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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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221116 MN-MN 1 trash truck to Sauk Rapids MN (delivered) 1 trash truck to South Sioux Center IA (returned) ... spending the night at Rochester MN We didn't want to leave out too early this AM as we were not sure how well the roads were going to be. And then when we were ready, we weren't ready so we finally got going at 7:45. On a clear day we would have been ready to go before 7 AM, we were just sitting around waiting for the sun to come up. Freeway's were clear, traffic not bad for a rush hour. When we got down to where we usually exit the free/expressway, we decided to stay on the four lane. Then when we got to 2nd option, we decided to go the back roads. I don't think it gained us anything. We could have stayed on the four lane and got there just as fast. It 'says' it would take about 20 minutes longer on the four lane, but there we would have been going the speed limit. So it took us about an extra 45 minutes today to get 90 miles. 1st stop is the shipper in Dodge Center. Our company shuttle van is already there and the trucks are lined up to leave. Don't know why, but they also left at 7:30 today. They usually leave the office at 6 AM and would have been long gone. No issues with my truck today but it still takes 45 minutes for an inspection. I do talk the the shuttle driver quickly a couple of times. It's someone I used to spend hours with in the shuttle van when I still rode it. Someone else is having issues today but they pull out before I do. 2nd stop is the Kwik Trip in Kasson for the scale. No fuel today as there is more than enough already to get to the drop. I'm good to go. I did call dispatch to see if we were still scaling, I don't have to cross any scales today. The driver that left before me had taken a different route and was waiting to get on the four lane when I went past. BB was a ways behind me so the driver had pulled out in front of her. First the person lost a big pile of snow, then BB saw more white coming at her. BB didn't realize until too late it was the drivers placards. Opps ... now they have one. I had seen that they all had them on the outside of their trucks. That is where they are supposed to be, but if I can find a spot, I put mine inside of a window. 3rd stop is 3 hours later at the drop in Sauk Rapids. I've been here before so I know where to park and who to look for. Offices are empty. When I do find someone, they go upstairs and get everyone off their break :) Today the guy doesn't want to look at my truck, he fills out a clean inspection for me while standing at a desk on the opposite of the building. 4th stop is only a couple of miles away, but in another town. Arby's in St Cloud. By now there are lots of midwest trips on the rental board. I want to call, which is rare being outside of my 'six hour window.' But BB says now. We are not even to our next truck yet. The bus out of IA is gone as are the trucks out of Sheldon, both the ones from yesterday and the ones from today. Sheldon is <> 30 miles from my drop and it's rare to match trips that close. But there are plenty of others. As of now. 5th stop is the Kwik Trip in Owattona for fuel. We have gone our 400+ miles today so we need a re-fill. We hadn't been sure how well today would go so we were not sure when or where we would be getting a hotel. It would have only cost us an hour to head home and stay the night if we had been running later. But we are early enough that we 'should' get to the shipper, get inspected and down the road an hour before we shut down. 6th stop is the shipper (again) in Dodge Center. IF we don't have to scale this truck, we could be to the hotel before last light. No inspection issues with either truck today ... but ... BB notices the front tires look low. So we have to call dispatch so THEY can call the shipper. Most people are gone for the day but someone picks up and heads over to see me. Everything is shut off here so they send me to a nearby shop that does a major amount of work for this shipper. The 1st tire had 90 psi and was supposed to have 120 psi. So it was low and they filled it. He's out there at below freezing for 20 minutes filling the tires and I have three shirts plus three jackets on and I go inside to stand out of the wind. ??? (BB calls and asks if this person and check my load, but that isn't the proper procedure and I have never had an issue) It is now dark, past last light. BB want's to make a reservation for a hotel but waits. 7th stop is the scale ... I am overweight. First time for me. I call the after hours dispatcher who says I can go back to the shop and see if they can fix the issue or ... I choose the or. Or I can park it at the shipper and pick it up again in the AM after they have moved the weight. 8th stop is back at the shipper. 9th stop is Rochester. First at 5 West for two cups of wild rice soup and then the Sleep Inn for the night. The Sleep Inn here is $30 less than the lower class hotels in Owatonna. Both are about 30 minutes from the shipper. Load board US - 164 IA - 24/21 MN - 7 WI - 2 Doesn't look like we are going anywhere. It would be nice if we could line up weekend work for the rental trucks but that isn't easy. Now there is snow in the North East so another place we are not going.
