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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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230407 MN-IL 1 Refer to Marengo IL (Monday) ... spending the night at home No work lined up so we are watching the load board when dispatch opens. Mid-morning I finally call dispatch about the MN to IL trip ... and find out the RV shipper is not working today. What we see on the loadboard is all we will see this week. Local dispatch calls about working Monday as I had said I would be available. I tell them I am NA for Monday. But that we are available for today. BB and I decide we do not want to run the east coast trips so we call on the MN to IL trip. We get the trip. Then we call a different dispatcher about an IL to ND trip. Looks great, it is less than an hour from our drop. But ... We have to take a 2nd leg from ND to OR. That is a deal breaker, so I don't find out how much it pays. After I hang up, BB and I talk. The ND to OR trip may be the best thing going by Monday. But it is too early to commit to a 2nd leg. Later when we check the load board, we find that someone has taken the ND to OR trip but not the IL to ND leg. AND ... the rental dispatchers are working. They had not updated their spread sheet all AM so we guessed that they had the day off. Now we see they have a MN to MN trip. Would have been great. But now it is mid-afternoon and we pass. So no work today. Local dispatch never calls back for work for today. I do call my shipper for my next trip and they don't open until 9 AM. OK, they open at 5-6 AM but they won't allow us pick up until 9 AM. That is going to make it tight for delivering in IL on Monday. As kind of expected ... part of the IL to OR trip was taken but not the whole trip. They just wouldn't give ME the partial. The ND to OR leg is gone but now there are two ND to MO trips. But these are 'tractor's' and the other was a box truck. The MN-MN trip that was out there was gone within the hour. IA pulled or covered all trips before the end of the day. Not sure if the ME trips were still there or not. So nothing new now until Monday. Load board US - 183 IA - 4/0 MN - 7 WI - 6 As of tonight, the IL to ND trip is still there. If it is still there Monday after we pick up, we may call on it. 230410 MN-IL 1 Refer to Marengo IL (delivered) 1 Tanker to Bismarck ND (Tuesday) ... spending the night at Elgin IL Up without the alarm clock. I eat leftovers for breakfast as I do not plan on stopping for food once I am in the truck. We are rolling within minutes of our planned time. Almost no rush hour this AM so our trip was what the computer/GPS had told us last night. When we get to the dealer, I head into service because that is where I have always gone. The guy at the desk seems to know every customer by name except for me. And he tells me I am in the wrong spot and where to go. But as soon as he is done with his line of customers he is over in the sales office making sure someone is helping me. They are, kind of. Everyone seems to know about the truck but they all seem to want to wait until the correct sales person is in at 9 AM. We had gotten there early because the drop closes at 4 PM and that only gives us one extra hour for all stops ... and traffic slow downs. I'm still waiting for my truck when the salesperson does get to the office, he asks if I am waiting for a refer ... I am. Not sure how he knew I was 'the driver' as I didn't have any logoed clothing on today. In a few minutes my truck is still not ready and the salesperson goes to look for it. Not a good sign, it looks like they have pulled it up to a shop door. What they tell me is they washed it before giving it to me. Nice to have a clean truck but I need those minutes to get to the drop. It is 9:30 by the time we are ready to pull out, an hour after we got here. Only a couple of minor issues. Nothing that effects the driving. It has been a long time since I have been to this dealer. We used to take our trucks here for service when I was a terminal manager in the early 1990's. Then I was often here when I first started driveaway as one of our main customers was a pizza company that used all Internationals. And sometimes they would brake down. For this trip, I have to leave the fuel where I find it. So no free fuel. And I have to call dispatch with the trip miles and fuel level when I pickup and when I drop. So I call. But the truck had been sitting on a hill and as soon as I pull out onto the street, the fuel level drops by a 1/16th. Not a lot, but still it is $10-20 of fuel. No truck issues, my first stop is the rest area two hours down the road. I don't go in, I just quick check a couple of items and then BB calls so we know where each other are. BB is at a Kwik Trip at the prior exit getting food, she had not eaten this AM. Road construction is almost in full swing already, going past Mauston is one of those places. No big issue for us, but the oncoming traffic had a seven mile backup. That would have mad this a tomorrow delivery. Somewhere in the Wisconsin Dells area I see a trash truck on the side of the road. Looks new. I work for the only two places that move them so I did think of stopping. But I carry nothing with that could help them and I am on a very tight schedule. So