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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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221014 MN-WI 1 trash truck to Germantown WI (Sunday) ... spending the night at home Got up this AM and there was snow on the ground, on the leaves, but not on the streets. Our 1st snow of the year. At 7 AM we call the east coast dispatcher. The trip we wanted is gone. The other trip we were looking at only leaves us an hour to spare on a Friday. Not enough for us. So, like prior weeks, we are scrambling to find work on a Friday. For today, for this weekend. A few trips come and go, one at a time and none that pay. And another downside is when we take something, that locks us out from taking a better trip ... if there is one. By the end of they day I call on the Germantown but no one picks up the phone. I did call this dispatcher earlier and he will answer the phone on Saturday's. If this one is gone, there is one other one about the same mileage. My local dispatcher also has called me on a truck going to the same drop. Maybe I will do one Monday and a 2nd one on Tuesday. Load board US - 185 IA - 2/0 MN - 4 WI - 4 221016 MN-WI 1 trash truck to Germantown WI ... spending the night at Waukesha WI Up and rolling a little earlier than usual, but that left room for errors. Out on the freeway, BB and I are talking and I sail right past our exit. And this is close to the longest stretch on the loop between exits. Oh well, by the time we are by on the route, we are running at our normal time. 1st stop is picking up the paperwork at the dispatchers house. He has four trucks in his drive waiting to go, including one going to St Cloud. ?? Not sure why he is pulling some off the lot and not others. Same town, we are at the shipper. The gate is already open and then I see why. My other companies shuttle is sitting in the drive ... I hold my cap over my face as I drive past, and then realize it is my cap from their company :) As soon as I am parked, security pulls up and asks questions. Next time I talk to him I will have to ask if I should have called even if the gate is open. Looks like one of the drivers is having some kind of issue again. Same as last time I saw the shuttle here. It's 9 AM, usually the shuttle gets here about 7:30 and drivers should be out by 8 AM. But carriers have two boxes for keys here. My local company has the code set the same for both boxes. This carrier does not so when I can't find my keys, I need to call dispatch ... on their day 'off' and ask for the code. Three rows of trucks, BB walks one, I walk one and then we walk together coming back on the 3rd row. Two trucks from the end is my truck. No issues. But I do see on my paperwork they have four fuel stops listed. I could do it in one, the other carrier has me do it in three and two of these stops add extra miles. So I text the dispatcher asking if I need to stop at those stops. I don't. So I do my own thing. I do stop four times because they are paying us for 'stop offs,' at least on past trips. 2nd stop is the Kwik Trip in Rochester. This is the one my other carrier does not have us stop at. 20 gallons so the tanks were not quite full. 3rd stop is West Salem at a Kwik Trip for fuel and lunch. But their fuel is down and will be at least until tomorrow. Do I go back 10 miles so I fuel four times? I decide I have enough fuel to get to Madison where there are six plus CNG stations so I should be good. Food is a rib sandwich ... with no onions. I think the rib sandwich is better here than McDonalds or Arby's. But this station is out of onions, today. I didn't look to see if they had any on the shelf. ... from a FB friend. They stopped at a truck stop today and ordered a salad. No salads today, there is no one here to chop the lettuce ... ??? 4th stop ... BB saw this ... I didn't ... and it was posted right above where I slid my credit card in. "Pumps will be shut down all day Wednesday." ... and we may be coming through again Wednesday. Plan ahead. After two stations being down or going to be down today and my only stop last CNG trip being down, I called my final stop tomorrow to see if their pumps were working. So far they are. One more hour ... of riding a jack hammer. This is the worst truck I have had in a long time. Lots of time with my seat off the seat. But I forget quickly and may do another one tomorrow. 5th and final stop is the Comfort Inn in Waukesha. Plenty of room to park, this place has never been full when we've been here and it has three area's away from the building where we can park crossways away from most cars. Food and treats were from Oscar's Frozen Custard. While waiting for our food, the rest of our food, someone asked BB how the 'flavor of the day' was. Because they were buying a gallon of it. Food was good. Chili was thick like spaghetti sauce with beans. Mild, the way I like it. But I did not need a malt, chili and a burger. Finally stopped when I was half done with the burger. I may finish it for breakfast. Load board (weekend) US - 184 IA - 2 MN - 3 WI - 4 Plan ... call dispatch at 7 AM local for a RV in IN. Then call my local dispatch and offer to do a repeat of today ... that way I will know which company pays better. We should drop by 10 AM, be in IN by 2 PM and back somewhere in WI by nightfall. Tuesday we should drop early afternoon and be able to pick