221117 MN-NE 1 trash truck to South Sioux Center IA (delivered) 1 rental truck to Shakopee MN (Friday) ... spending the night at Sioux Falls SD Alarm at 6 AM. Breakfast, eggs, bacon, juice. Running a little slow this AM getting out of the room and then we had to clear the snow off the car. But the major slow down was ... the highway maps showed lots of spin outs on US-14. We only saw three, one of them had rolled. 1st stop was the shipper at Dodge Center. Our shuttle was there again, I'll have to ask why they are running at 7:30 instead of the former 6 AM. "They" were not going to have my truck ready. I had to take it to the inspection area and find someone to adjust it, just as if I had been here when they were open. I found someone and they came out and adjusted and I was off. 2nd stop was back at the Kwik Trip in Kasson to the scale. I look at the ticket when I pay for it 20,000+pounds. I'm good. BB had stayed in Dodge Center and waited for me, I called her when I was leaving the truckstop and she pulled on the highway as I was passing. Traveling down the road I my mind clicks ... 20,000+ pounds? I need to be UNDER 20,000#'s. 3rd stop, roadside in Owattona - I pull off at the next exit and call dispatch ... back to the shipper again. It took 15 minutes down the road for it to hit me so another half hour wasted. BB will keep going and pull off at the next rest area. No reason to put the extra miles on the car. And the roads are not that good yet. 4th stop is back at the shipper in Dodge Center to have it re-adjusted. This time it was the bosses boss that did it. He was wondering why the tag axel wasn't down. But someone also told me that these things should weigh 17,000# on the front axel if they are set right. 5th stop is the Kwik Trip in Kasson again. I take a picture of where I am parked on the scale, there is no way I could have gotten the back axels on the same section of the scale as the front axel. I pay and walk out ... I am still over. I call dispatch. I get the OK to run. It is now 10:30 ... we could have left out last night at 4:30. Visibility is down to 1/4 mile and the roads aren't good just west of Dodge Center again. Saw one more car in the ditch. ... back when I headed from Owattona earlier, I was able to fishtail this truck as I was pulling back on the freeway. It is slick. Glad BB didn't follow me, just for the fun of it. 6th stop is at the rest area near Owattona to get BB following again. When I was stopped, I took my back pack out of my truck. I don't need any, any extra weight. There is only one 'inspection' area that I will pass today. I have only seen it open once in my 20 years of driving ... and luckily it wasn't open again today. More snow spots on I-90. BB will tell me later that I-90 was bad this AM too, just as it was on US-14. We did meet 5 'Got Junk' trucks being transported. Yesterday I noticed three transporters, 2 were Armark trucks like the ones we used to move from Fargo to South Bend. The other was a box truck which was following them so likely running together. 7th stop was the Blue Line truckstop in Worthington. I fueled. I had done the math but the pump shut me off at $100. Nowadays that is only 20 gallons and some large trucks have two 150 gallon fuel tanks. I could have started the pump again but I was just guessing at what mileage I was getting so I would likely have to start again. We haven't eaten mid-day so we grab shelf food and eat in the car. Fresh but way too much. No looking under the pickle for the meet on this one. An inch of meat and two slices of cheese. We finally decide to call on the Sioux Falls truck but I go to voicemail. Then I call my drop and that goes to voicemail also. A few miles down the road I get a call back from my drop so I pull over on the side of the road and answer. I should be there at 4 PM. 8th stop is the Loves in Le Mar. By now I have a better idea of how much fuel I will need. I had guessed I was getting 5 mpg. Now it looks like I am getting closer to 4 mpg. Which is not very good for an empty truck. We are still getting snow bursts including while stopped at Loves. Just before Sioux City there are two small towns that IA-60 does not go around and those slow me down enough that I will not make it to the drop before 4 PM but a few minutes after. 9th stop is the drop in South Sioux City. While I am still in the truck someone comes up to me and says they will send out someone to inspect the truck. This guy at least was standing next to the truck while he 'inspected' it. I'm not sure he ever looked at the truck, he just stood next to it and checked all the boxes. 