I didn't stop, BB had saw them also. Fuel is dropping faster than I thought so instead of fueling in Janesville, I'll be fueling most of an hour earlier in De Forest. By now my gauge is almost down to 'E' so my guess is I need to put in 3/4th of a tank of fuel. It is a 100 gallon tank so I'm guessing 75 gallons and I still have another 100+ miles to go. When I stop for fuel, once the meter get's over $200 I call BB. I have already put in almost as much fuel as the shipper is paying for. If I put in much more, this will be the first trip where I have not gotten paid more for fuel than I have put in. While I go into get my receipt, I also get a bottle of juice. It is getting warm today, lower 70's and I don't have any liquids with me. My plan is to stop again at the truckstop at the drop exit and top off as I don't think I have put in enough fuel. South of Madison there is a weigh scale that has truck specific signs. I'm watching way ahead to see if they are working today. When I pass the cameras, the sign a 1/4 of a mile ahead goes on that truck must exit. No one is there, there is nothing between me and that sign so to play it safe, I assume the sign is for me and exit. And in the scale area, I do not get the bypass lane, I have to cross the scale in front of the office. Even once on the scale I have to sit there. I'm an empty truck, how hard can it be to see that I am not overweight? They do let me go, but it likely took an extra five minutes. Another twenty miles down the road we saw ??? we don't know what it was for sure. It was a building on the shoulder/in the ditch. It looked like either a two part mobile home or office with the plastic facing the highway. But it had no tires under it. It was sitting flat on the ground. It was not supposed to be there. Too close to the road, not flat, no guard around it. My fuel gauge had dropped to 3/4 by the time we get to the border. 40 miles later it is still at 3/4 so I don't stop. Five miles later we are at the drop and the gauge is still showing 3/4 which is more than I needed to leave but I'm thinking the gauge is stuck (?) BB had looked at routes to get to the drop yesterday and was verballing telling me which ways we could go. Those are 'computer suggestions.' My way is logical. Stay on the freeway as long as possible with the fewest city street miles. My way added two extra miles, no extra time. The person at the drop who is supposed to sign was going to leave at 4 PM. We get there a little after 3:30. (Oh, I did drive 70 mph and eat in the truck today. Used truck, 200,000+ miles on it, I don't need to keep it clean or babied) We are in and out in 15 minutes and head back to the truckstop. No RV's out of IA so I call on the ND trip. This dispatcher does not say anything about a 2nd leg so we take the trip. I do a quick call to the shipper and they close in less than 10 minutes and we are still 20 minutes away. That extra half hour this AM we lost at the shipper would have gotten us down the road with our text truck. Good news ... shipper opens at 5 AM :) I told him we'd be there closer to 8 AM. We make reservations and head to our hotel. Once we are checked in, we head across the street to the Holiday Inn which has a Bennigan's in it. I had their potato soup and rueben balls. Very good, I couldn't eat everything and had to leave some food. 1st stop - Minneapolis at the shipper 2nd - Rest area, Black River Falls 3rd - TA in De Forest for fuel 4th - drop in Marengo 5th - Quality Inn / Bennigan's in Elgin Load board (Weekend) US - 174 IA - 3/0 MN - 7 WI - 6 Load board (Monday) US - 232 IA - 5/3 MN - 7 WI - 7 The MN dispatcher has a short 100 mile trip, where was that on Friday when we sat home? Also the rental dispatcher has two MN to MN trips. We might grab one or both of they are still there in a couple of days. Tomorrow we should be at the shipper by 8 AM and MAY, may get as far as Fargo by nightfall. We could make it back home Wednesday night but we will likely look for more work instead of heading home. We'd like to head west but if it doesn't happen this week, it likely won't happen until after the 4th. In a couple of weeks the fields should be getting dry and then we have a family picnic. And somewhere in there we need to see the dentist. 230411 IL-ND 1 Tanker to Bismarck ND ... spending the night at Alexandria MN We are up at our usual time, that is why I told the shipper we would be there around 8 AM. We were planning on eating closer to noon today so we did eat breakfast before we left the hotel. Eggs and bacon. We finally threw my spiced apples that we had been carrying around for the last week. We had gotten them at the Cracker Barrel. Always good, but was never hungry enough to eat them. We get to the shipper and call in. They pick up and meet us at the gate within a couple of minutes. This person turns on the battery for me :) Now that I know where it is. I asked, they said they usually are shipping one truck a week. This one has been on the load board for a week so the next one should be just about ready. I had called to take this truck last week coming back from Greer and they wouldn't give it to me because I wouldn't also take the Portland. By the time BB and I talked about it and decided we could do the Portland, that leg was gone and this