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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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.. the trip continues from HERE 220914 IA-MN 1 trash truck to Dodge Center MN (delivered) ... spending the night at Albert Lea MN Major change of plans, and un-planned also. It would have been 10 PM by the time we made it home so we used rewards points and shut down before 8 PM. Breakfast - plan was to leave here by 8 AM so we would be in Forest City by 12 noon for their free meal today. So I decided to just have yogurt again today. And as I do, I open most yogurts with my teeth so that when the carton 'burbs,' it doesn't splatter. And when I am driving and sometimes not driving I suck out the yogurt from a small opening. That is what I did today ... until I realized that it didn't seem quite as thick as usual. So I opened the carton wider and saw that it was mostly 'milk' thickness with a couple of large curds. I threw that carton and opened my 2nd open, that one was fine. We did pull out before 8 AM. Plan was to stop and get fuel near Des Moines where Gasbuddy says it is under $3. About a half hour before we get to Des Moines, my local dispatcher calls to see where I am ... They have a truck in Des Moines going to Dodge Center than needs to be delivered by tomorrow. This looks like it will work out for everyone :) ... and I should be able to park the truck at a truck stop while we drive the car to get our free meal. Later we decide that work should take priority over a free meal. :) Dispatch emails me my paperwork but also sends it to the shipper so I do not have to stop and find a place to print it out. At the shipper, they pull the truck out for me. The truck only has 15,000 miles on it so almost new. I do notice the front is damaged. I miss the fact that it is missing a mudflap (BB notices that at delivery) I figure if I don't stop before having to fuel, that I can make delivery by 2 PM and then be back to Forest City by 4 PM. ... then an hour and a half down the road ... BANG ... All I can see out my left mirror is white. I can't see anything wrong but I assume I have blown a tire and pull to the side of the road. By the time I am stopped, BB is stopping behind me. She had not been following me but had just caught up to me after this happened. I call dispatch and they make their calls ... I get the OK to drive to the next exit. I stay on the shoulder and run about 30 mph. Luckily when I got to the dead skunk I was able to get over into the travel lane :) so one less issue there. Two hours from my 1st call, I call dispatch back. They think it is to tell them I am up and running. The tire company they called was going to call me right away so dispatch didn't want to be on the phone when I got the tire call. That did not happen. But by the time I got done calling the tire company saying I had not heard anything, the repair man was standing by my door. It took him another hour to do the switch. Three hours down. What was going to be 'easy money' on our way home has now changed how much we will make and how many days we are out. During that time, BB drove to Clear Lake to get McD's for us. We had eaten a cookie from our stash but that didn't hold us for long. IA bills this freeway as the 'Monarch Hwy.' And I think most of the time we sat on the shoulder we could see one or two so there are still a few around. (One of my grand-children 'raises' them. Last year they released over 100, I know the numbers are down this year but I don't know how much yet) Right before the repair man was done, a state highway patrol parked on the ramp in front of us. He seemed to be following the highway crew that was patching the road and didn't bother us. Sometime on this trip the 'Google Street View' car passed me. Now that it is a day later as I write this, I do not remember where it was. I had looked at the next exit sign. For the next hour after the tire was replaced, I watch the tire as much as I watch the road. When I first left Des Moines I was thinking about the MN scale. Then I remembered that I need to deliver these units full of fuel and the only CNG fuel on this route is in Austin on I-90 ... the scale is on I-35 so that is not an issue. The issue is when I get to the fuel station, all pumps are shut off, roped off. I go in as ask if that includes the CNG pumps. Yes, the whole fueling system is down. A quick call to dispatch and I get cleared to deliver with the fuel in the truck. It will be about half full when I get there. Once off the freeway I set the cruise to 55 mph. I guess I passed a few 60 mph signs but I didn't see them. This is a state highway. Oh well, it is a 30 mile trip so it doesn't cost much time. At the shipper I park the truck and drop the keys in the office. At this point BB tells me I am missing a mud flap. ?? But not off the same side as the tire blew. So I looked, it was not on at pick up. Opps. And I was parked next to a cop? Opps. The truck should have never left the shippers lot without being fixed. It is now after 5 PM instead of being 'around 2 PM. This also meant that I had to leave the truck without getting a signature. Our plan is to still get this rental car back to the airport before 10 AM tomorrow. So we head down to Forest City and get back as far as Albert Lea. From there it is less than two hours back to the airport tomorrow morning. Not sure what happened, but the Comfort Inn in Albert Lea no long has any discount prices, not even AAA. That puts the cost of their hotel almost double the price of the Quality Inn. The only hotel charging more is the Holiday Inn next to the casino in IA. But we like the Comfort Inn so we end up using some of our 300,000 rewards points for the night. We hadn't eaten until 2 PM so we were not really hungry. We ended up walking next door to the truck stop and roaming the isles looking for food. Food at the old Iron Skillet is too much food. Pizza Hut and Taco Bell are already closed. We end up getting soup. At first BB is concerned about food that has been sitting out all day. But nothing else looks good so after 'stirring the pot' some, BB decides the soup should be OK. Chicken wild rice. And we also get a package of pineapple slices. So that was supper. It is now close to 9 PM. Load board US - 134 IA - 7/6 (all Canada) MN - 5 ... 2 of them are to WI 220915 IA-MN 1 trash truck to Dodge Center MN (delivered) ... spending the night at home Up before the alarm - bacon for breakfast. I think I remember all of the people we have seen working here from past trips. 1st stop for me is the Fort Snelling Cemetery. BB has to stop and fuel so that gives me time to look up a couple of extended family members. BB was so ... ready to go home this AM that I hadn't even looked at the load board or emails. But when BB gets in the car, the first thing she sees is three trucks in MN coming back to the cities. She does the math from how fast we could do them after we drop off my paperwork. We could have left right from the airport and that would have saved us another hour. She thought we should drop off the paperwork first before getting the trucks. Because of how glad she was to be heading home this AM I suggested we wait to call until after I had dropped my paperwork and talked to those dispatchers. No work today from the local dispatchers, they just wanted to know about the next two weeks. So when I got back to the car I asked if we are still a go on the 3 MN trucks and BB said yes, so I called. All three were gone ... so home we go. The only thing in the carriers storage lot was one bus with no markings. I looked for the paperwork but did not see it. I did see lot's of wiring cable laying all over the floor and even on the drivers seat. The sweet corn that the squirrels haven't eaten or opened is ready. Usually I plant corn to be ready up through the 1st week of September. This year because spring was late and summer was hot the dates on the corn have meant little. Some never did get ripe or produce ears. And now I still have two plantings of corn that is not ready yet. It looks like it has been hit with blight but that could just be three weeks without watering. I will start watering today and see if we get ears in the next two weeks. This AM there were still two WI trucks out of MN, later there were two no-tow RV's out of IA to IL. But our plan is to stay local, likely metro for my local company. Load board US - 132 IA - 9/8 MN - 4 |