up the next WI trip and get to Rochester or La Crosse ... we'll see. 221017 MN-WI 1 trash truck to Germantown WI (delivered) 1 trash truck to Louisville KY (Canceled) 1 trash truck to Germantown WI ... spending the night at Rochester MN Not much went as planned today. This much was pretty much as usual ... I ate left overs for breakfast. I delivered my truck this AM as planned. Here is the rest of the story. At 7 AM I called, and called, and called the dispatcher I wanted to contact. The calls went to auto-hold like it had done on Saturday. Finally someone picked up. By then I could see on the screen that the trip I wanted had already been taken. :( We no longer have a plan. As long as I had someone on the phone, I asked about weekend hours. None. So we change our plans and decide to take a trip that we can pick up less than an hour from here going to Louisville. I call that dispatcher and BB will wait at the hotel until we receive the paperwork and then print it out. It snowed ... it is still snowing. And it's cold. I do a quick walk around the truck to make sure it is all in one piece before I head out. 1st stop is a few miles away at a Kwik Trip for final fuel. Then I head on a 'truck route' to the drop. I haven't been this way before but it is easy enough that I don't use notes. 2nd stop is the drop. I've just been here in the last weeks so I remember the routine. The inspector notes that four marker lights and one blinker are not working. Not surprised for how badly the truck shakes going down the road. Everything was working at pickup. Something I could/should have noticed but not damage that I would have caused. It's a good day :) , I did not walk into any glass walls today while I was here. We do our paperwork while in the parking lot. I call the shipper but the call goes to voicemail. As soon as we start to move the shipper calls back, they know what I am talking about. Things should go smooth. 3rd stop is the 2nd shipper. The person I need to talk to is standing in the front customer service area. But as soon as we start to talk, someone asks us to move to the shop. (It sounds like one of the 'higher ups' is using the main area for their office and loud conversations disturb their phone calls.) We have a problem. The truck has not been paid for. For the next 20 minutes we stand there and talk. Finally I give the person my phone number and excuse myself so they can get back to work. We head to Culvers a couple of blocks away. I call dispatch and update them. Then we eat, sit and wait. Today I had their chili, soup, cheese curds ... Then the shipper calls and says I will not be able to pick it up today. I call dispatch to be taken off the trip. Dispatch wants to make another call, they do, and then call me back. They want me to stay overnight. This will be taken care of tomorrow. Without talking it over, I say no. They are willing to pay for the hotel, but we loose a day of work. It is only later that we do the math and realize we may have been money ahead to have gone to the hotel. Instead we head back to Dodge Center. Sometime on Friday, the local dispatcher had emailed me about a trip to WI. I hadn't gotten back to them until we were sitting and eating at Culvers. I had emailed them and said I would be NA for the rest of the week. Now I call back and and take the trip, no one else has yet. So we now we are heading back to Dodge Center. 4th stop is the rest area near Lyndon Station. 5th stop is Loves in St Charles for fuel. 6th stop was the shipper in Dodge Center. We do get there before 4 PM, but we were not sure if we would so we had the shipper put the paperwork in our box for me. When I check out my truck, I find I have an alarm going off and two marker lights not working. It is only a few minutes before closing time here and I need to find the shop. I've never done that before and drive past it the first time, then I stop and ask someone who has no idea what I am talking about so I keep looking. When I walk in a shop area, I ask the first person I see. Turns out someone who can help. He doesn't do the work, but finds someone who does and stays until the issue is fixed. The alarm is fixed. These people know nothing about the lights. They are extra's, not sure why they are put on there and they were not working on the truck I delivered today either. The joys of picking up at closing time. The shippers dispatcher is going home, my dispatcher is going home, the work crew is going home. I want to leave ... Before I leave someone does stop and ask what the issue was, they had seen me driving around ... sounds like they are the after hours repair person so they were wondering if it was an issue similar to others. 6th stop is the Kwik Trip to scale the truck. It is a front loader so it gets weighed. It's legal. 7th and final stops are in Rochester. First for fuel at Kwik Trip. My 2nd stop was down/broken on Sunday so I want to get a good fill here today in case it is still down. Second stop is the hotel, Comfort Inn. There is still a large open spot so I take it. Third stop is the Five West for food. I have more soup and some bread. Load board US - 163 IA - 3/0 MN - 7 WI - 2 Nothing good for a return trip on the load board. Plan is to stop for fuel and deliver by early afternoon. Not sure if we will try the KY trip if it comes back on the load board or not. That would leave us 700 miles from home.