one was still there. Today the low fuel light is one when I pick up the truck. That kind of threw us off as I didn't want to start the truck until we were ready to pull out. We did all the inspection, paperwork and phone calls we could before starting the truck. Out of routine so I forgot to take pictures before we left the lot. The closest, easiest station to get my truck into was back by the hotel. It was bigger, but that meant all the other trucks thought so to. I was able to get past the other trucks and get to a pump and then someone else wanted that same pump so they blocked the entrance until I was done fueling. I just put enough fuel in to get down the road into WI where fuel will be cheaper. BB had asked me how I was going to get out of the station so I thought I could only go one way on the highway. So ... I tried to go out the back and ended up in a hotel parking lot. There was no issue getting out the way I came in, I just didn't think that was an option. BB had planned on stopping at the oasis to get me a new I-pass but they don't open until 10 AM and she didn't want to wait an hour. I'm using hers so that is not an urgent issue. Passing Beloit again today I was able to get a better look at what was laying on it's side. Coming from IL we could see the name on the side of the building and the unit is laying on its side. What we thought was the open side of the building was actually the bottom. Not sure what happened. Just slide of the frame? And the driver kept going to their drop? I got the bypass at the first WI scale today and then their 2nd one was closed. Janesville is my WI stop for fuel. They are working on the truckstop so there is less room to pull out from the pumps and different doors to go in and out so BB didn't find me. We did talk and that may be part of the reason I forgot my receipt. So I called BB and she went back and got it for me :) This fuel gauge only shows 7/8 when the pumps stop. No idea yet what my mpg will be. On the last truck it was about 7 but this truck had 1,000+ miles on it when I picked it up. That is when they usually start getting better mileage. Two hours would put us at lunch time and near Mauston. Log Cabin Deli. That had been our plan but then we decided that the Double Nickels Deli has better truck parking so we switched plans. Today's special was lasagna ... with soup and chips. I was full from the soup so I only ate about 1/4th of the lasagna. Very good. If we had a way to keep it cool I would have gotten more to go. As it was we were not sure that we could keep one piece cool. Temps toped out at 85 degrees today ... and some of the lakes are still frozen over and there is snow in the shaded areas. Saw a picture online of someone sunning themselves in a little patch of grass surrounded by snow. Fuel is cheaper in WI so I stop again in Hudson. I do the math and try to come up short so I don't leave too much at delivery. We haven't decided how far we will go tonight so we will stop again at a rest area in an hour and a half. Rush hour, MN style. (I prefer the open road) If we make it to Alex, we will have our 500 miles in today. Our main brand of hotel has one location in Alex that gets 2 out of 5 stars. I've never head anything good about it. It is going to be after 6 PM when we would get there. We talk about going further but that makes for a short night. And shutting down here near St Cloud makes for a long day tomorrow. BB is hungry so she is going to stop near St Cloud for food, I will eat leftovers later. BB sits in line for a while but it seems to be taking about five minutes per car so she decides she is not that hungry. We had made reservations at the Best Western in Alex before leaving the rest area. I got there first, but it is later in the day and the lot is mostly full. I wasn't sure I could get between the cars to where I had planned on parking so I parked against the trees instead. So far I haven't hit them. BB calls me before I am out of the truck, she thought I was already in the room and instead I had just gotten here. As soon as we check in, we walk to Jimmy John's to get her a sandwich and a cookie for us to split. No microwave in our room so I have to use the one in the breakfast area to warm my lasagna. Still good ... hope I don't get sick from having it in the car all day (in a cooler) I had called the drop from the truckstop earlier today and left a voicemail. No one got back to me so I don't know what time they are open until. Local dispatch called but didn't leave a message. I'm not in town so I didn't call back. 1st stop - at the shipper in Elgin 2nd - at a Thornton's convenience store for fuel 3rd - TA in Janesville for more fuel 4th - Double Nickels Deli in Camp Douglas for food 5th - TA in Hudson for fuel 6th - rest area near Clearwater 7th - Best Western and Jimmy Johns in Alexandria for food and the night Load board US - 183 IA - 9/7 MN - 11 WI - 5 The two MN rental trips that were on their spreedsheet were gone first thing this AM. Still nothing out of IA that works for us. BB has decided that 800 mile trips are too far for her to chase me :) We still won't be over 500 miles from home, just in opposite directions. Tomorrow we should deliver about 2 PM and start heading home. Unless we find more work. .. the trip continues HERE |
