working for this company until mid-month before working for my local company the last few days of the month. 220903 IA-CA ... spending the night at Livermore CA Breakfast, same hotel, same as yesterday. About 8 AM we took a walk around the city streets for a half hour. 9 AM we checked out and headed to San Leandro. Today there were signs on the freeway near 'our' outlet mall warning of delays and long lines. 1st stop is Hertz in San Leandro. We are there early so our car is not ready. We had reserved the car for 10 AM and were gone shortly after. 2nd stop, for me, was Avis in Pleasanton. BB had stopped across the street at Shell to fill the car before returning it. Both of us had taken wrong turns. Me following my nose and BB following her GPS. When we exit the freeway we should have stayed in a lane going straight. We both took a right thinking our street was further off the freeway. Even on Saturday AM there is traffic over the hill east of Livermore. It finally clears once I-205 splits off to I-5 north. 3rd stop is the first rest area. Just north of Westley. The place was packed, I had to park in an EV charging station to get out of the traffic lane. 4th stop was Anderson's in Santa Nella. Not packed but they seemed to be doing a fair business. BB had her half sandwich and split pea soup. I had a chicken salad on croissant. I guess the only places we have not gone back to are buffet's and standing room only places. Things are changing in the orchard area's. Farms are getting crowded out by houses. Some orchards are getting over grown and dying off. New ones are being planted where it used to be dry pasture. Orchard's aren't a crop that can be abandon one year and then go back to harvesting them the next year. Not out here. If no water flows, nothing grows. ? th stop (Forgot this one) One 9 / EZ Trip for a quick rest room stop. 100+ degrees outside. Avalon rest area was closed. 5th stop is the Flying J in Tehachapi for the rest rooms. Once we are closer to Mojave we see what looks like a huge fire, we can't see the flames so we don't know if it is smoke or just dust. Not much to burn out here but once we are on the far side of the 'fire,' we catch wind that blows the truck ahead of us around a little. 6th stop is the Comfort Inn in Barstow. But first we got through the drive thru at In-n-Out. After we eat in our room, we decide that the room has not cooled yet and is not blowing cold air so we move to a different room. We are not in that room long when we hear a noise. BB is in the bathroom and I thought it was her. She was quite sure it was someone trying to get in our room. They didn't and never came back so they were likely on the wrong floor. Oh ... we decided to take the southern route even though it is a few more miles. Temps were often as high as 107, a quick rain cooled it 15 degrees for a few minutes before heading back up to 107 ... at 6 PM. Load board (weekend) US - 255 IA - 94 .. the trip continues from HERE |