221018 MN-WI 1 trash truck to Germantown WI (delivered) 1 RV to Mount Vernon IN (Wednesday) ... spending the night at Albert Lea MN I wasn't planning on stopping for lunch so I decided I should eat breakfast. Scrambled eggs, with cheese and ham. Plus a few pieces of bacon. Just OJ because the apple juice looked like water. I told someone but didn't wait around for them to change it. I'm on a mission ... to get going. Nothing new on the load board so no one to call. When I leave the hotel I see someone with a pickup and trailer has parked on the street, that must be where 'truck parking' is. No issues so I am pulling out at 7:15 AM. The sun isn't up yet but soon will be ... no clouds in the sky so we had the sun in our eyes in the AM and PM. 12 hour day today. 1st stop is the Kwik Trip in West Salem, the pumps are working again. They have one CNG pump past the truck islands so that is where I always fuel, out of the way of the other truckers. All islands were full today. One of those truckers was hauling a plot combine. (I had to look it up to see what they were called.) I found five brands online. A few days ago I saw a Massey Ferguson plot combine. They aren't one of the five so that must be from the past. When I went to pull out, I followed the trucker with the combine. He must have just pulled out of the field before he fueled. For the 10 miles I followed him, chaff, leaves and corn was blowing off of that combine. Just before I got to where I-90 and I-94 merge, I looked in my mirror just in time to see someone just about hit my mud flaps. Wasn't watching so I don't know how fast they had come up on me ... as they past me, I saw that they were sitting cross-legged on their seat with their jammies still on. No foot near the gas or the brake. Then after the two freeways merged, there was a big backup of trucks to get past us slow people. One semi was about six feet behind the one ahead of him as they went past my window ... so my guess of distance should be pretty close. See a lot of that. Need a dash cam. 2nd stop was the Kwik Trip in West Salem. 3rd stop was the Kwik Trip in Waukesha. Both CNG islands were being used with one truck ahead of me. One truck looked like a new one like mine but he pulled out and I never did see any placards so I don't know if it was new or just clean. By now, I have decided I am done with Autocar trucks. I have been beaten up from every bump for the last three days. Today I even hit my head on the ceiling because I was not paying attention. Lots of times I am holding on with both hands just trying to stay in my seat (seat belt helps for that) On yesterday's truck five lights stopped working from on the shaking. Today one of the inside panels on the truck popped loose exposing the wiring. (Next week I will find out how many fillings have been shaken loose) 4th stop is the drop in Germantown. Today I know to park facing the building. So I park right next to another driver who is still in their truck doing paperwork. I hop out and go find my contact. I find both of them, but the one that is going to inspect is still on break. Outside I talk to the other driver and tell him that the inspector will be out. We talk. He is driving for the company I drove for yesterday. I was here yesterday at 9 AM, he was here at 1 PM ... and got back here before me today. His wife has MS so he only does local trips that allow him to be home every night. On good days she drives the chase car. On the other days he uses rental cars. ... I check with Bridget to see if we can give him a ride ... then I ask where he will pick up his car ... Airport ... that would add 60 miles to our day so I don't offer. About that time the inspector is done with his truck and the driver is gone without saying goodbye. This locations runs every function of the truck for the inspection but they still are able to do one every 15 minutes. So not a long wait. A little warmer today, yesterday I froze the whole time I was there. We send in my paperwork from the lot. Still no good trips, and the company I worked for today did not ask me when I was available. BB is hungry so we head to a FireHouse Subs. On the way we see Zupas. It wasn't on the map but that is where we stopped. 5th stop, Zupas in Menomonee Falls. As we are eating, BB is watching the load board. An RV shows up near us heading back to IA ... ... But BB wants to do all the math before she will let me call. I finally call before she is done. It's gone. When there is this little work, the trips are gone in seconds, not days. I like to call as soon as I see something ... IF it sounds good, we can put it on hold. BB wants to do all the math, run all the scenarios before we call. So that was that one. A few minutes after we left, the same dispatcher put a trip on out of IA. This time I did get BB to call right away and we did get it. BB got it. We are supposed to take one trip every 30 days and it is getting close to 60 days for her. We are going to Mount Vernon IN. Right down on the border of KY with no way to get out of town, other than a chase car. So now we know where we are heading and what we will be doing the next two days. Surprising, we are making OK money as long as we don't count the cost of our car. We drove past the truck I didn't take yesterday. It is still there and has not shown back on our load board. That is why I did not want to stay. When there is an issue with money, it can be because the buyer doesn't have any ... 6th stop is Lyndon Station at a rest area, same as yesterday. 7th stop is the Loves in St Charles for fuel, cheapest fuel around, same as yesterday. 8th and final stop is the Best Western in Albert Lea. Not the Comfort Inn or Quality Inn this time. But first we stop at the HyVee Express. This one is not the same and neither is there food. No food made to order, I guess it needs to be a 'Cafe' for that. And the hot food we got was a chicken quesadilla. BB had one piece, that was all she could handle. Not good. Load board US - 209 IA - 1/0 MN - 6 WI - 1 We have about an hour to go in the AM to the shipper, then likely Waterloo for lunch and hotel in St Louis. That will leave us about 200 miles to the drop on Thursday and 700 miles home. Closest work back to MN is 330 miles, there is also a truck 550 miles coming back to MN but with either we would not get back until Saturday. And we have plans on Mon, Tues, Weds (?) and Thurs next week. .. the trip continues HERE
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