15 minutes and I am done. It is after 5 PM east coast time but the rental dispatcher never got back to me. I call again. Not sure what is going on. He hadn't done anything with my request. Now he sends the request. We will 'assume' we got the trip. We could stay here and drive up in the AM. But we have an hour of daylight left so I decide to go. The first sign I see says Sioux Falls, 70 miles ... and the speed limit is 80 mph. We get to Sioux Falls three minutes after last light. 10th stop is Sioux Falls. Food was from Capriotti's. We each got a cheesestake. BB also got coleslaw and I got soup. A couple of blocks down the road and we were at the Comfort Inn. Load board US - 165 IA - 24/22 MN - 7 IA - 6 It doesn't look like we will be working this weekend. We could if we had a way to line up some rental work, but we chose to do this trip instead of another location. We'll drop this early afternoon on Friday and then ??? 221118 SD-MN 1 rental truck to Shakopee MN (delivered) ... spending the night at home No work assigned yet so no reason to set the alarm. East coast dispatch starts at 8 AM, 7 local. I had called them starting yesterday about 2 PM and then finally got ahold of them after 5 PM. A little after 8 AM I started calling them, seven tries before they finally picked up and got the trip lined up for me. By then it was after 10 AM. Another few hours wasted. 1st stop was three miles from our hotel. Good planning. I called ahead and they knew what it was. We got there and the first person I talked to gave me a blank look. While I was standing there, someone else walked over and knew everything and had the keys. First time in a while ... this truck will need gas. 2nd stop is the Circle C in Brandon for fuel. I only put in 6 gallon as I have no idea how much mileage I am getting or how far the fuel in the tank will go. But a few miles down the road I realized I would need more fuel. 3rd stop was the Kwik Trip in Windom for food and fuel. I was down to 15 miles over 'E' when I stopped. By now my fuel range was up 22 mpg. I did the math and put in what I needed to arrive without the gauge being on 'E.' While there I got a rib sandwich. Fresh, good. Preferred over either McDonalds or Hardee's. BB and I were not running together and she stopped at A&W a few miles up the road. I had thought about it, but I didn't want to have to stop twice ... or wait for food. 4th stop was the drop in Shakopee. Pretty quite on a Friday night. I had thought about waiting in my truck until BB messaged me that she was here. Then I figured I could get everything done and wait in the office like I have done before. Nope ... office was closed. Now I am standing outside in the wind chill waiting. How far behind me could she be ... longer than I thought. It was cold, but I didn't get chilled to the bone. There had been a trip from Minneapolis to Shakopee that we had thought about doing. But that was before we were delayed a couple of hours this AM. And now it is gone. IA has been putting out trips but nothing in our range. Nothing in the 1,000 mile / two day range. And no pairs in the one day range. So we decide to head home. At one point we thought of parking and watching the load board in case they did put anything out. We didn't and they didn't. So we are home for the weekend ... as of now. 5th stop was my local dispatch office to drop off paperwork. As soon as I walked in one of the dispatchers walked out and said the other dispatcher was just asking where I was ... they now have a truck in Omaha coming back to the cities. That would have been nice if they had gotten the order ... yesterday. Being the always nosing person I am, I drove out back to see what was sitting the the lot. Three trucks ... one with the four way flashers on. So I called dispatch, which got me the job of going and getting the keys to shut them off. Not sure the why, but the shipper had dropped that truck off. (no drivers?) Then dispatch asked what I was doing next week, they will have local trips ... now we need to decide which pay better. There are close to a dozen rental trucks in the mid-west including one up in Bagley MN. Load board US - 206 IA - 37/35 MN - 7 WI - 7 It looks like there will be local work next week for as much as we want to do. So far we are planning on being in town for Thursday and Saturday. And if IA doesn't put any good trips on the board it will be longer than that. It is quarter end. The load board should hit 100 for at least a day or two.
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