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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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221109 MN-IA 1 Box truck to Orange City IA (Thursday) ... spending the night at home Nothing great on the load board today so it was 'laundry day.' We made a few calls, a few errand's and hit re-fresh on the loadboard. One of those errand's was to drop off paperwork from a couple of weeks ago. With that company I don't get paid until they have a hard copy of the paperwork. By chance, the dispatcher I had dealt with on the '0 mile trip,' the one with the flat tire, was walking out. So I found out that the drop had sent their own repair crew over to fix the tire ... and they noticed the highway posts knocked down, and the scuff's on the tire and put the two together. Took pictures and all that, not happy. Once word got back to everyone in the office, it turns out that someone in the office had seen the whole thing happen and hadn't said anything to the dispatchers. And they hadn't asked, why would they. So it was 'driver error,' hope it doesn't cost us the account. Finally about 3 PM, I call on a trip from Arden Hills to IA. If anything else shows up we will still be able to do that also. When we drop, we will be two hours from our IA shipper ... who has almost two lots full of RV's and nothing on the load board. Little issue here, I left messages with two people at the shipper and neither called back. So as of now, I have no conformation that the truck will be there tomorrow when I show up. But it is less than a half hour from my house so not a major loss of time if it is a NA ... or a 'zero mile run' as some call it. They did put a few trips on the load board, mostly Canada. And BB doesn't have a current passport yet. BUT ... We may start doing a Canadian trip now and then. Something different before we quit driving. There is a trip in SD that works good after dropping this one, but dispatch has not gotten back to me yet and there is an ice storm brewing in that area. By tomorrow we should know which way that storm is tracking and if we dare head that way. ... and there are now a couple of trash trucks going less than 500 miles if we want to work. It's starting to look like we may not get back to CA before Thanksgiving. Load board US - 176 IA - 9/5 MN - 9 Tomorrow - We should get to the drop in IA about 1 PM and to the SD shipper, if we take that route, by dark. Then pick that one up in the AM and drop back in MY by about 3 PM. We 'could' pick up either RV's or a trash truck yet on Friday. Not likely a trash truck on a Friday. If we do one of those we would wait and pick up on Sunday and be to the drop Monday AM. 221110 MN-IA 1 Box truck to Orange City IA (delivered) ... spending the night at home We head out at 7:30, arrive at the shipper at 8 AM. Arden Hills - This place has no receptionist which is becoming common. I call the 1st person on the list, they put someone else on the phone. This person doesn't know anything about a truck but will come right up to where I am. But ... the person who comes up knows everything. He takes me back through the building, grabs the keys and brings me out to the truck. At a very fast pace. I'm sure it helps that he was a foot taller, years younger and does this every day. We sign off on the paperwork and he is on his way. All checks out good. This truck is just being re-located, they know of no issues. And it has a tank full of gas. BB and I talk, we will meet at the drop, she will check the load board. Last night I had sent a message to the dispatcher about the SD trip. The weather looks OK this AM, but by the time I have picked up the first truck the SD trip has been taken. Now there are two IA to IA trips. My mind says it should only be 60 miles from this drop to the next pick up but BB says it is closer to 180 miles ... and the paid trip is 145 miles. All out of route. It goes against our rules. So I do not call. By mid-morning I am getting hungry. That does happen some times. The first thing I find in my bag is an apple. Picked it up a couple of days ago at a hotel. Normally I won't eat or drink anything in a truck but this truck has 117,000 mile and is not clean. So bad that that was the first thing I took a picture of this AM, the floor. Within a few bites there is a rest area, the only one on this trip on the correct side of the highway. I pull off to call the drop, again, no answer so I have to leave a message. By the time I am coming out of the restroom, BB is following me on the sidewalk. She has caught up to me. We talk, nothing good on the load board yet. I also look at a map of the drop. 2nd town south of Shelby (or Sheldon :) ) When I get off the four lane I park on the ramp and look more closely at the map. Five minutes later I am at the drop. Orange City - Huge place, the first thing close to what I want that I see is a receiving door. I park and go in. Locked. But someone comes right away. They find another person who is not willing to sign. But they find a 3rd person. They come outside and do a once around and it is theirs. Again I should have been ready to go before I contacted someone but I wasn't sure if I would have to head down the highway again. This time it only took a couple of minutes to put my things together. As I am walking around the truck, BB pulls in. Finally ... we are able to get a release number without talking to a dispatcher. Someone I was messaging with last night told me how. As soon as we send our paperwork in, we head to get food. Shelby - New truckstop that is not on the maps yet. It has both a Jimmy Johns and Godfathers pizza. We get a pizza and a cookie from Jimmy Johns. At first we had talked about heading home via Forest City, it would only add 45 minutes. BUT, we now have very short days and it will be dark before we get home as it is. If we don't get work. So we head home, the fastest, not shortest route. There is nothing close for rental trucks. The short trip trash trucks are gone. IA does put out some RV's but the only two the same direction are to NY without a rental car close. No, that wasn't the only two. There were two to FL. But no cars are available out of FL since the prior hurricane and now there is a second one hitting them right now. So we passed on that trip. We passed on the NY one two, but it could work. And it might if they are still there on Saturday and we are still here. At some point they will release the 100-200 RV's that have been sitting in the lot for two weeks already. ... Oh yeah. After lunch today I notice that a tooth is loose. I should, likely will, try to get in tomorrow and have it looked at. Otherwise it is likely to break off when I'm eating ... I think we did a non-stop trip from there to near home. Four hours, that doesn't happen often. We stop at Tinucci's for food. Enough food for two meals. Used to be enough food for three meals but they have cut back. Then home. It was 60 degrees this AM, now it is 33. Early this AM, BB was looking at old emails and saw that a rental car company was going to charge us for a broken windshield. BB looked back in her daily notes and found the car in question. Yes, we did realize during our trip that the windshield was cracked, but at delivery the person checking her in showed how they mark damage and this damage had already been recorded. No issue. So once the customer service opened, BB called them. She didn't even get to explain what happened ... the claim was so old that THEY had gotten rid of all their records so they couldn't prove anything one way or the other. Claim dropped. Load board US - 172 IA - 4/2 MN - 8 WI - 7 We will watch the load board tomorrow for either local or long. By Sat AM we may take anything that works. And local dispatch may call again. 221111 MN Life ... isn't always on the road. Got up this AM and decided I should do something about my loose tooth today. I was able to call and get a 9 AM appointment. But, because I have to take a med, I was not ready to go anywhere for a few hours after that. We did keep watching the load board for the ideal trip but that never showed. Then a couple of hours later we get a call from our daughter, she is in ER with re-recurring physical issue. So we spend the next six hours at the hospital. Long day, nothing done work wise. BB did get her passport so we are both legal to go to Canada again, but neither company has us on record as being legal so we aren't going there for work. Which may be fore the best. I'd like to do a personal trip again 1st. It sounds like all the Covid restrictions are gone. Hopefully. Load board US - 143 IA - 7 MN - 10 WI - 5 There were still 5-6 rental trips that would work for us but that company/dispatch do not work weekends so we don't know what will be there Monday AM. There is a trip to MLW that I did twice last month and said 'never again.' so we opted not to take that trip again. Everything else is over 500, more like over 600 miles, and only one so we'd used the chase car. But nothing looks like a good match, too far between the drop and the next current shipper. IF it is still there on Monday, we will call in at 7 AM and get a local. Then call the rental dispatcher and see what else we can line up. The trips that are out there have been there for a few days so they seem to do something behind the scenes and then they are gone. |
